MR: Dr. Sproul, do you think that in some ways Evangelicals are carried along like the general culture with an obsession of power rather than a concern for preaching Christ crucified?
Sproul: Yes, I think it is just another dimension where the Evangelical church is playing catch-up with the world and trying desperately to address the culture with some degree of relevance, but as has been the case almost consistently in this century, we're following rather than leading.
MR: So what do you tell people who say that church is boring, and all we're trying to do is make it a little more relevant?
Sproul: When people say to me that for them church is boring, I don't challenge that assessment. They are giving me, I presume, an honest expression of how they feel at church; they're bored. And I think it is true that for most people church is boring. But I think the reason for that is that people are not sensing or having an awareness of, or experiencing in any viable way, the presence of God. I don't think there has ever been a human being in all of human history who, in the midst of an acute sense of the presence of God, was bored. Some people are terrified, some are angry, some weep, some are frightened and so on, but boredom is not a human response to the presence of God.
MR: What then is the problem? Why is there so much boredom? If we're not in the presence of God, why aren't we?
Sproul: Well, Calvin said, with respect to general revelation, that the universe in which we live is like a glorious theater and that we walk through it as people with blindfolds on. How many times does the Bible say that the earth is full of the glory of God? So if the earth is full of the glory of God, and I'm bored, it must be that I'm not perceiving the glory of God. Somehow I've got blinders on; somehow I'm almost comatose when it comes to true spiritual discernment. I think that we're living in a time, in a generation where we believe that reality is only skin deep, and that we have been almost brainwashed or conditioned into living on the surface of things. We will not dig beneath the surface, and consequently, we miss the glory.
MR: How does that relate to idea of preaching to people's "felt needs" instead of preaching Christ and the good news of justification?
Sproul:Well, I would say that one of the most successful professions of all time is a profession that caters and panders to a "felt need." It's also been called the oldest profession. Now I know that Madison Avenue understands that if you want to sell something, if you want to get a response you've got to scratch people where they itch, and you've got to meet their "felt needs." And there is nothing wrong with meeting the felt needs of people when they're having trouble with their children, or with their marriage. They feel the tension and the conflict there, and the church obviously should have a ministry to that. When people are sick, they need healing and that is a felt need. But what is happening now in terms of a technique or a strategy is that you try to speak only to those superficial levels of human experience, and never get down to the deeper questions of understanding the character of God. Yes, when my child is in trouble I feel it and I need to learn how to relate to my child. But the most important thing I can learn, in learning how to relate to my child, is understanding the character of God because that defines all of our human relationships. But people don't feel the need for their deeper needs. And it is the task of the church-not to take a Gallup poll, or give a referendum to the community and have them tell the preacher what to preach. We take our instruction from the Word of God, and from the priorities of God.
MR: I would assume then, that you are not in favor of the church growth movement?
Sproul: Well, my view of general revelation teaches me that I can learn from science and from nature things I cannot find in the Bible. And church growth methods learn significant things from secular research. I can learn things, for example, about management, about structure, and things like that, from a pagan. But if you want to have that as the whole driving factor of your church, you are doomed to prostitution. There is a content and a mission to the church that the Bible gives us that is transcultural, and transhistorical. And though I can learn certain techniques of how to organize, and how to reach out to people, I must never compromise the mission and character of the church to preach the gospel, the good news of Christ's death for sinners. And I think that people who get caught up in methods do just that, they compromise the mission of the church.
MR: Do you think that politics has become more of an obsession for some Christians than theology?
Sproul: I'm afraid that today, both in the secular culture and in the church, that too many people are looking to the government to solve their every problem. And what we need is for the church to be the church. I do think we should have a voice, as Christians, to speak to the culture in a political arena, but I don't spend a whole lot of my time there because I don't have a whole lot of hope there.
MR: What about chances for reformation?
Sproul: Well, obviously only God can bring a reformation, and I don't know what his plan is, providentially speaking. Everything is so stacked against it that it would be easy to succumb to despair. But on the other hand we are seeing a crisis in the evangelical church. We've seen the failure of Liberalism, and though it's painful, we've seen the liberal church beginning to understand that people aren't going to subscribe to that for very much longer because there is no reason for them to get up on Sunday morning and go to church. The evangelical church, however, has bought into what Os Guinness calls modernity, with all of its relativism, and pluralism, and so on, that have the seeds of its destruction sown within it. And yet, it is in the renewal of the evangelical church that I see as the greatest human hope for reformation. But it's going to take a recovery of the authority of Scripture, and of the gospel of Christ, and a massive awakening to the character of God.
MR: What can the average layperson do to fulfill his or her responsibilities in that regard?
Sproul: The first thing I would tell that person would be to read the Old Testament, and to get re-acquainted with the character of God. Because every great movement in the church, and all great theologians for that matter, certainly mastered the New Testament, but they did not ignore the Old Testament because they understood that the Old Testament was the history of God's own self-disclosure. And there is so much to be learned about the majesty of God and the sovereignty and grace of God in the Old Testament, that to spend time there will often awaken us from our dogmatic slumbers about what Christianity is all about.
