1 And when I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God. 2 For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. 3 I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling, 4 and my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5 so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God. 1 Corinthians 2:1-5 (NASB)
We preach to men as if they were conscious of being dying sinners; they are not; they are having a good time, and our talk about being born again is from a domain of which they know nothing. The natural man does not want to be born again. – Oswald Chambers from The Psychology of Redemption, 1062 R.
We live in a time in which the evangelical church appears to have been taken over by men who have rejected the Apostle Paul’s method of preaching the Gospel in favor of man-centered, man-pleasing methodology that is grounded in cultural relevance. You can tell very quickly if a local church has succumbed to this by observing whether the focus of what goes on there is on Christ Crucified or on the personalities of the leadership therein. If it is the latter then observe carefully how the Gospel is presented, that is, if it really is. If the preaching in the church is man-centered and geared to pleasing men then it will contain threads of entertainment intertwined with psychological methodology all based upon the concept that these things can actually persuade people to become Christians.