Many Christian leaders are pushing the message to their ministers, leaders, and people— “In this world, we need to be soft, gentle, lowly, and winsome.” But is this the message for the hour, the right word in season?

We are not in an age of peace, yet the loudest message coming from so many ministers and church leaders is, “Be even more winsome!” They claim that issues such as creation, gender, sexuality, sin, and sanctification are merely secondary issues that displace the gospel from its central position.

The cry from this coalition of gospel leaders with years of faithful service in our churches is basically, “Compromise a little on these lesser issues for the sake of ‘love,’ ‘Jesus’ and the ‘gospel’! Don’t be offensive! Don’t be divisive!”

Is the church actually winning anything with these tactics? Jesus aptly quoted from the proverbs, “Yet wisdom is justified by all her children.” (Luke 7:35) It’s not working, the Australian church is continually in decline. 

These shepherds are calling upon the sheep to make peace with the wolves for the sake of their gospel while the church and her sheep are being daily devoured by wicked pagan heathenism — the worship of man and his life (health). Wisdom, wants, and whims are being given a higher place than the right worship of God and adherence to His holy law.

These men at the helm have led us to this place with these winsome tactics and now it is evident they are “in for a penny, in for a pound.” Men in our pulpits are sounding the alarm over future hypothetical battles that we ought to be willing to fight, while actively turning a blind eye to the war ravaging their people today. They hide in their safe ecclesiastical citadels, while the countryside and city are being ravaged by barbarians.

Ravenous wolves are devouring the flock, and the shepherds have put down their rods and taken up a harp. The sheep are paying with their lives and the lives of their children as seen in the toll of lost careers due to woke ideology and Covid restrictions, divorce and abuse ravaging our Christian families.

Covenant children are increasingly claiming to be gay, transgender, and proud of their sexual promiscuity. Parents don’t know what to do with their children’s education as schools actively groom and indoctrinate students with pagan ideology, sexuality, and gender. Mental illness is running rampant among Christians. The elderly in our churches are afraid of sickness and death. Church members are at a loss as to what truth really is and where it can be found — the government, science, media, medicine, the Bible?

These leaders are like the Israelite leaders of old of whom God said, “They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, Peace!’ When there is no peace’” (Jeremiah 6:14).

The next time a leader in the Christian community promotes winsomeness and small compromises, to be at peace with the world, when they double down on ‘softness, gentleness, and lowliness’ while the battle rages around you and your family, will you be able to see it for what it really is? Godly character or ungodly cowardice?

Perhaps if we sheep want to actually survive we should start looking for good shepherds with battle scars. Men who have paid a price for their convictions. Men whose convictions don’t change with the winds of time, politics, and popularity.  Men who are…’bold, fearsome, and courageous.’ Men who have taken up the Sword of the Spirit, left their ecclesiastical citadels, and are defending the sheep on the hillside.

To the Christian leaders, I say this, it is time for you to cast off the old winsome ways, dress for work like a man (Jer. 1:17), and be courageous, for “It may be that the Lord will work for us, for nothing can hinder the Lord from saving by many or by few.” (1 Sam. 14:6)