Dark Devotions (Ray Patchett & Steve Messer)
A best-selling book on church growth says ‘that anybody can be won to Christ if you discover the key to his or her heart…’ Accordingly evangelism must begin by addressing people’s ‘felt needs’. The author’s motivation seems sound (seeing people converted to Christ), but what of his method?
It is unlikely that the prophet Micah would have agreed. His was a less rosy conclusion on people’s unassisted capacity to determine what was in their best interests. Micah, a younger contemporary of Isaiah, addressed the same problems among God’s people: their complacent inattention to the righteous requirements of his law expressed in idolatry and social injustice. Like the other biblical prophets his message was unpopular and therefore largely ignored. Can you hear the biting sarcasm as he denounces the windy lies of
the people’s preferred prophets? They wanted preachers who would tell them what they wanted to hear, satirised here as promises of lots of grog. No doubt an Australian church outreach which promised an all you can eat barbeque and free beer would attract a crowd who felt their needs would be met that way!
Partying might deliver some short-term thrill, but Micah’s message, which his audience warned him not to preach (2:6), was of looming disaster which would deliver ‘utter ruin’ (2:3-4). In its light, their petty pleasures would seem ‘small beer’, that they would have an eternity to regret.
Felt needs are a most unreliable guide. In an older best-seller (still in print though first published in 1536!) a pastor from former times, John Calvin wrote, ‘…the human mind is…a perpetual forge of idols… stuffed… with presumptuous rashness, dar[ing] to imagine a god suited to its own capacity’.[1]
With our idol-prone minds we will always imagine our needs are best met by pleasant or convenient things. ‘Not so’, says Micah! We really need to repent and turn away from self-satisfaction to walking humbly with God (6:8). We really need to come for our peace and security to Jesus the shepherd-king born in Bethlehem (5:2-4, cf Mt 2:5-6), seeking in him God’s pardon for sin and living lives of obedience in gratitude for his delight in showing us the steadfast
love which has cast our sins ‘into the depths of the sea’ (7:18-20).
[1] John Calvin. Institutes of the Christian Religion. 1.11.8.