Christian Events Without Christ
The Holy Spirit testifies to the Person and work of Jesus Christ (Jn 15:26). Recently, I attended three Christian events over the span of three days. One should be expectant while attending events flying the banner of Christ, to hear something of Christ. Sadly, all the events failed the simple litmus test, “We preach Christ and Him crucified.”
The first event gave lip service to Jesus. The luncheon keynote speaker delivered a feel-good message that did have some exhortation, and everyone went home feeling good. The second event, a small pastor’s conference, could have been titled, “A dumped truckload of leadership principles and practices void of any reference to the Holy Spirit.” The third was an actual Sunday sermon in front of 300 people, where the preacher preached faith, not Christ.
In all these cases, the absence of the Gospel is disturbing. In the first case, the void was because the offense of the Gospel would have ruined the gathering of happy Christians. In the second case, the void was the result of ambitious man-centered organization for Christ’s church. Melding corporate America’s leadership strategies with Christian wording from the pastoral epistles, the seemingly endless to do list given to us was exhausting. Shocking to my sensibilities was the worship service sermon, in which Jesus’ name was uttered for the very first time in the sermon at the 35th minute (9:54am PST).
In my self-reflective grief, I mean no harm to my dear brothers in Christ. All the speakers at these three events clearly meant well. They also motivated me to re-commit to preaching the cross of Christ in a now highly awakened state. If men of God will not do this work, I surely will do so, by the grace of God. It is what I have been called to do (Acts 6:4).
Preachers of the Gospel of Jesus Christ are called to preach the Word (2 Tim 4:2). The Word is not about being a light without a message linked to Calvary. It is not about 132 leadership “must do’s” neatly alliterated with the letter “c”. It is not about Rahab, the harlot, and her courageous faith.
When the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ are not central to one’s Christian communication, the communication is something, but it is not the Christian Gospel. Failure to make Jesus and His death the centerpiece of one’s communication, from a lectern/stool/pulpit, is misguided. Like a car knocked out of alignment, men who are called to represent the King of kings must be brought back into alignment. Who will help them re-find their bearings?
The answer to this question presents a related problem. Christians who do not sit under men of God, who preach Christ without variant “Christian” messages, become too ignorant of the Gospel to even know how far the preacher and preaching have drifted away from the Cross. They are anti-Bereans. In the second event, only one pastor got up and departed the seminar. He was perfectly justified in doing so.
The failure to find relevance in Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection — when speaking to fellow Christians — invariably means we are sitting under ambitious men questing after their own kingdoms. Otherwise, they would point us to Jesus and not to ourselves as light reflectors (Friday), corporate church managers (Saturday), or courageous faith generators (Sunday).
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I am immensely grateful to the Holy Spirit, who was not mentioned in any one of the three events (speech/lecture/sermon). He granted me three days of observation, contemplation, and re-commitment to preaching the Word of Christ, who is Himself the Gospel. My brothers showed me how easy it is to talk about anything else. Sin and total depravity of humanity (bad news), along with the precious blood of Jesus Christ, the redeemer (good news), must always be in our communication.
In my reflections of a cross-less void, experienced over three days, it is the sin problem and blood solution that sit at the heart of what we should preach and teach. If we preach sin, we draw the ire of sinners. If we preach the blood of Jesus, we draw their mockery. Popular preachers are people pleasers. They want one thing: a bigger crowd to listen to them. That is why they are incessantly counting sheep. Mega-wanna-be “lead” pastors are self-absorbed, using Jesus Christ to build their respective little kingdoms, where they can play pope, and declare their authority over Christ’s people.
As for me, I am a very small church pastor, who loves Christ’s church, both local and global. I love to see Christians who are growing in their study of the Scriptures, increasing in their prayer life, who engage in both personal and corporate worship, and who fellowship with one another in Christian love and service. I also thank God that He has kept me from big church aspirations.
Big church invariably must be managed. Big church may claim to be an organism, but, by nature, it must become an increasingly complex organization (the playground of both big and small popes). There is nothing inherently evil about organization, but sinners drive organizations to get bigger, needing more money, more people, to do more work, to sustain the organization. The customer takes control and votes with his or her feet to determine the success or failure of the organization.
Meanwhile, Christ’s little flock, free of endless programs and catchy new names for those programs, can focus on Christ and Him crucified, an atonement for sin. We gather for prayer. We gather to sing. We gather to sit under the Word preached. We intermingle as people who know one another’s names because we are a family who does spiritual life together. Then, we go to our homes, offices, and recreations to live as ambassadors of Christ to the people who walk in darkness.
When someone asks, “David, how is your church going?” My reply is always, “Nothing that the return of Christ wouldn’t solve; and oh, by the way, it is Christ’s church, which is why we preach Him, not ourselves.”
David Norczyk
Coeur d’Alene, Idaho
October 26, 2026
