Category Archives: Church

Church, Life, Psycolog, Ramblings

Church Attendance Pt2

There are segments of our Western culture that are flourishing.  Technology seems to ingrained into every part of what we call life today.  The world seems to be saying it can provide you everything you need.  “I can provide all things at a click of a mouse or a tap on the screen.”  It is a beautiful place that we have made.  You don’t have to go to the Grand Canyon to feel the awe, you can get virtual glasses and the latest program.  You can buy all that is needed to lead a full and exciting life.  If you are lonely just log on to Facebook,  if you are hungry call up UBER to deliver a gourmet meal in less than an hour.  A world of products are just a click away.  Special industries have popped up to provide vacations, amazing experiences, and gastronomic delights.  Entertainment can provide an endless supply of music, music, live sports and the latest shoot-em-up gaming experience.  There seems to be a constant hum in the air.  But it is so much driven by individualism.

It is about my experience, my location, my food, my dog, my witticism, and my life.  Happiness and stimulation without commitment.  It may not be George Orwell’s new world, but the outcome is the same.  Dull automatons marching to the glare of a screen plastered to your face.

This new found freedom is at the expense of something else.  One writer called it the vanishing of institutions.  If we can be ourselves, if we can life our lives in constant self gratification and self forfillment, what do we need with institutions?  What do we need with the Church?

The Church is our beliefs and ethics in the flesh. The Church is a bringing down from heaven the life of God to become a operating on earth.  There is a shared set of beliefs that the whole agrees and defines itself.  The Church exists to pass along our beliefs.  The Church exists as a place to turn our beliefs into action, in real behaviors, to educate.  It is more than a broadcast message hoping some would friend it.  It is not about information it is about values.

Values, including love, forgiveness, self sacrifice, the greater good, hope, acceptance and service, must be passed on.  And the passing from one generation to the next is one of the reasons the Church exists and will continue to exist.  When the Church stops passing on values and changes to a broadcast mode of information, then it fails.  Broadcasting of information without values becomes part of the hum and will die with all pet rock and the VCR.

Yes I go to Church.  It is an act of faithfulness to a value system.  Oh I love the old hymns and a well crafted sermon is a delight to my ears. Never-the-less, when you get down to it, it is more about legacy, it is more about passing something along.  It is about endurance of life.  It is about community.  It is about being a part of something that is more than elections across a screen.

What do you think?  Leave me a comment.

Church, Psycolog, Worship

Flash Mob Church

You may have not noticed but there is something happening in the Church.  There has been successive waves of growth and wane.  Waves of people coming in the door staying just long enough to figure it all out and then move on to the next congregation.  I don’t know what they are looking for, I do not know what would keep them long term, or for that matter do I even desire them to stay longer.  You see they are what I call locusts.  They fly in, sometimes in great clouds, to land and partake of the feast.  There is great excitement about these new numbers.  Energy is spent to make them comfortable, liked and accepted.  Some of them proudly proclaimed how much they loved our church and they attended only sporadically at times, they saw themselves as a part.  Some saw attendance as a once a month thing, others a little more.  However, when the time comes for them to fly away there is no warning, they are just not there anymore.  As suddenly they appeared out of the dark, they simply disappeared.  No amount of email and visitor cards stopped their vanishing.

Oh there are those who are there all the time; never wavering, steady, resolute.  I used to say, “saved, justified, sanctified and petrified.”  Never-the-less why has this phenomenon happening?  Why has the Church become more of a Flash-mob experience?  If an individual church has two-hundred members, but only one-hundred is ever there at one time, what does that say about our new church culture?  The church becomes like a roller coaster. Has it always been that way, or has something changed?

I think it is not the preaching or even the preacher.  It is not the musicians or ever the type of music.  It is not the thousand hours of video work put into the presentation of the week splattered up on the white boarded front of the church.  It is that our culture has changed.  Changed from a Church oriented, family empowered, God designed culture to one of emphasis on the individual.  The individual who can determine what they like.  The individual that sets the boundaries.  There are no moral absolutes.  We have to be tolerant to everyone’s feelings and “specialness”. We want the new younger crowd to be welcome and comfortable.  To draw them out of the world to a God that fills them with awe and wonder.  But the church seems at times more like a “Me generation” rally than worship of God.

The church attendance roller coaster is simply a response to change from THEE to me.

What do you think.  Leave a comment.

 

 

 

 

Church, Personal, Ramblings

Church Attendance

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When I went to my denominations educational institution were I was required to attend chapel.  I went to school at night so each evening between classes all the prospective preachers would hike down the little hill to First Church.  It was conveniently on the same campus.  It was not an option.  If you did not go it would be noted in your permanent record.  With enough checks you were put on probation and ultimately you would not be allowed to graduate.

The thought of my outward religiosity as some criteria for my spirituality troubles me.  And this concept has plagued me as I finally graduated and became a Pastor.  At every service I would take mental notes as to who was there and who was absent without leave.  Thank God I have overcome this terrible judgmental attitude in my life.

I don’t think God keeps a gradebook and checks every time you or I miss a church service.  The problem is that sometimes the establishment, sometimes called the church, does not quite look at it that way. Church attendance is seen as a mandatory thing.  “You can’t have good and Godly Christians staying away from the gracious open doors of the church.”  Though Christianity purports to operate under the auspices of grace, love and freedom, there seems to be a hint of Torah-caliber parameters to be upheld.

“We can’t have our congregation out during the summer for vacation.”

“The building will fall down and the lights not glow if we let our board members take some family time off.”

Here the institution called the church seems to have taken something so beautiful, so wonderful, so life giving, so filled with awe (Worship) and found a way to grade and monitor people’s performance.

So how exactly do you go to Church? “Because you just have to.”  Some churches even have little cards that every person or family in a pew has to fill in every service just to keep count.

There are two directions of inspection going on.  There is first an assessment of my spirituality. I see the sly glances by the pious attempting to determine if I am holding my head at the right angle, placing the proper envelope in the plate as it goes by, and I standing when I am told to. And if I am not there filling my spot there is a negative assessment of my commitment and spirituality.  If you miss a couple of meetings, you become bombarded with email and notes asking if you are alright.  Secondly this inspection process can well become reciprocal. Church is also where I could well assess the spirituality of my fellow adherents. This is the part I am most concerned with.  I cannot control or change the assessments of others of me.  But I cannot allow myself to fall into the same behavior.

It does not matter if I am the only one in the pew. It does not matter if Harry Holiness is in his place either.  Worship is what I do and it is not for anyone else.  If I am right with God, if I am in the spirit that God would have me in, then it really doesn’t matter whether I am in my pew or on vacation.  Mandatory church like mandatory chapel was in college is a stupid.  God isn’t keeping score.  God does not have a grade book to keep my attendance.  I am saved by grace and not by what I do.

Now don’t get me wrong here.  Worship with a body of like believers is a wonderful thing.  It can pick you up when you don’t feel like it.  It is a place where we can be with people who know more about you than some family members.  But I am not going to Church just to please others.  I am not going to church to meet some grading criteria.

There is no way to guilt me into it; I have given up guilt with the new life in Christ.

What do you think?  Leave a comment.

Church, Life, Sermon Illustration

What is a Saint?

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What are little boys made of:
They are made of frogs and snails and puppy dog tails,
What are little girls made of:
They are made of sugar and spice and everything nice.

But what makes a saint?
They are made of very real stuff; costly stuff, the stuff of conflict and struggle. They are made of failure and defeat. They are made of repentance and renewal. I once asked a Junior High Class in Sunday School what made a saint. After quite a bit of time in silence and seemingly looks of question, one particularly quarrelsome young man exclaimed, “A saint is a dead Christian.”
God’s saints are men and women seasoned by many of life’s deepest and most tragic human experiences. Saintliness comes from hard times. Saintliness comes from fires of life. When you around one of these special people you can almost smell the smoke on their clothes. They most often focus not on doing things right, but more on doing the right thing.
They have within them a fire that burns as much as a candle burns and puts out a special glowing fire. The brightness of thier lives determine the length of the candle. Their real character is not determined by reputation. Their real character is not determined by their professions. A saint’s character is determined by the Spirit of Christ that dwells and shines through them.
I have met a few saints and none of them would like the title.

Church, Ministry, Preaching

The Church and Leadership

There is a giant gap between leadership and management.  This truth is ever more important as it pertains to the church.  The main difference between a church leader and manager is that a leader has people follow them, while managers have people who work for them.  I have had personal experience with both.  The very nature of the person that would be person up front can well be defined as having one of these two styles.  The issue is there are few that would characterize themselves as leaders and in doing so their influence in making positive change is severely limited. The primal cause of this situation is the church, in its efforts to be relevant in today’s society is trying to emulate the societies norms.  Managers are good enough. Any church, no matter how large or small must find and build up leaders; managers are not enough to make a real lasting difference in the church.  It is a good thing if the person of influence holds both characteristics if leadership and management, but settling for the latter is a shame.

Leadership is about getting people to understand and believe in a vision and to work with the people to achieve visionary goals while managing is more about administering and making sure the day-to-day things are happening as they should.

I know that a plethora of materials and data exist on personality assessments and characteristics.  And I have discovered many great sources.  There is a common tread to most of them.  There are some distinctive traits that make up a strong leader.

  1. Leaders believe they are leaders: I have seen leadership become management just because of the lack of self-confidence. It is easier to minimize risk than to take one.  It is easier to do a thing right than to do the right thing.  It is easier to be reactive than proactive. It is easier to set plans around constraints, than to set direction and lead toward that direction.  Leaders have an inward confidence in what they are and what they can accomplish.
  2. Leaders make a difference through vision. Leaders have a vision, believe in that vision, and know that vision will make a positive impact. Leaders know where the church is and where the leader wants the church to be.   A leader goes out and enrolls the body in charting a path for the future. The capacity to imagine and articulate exciting future possibilities is a defining competence of a leader.   If the church can’t see a leader’s vision, there is little hope in them following. The leader must be confident in himself.  A leader must believe in leadership.
  3. Honesty & Integrity: are crucial to move people to believe you and buy in to the journey you are taking them on. What does it take for others to believe in a leader?    It has been said many times, and it bears repeating again.  In these times when even those in the church are becoming more and more cynical about leadership and institutions, it has never been a more important than the character of the leader is believable.  The church must know what the leader has committed himself to do and be.  They must know and see what the leader values.  If the leader of a church values only that the bills are paid and the grass is mowed, there is little value to the larger picture or the greater vision. Either lead by example or don’t lead at all.  Leaders have to keep their promises and become role models for their vision, values and actions.
  4. Inspiration: The church needs to be stirred. A leader no matter how well trained and gifted, no leader ever accomplished anything extraordinary without the talent and support of others. Going out on a great visionary journey without others is nothing more than walk around the block.  Leadership is a team sport and for your team to be all they can be each must understand their role in the bigger picture.   They have to be inspired in more than just a destination but are enthused by their part in the journey. Managers are all about work to be done, leaders only about leading people through vision.
  5. Trust: If you can’t do it alone and rely on others, what is needed to make the vision happen?   Trust is the social glue that holds individuals and groups together. It is directly proportional between the level of trust and influence.  A leader has to earn trust of any one is to follow.  The leader must give trust before expecting any in return. A large part of this trust is based upon honest and complete communication. Keeping the team informed of the journey, where you are, where you are heading and share any roadblocks you may encounter along the way is the best way to earn trust.
  6. Challenge: Exemplary leaders, the kind of which people want to follow, are always associated with changing the status quo. Great achievements don’t happen when things are kept the same.  Change invariable involves challenge, and challenge test everyone.  Change introduces everyone in the church to examine themselves inwardly.  It brings each member face to face with their personal level of commitment.  It forces each to dig deep into personal values and belief. Change changes everyone.  The goal of a manager is toward stability and for a leader is change.
  7. It is a matter of the heart: Leaders who love their followers are great leaders. Leaders that have empathy for follower’s pain are followed. Leaders make others feel important and are gracious in showing appreciation. Love is the motivation that energizes leaders to give so much to the vision and those following the vision.  Managers see the flock as subordinates and leaders as fellow followers of the vision. Managers are motivated by the head and a leader by the heart. The wonder of it all is that leadership, great leadership, driven by first and last by love.

What do you think?  Add a comment.

Church, Ramblings, Theology

Facebook as a creator of sickness

I sit here in my little place of authorship.  I have a TV on my right giving me the news of the day.  I have three computer screens in front of me.  One has my home security cameras going to make sure I know what the weather is like just outside of my walls.  The main monitor is 34 inches and is high definition; I justify it because my eyes are not as good as they used to be.  My third monitor has my email split with my instant messenger.  I guess someone looking in would think I was pretty well saturated with technology. I am often distracted by another app running behind the current task of writing by a new post on Facebook.

I have to ask the question:  What does all this technology and social media affect my life?  Further, what affect does this plethora of technology have upon the way that you and I have of the church?

Facebook is mostly positive.  Lots of pictures of dogs and food.  Once and a while there is a reaction to news or something really affecting one of my Facebook “Friends”.  I have a link on my main screen that takes me to the church I attend. The church has certainly leveraged this technology to advance the cause of Christ.  This blog is my way of making my voice heard in the din of voices in the internet.  I don’t know if anyone is reading this stuff, but it is enough to know I am out there.  The technology is not the illness.

The issue is the direct affect this glut of information upon the church.  I have concerns and so should you.

I just reviewed a book on the social media and how it is affecting the morals and behaviors of its adherents. MIT professor Sherry Trukle wrote to point to the dangers and advantages of social media. Here are a few thoughts I have to agree with professor Trukle as I look at today’s “Facebook culture.”  The sickness names are just a simple way to characterize the issues and are not from Trukle’s work.

  1. Facebook Attention Deficit Disorder (FADD)

I read a great deal.  Real books on real paper is my medium.  Sure I use the internet to get a different opinion on a subject, but for the most part, the books I have in my small library are the prime sources for both inspiration and new thoughts.  But the pervasive invasion of Facebook and like sources has become the only place where some find information.  Short texts, tweets, likes, and smiley faces have become the medium of today.  How do we expect a person from the FADD (Facebook Attention Deficit Disorder) to come to church and listen to a preacher for forty minutes?  Do we insist each part of the service to be accentuated by a slick video presentation.  Do we expect the message to be broken up by a joke or a funny antidote? I believe the only medicine for the church member suffering from FADD is to teach them on how important big thoughts can be.  To teach them that the message is more than a bunch of tweets and thumbs up, but the very prophecy of God.

  1. Facebook Authority Syndrome (FAS)

Our church small groups have changed by the mindset that everyone’s opinion is as worthy as everyone else’s.  There is no hierarchy of authority.  Social media has broken down the barriers of the authority of source.  If I say on my Facebook page that my opinion is just as good as the local minister, there are few that would contradict me.  Not because it is true but because I have freedom of speech and in the egalitarian world of social media there is no consequences to being wrong.  Everyone has a voice.  We all have a platform to speak our mind, to say our piece. After any article or news story, anyone can offer an opinion. And certainly much of this is good.  But it leads to the view that if all have an authority to speak, then no one can be an authority.  We have come to a place where no one person’s opinion should be valued or weighted more than any other’s. Needless to say, this presents problems for the church and pastors to have real God-given authority in the lives of its people.

  1. Facebook Artificiality Ailment (FAA)

In a book by a MIT professor Sherry Trukle, she states “On social-networking sites such as Facebook, we think we will be presenting ourselves, but our profile ends up as somebody else—often the fantasy of who we want to be.”  What she was saying was even though social media users may feel more connected, they become even more artificial. We post only what you want others to know about you.  The good stuff. Sometimes this good stuff is not entirely true but slanted to make the poster feel better. Consequently, those with FAD (Facebook Artificiality Disease) become more and more distant.  “I posted, therefore I am social.”

The church was founded upon and demands that we engage with each other.  And this engagement has to be truthful, loving and forgiving.  We have to engage with people as they really are.  It is only in honesty that we can face our sin and grow together with Jesus.

  1. Social Media Phantom Malady (SMPM)

I remember when the nickle postcard went up to ten cents.  It was a method of communication that was limited to just a few lines of script.  It was open for all to see. Sure this medium lasted quite a while but has morphed into a marketing tool and little else. Today, I find people readily admitting they would rather leave a voicemail or send an e-mail than talk face-to-face.  Social media has reduced human contact to a point which is limited to a couple of lines in a tweet.  Modern technology, can create an almost non-physical, quasi-phantom existence SMPM.

If I read the church web page and watch my favorite preacher on YouTube it is enough. But the church was born in a face to face encounter.  A hand shake or a polite hug is more gratifying that a million lines of tweets.

  1. Negative Accountability and Commitment Condition. (NACC)

Probably the most attractive features of the use of social media communications is that it does not require much of a commitment and little or no accountability.  We control to the last letter of our posts, the duration, degree of the radical, and level of our contact.  There is little commitment to the those we are spewing to.  There is a mindset that “everybody” wants to know my meal plan.  It is a low-commitment and low-accountability form of interaction.

But the Christian life and real Christian relationships don’t work this way. We do have obligations to one another to be real.  Oh there are times we would rather not have those obligations. There are times we would rather not have accountability.  But the Christian Church is one of commitments and obligations.  In the church there is something called a covenant. The Christian church has a corporate aspect that stands directly against the individualistic and self-determined relational patterns of our modern technological age.

The Bitter Pill

So is the answer is to unplug and shut it all down?  Should we all move away from it all and get back to our old time religion roots? Not at all.  Do we abandon technology, move to the countryside, and adopt an Amish-like existence? I am not here to condemn methodologies but to point out the symptoms. Symptoms of a sickness that could well be infecting your life.

Yes, we may well need a sabbatical from this all purveying contagion of illness.  But in reality we can’t get away from it all.  My bitter pill is to be honest with your posts.  Have accountability.  Don’t let the ease of communication become the only communication.  Realize there are authorities in life.  People are not all the same: love them, keep them in your prayers and go to church and shake a hand.

Tell me what you think.

Church, Preaching, Theology, Worship

An echo and an AMEN to A.W. Tozer

The more I read of A.W Tozer, a mid-western born preacher, pastor, author, magazine editor and spiritual mentor to hundreds, the more he both puzzles and astounds me.  In very simple terms he internalizes the words of Jesus and through his writing Christianity is furthered.  He wrote, and preached thousands of words on a myriad of subjects.  He seemed to come back again and again to three themes.  What they are is a genuine heartache for the state of the church.

You could l characterize the first of these concerns as seeing the Bible as an end to itself.  It is seen as a recipe.  Take a verse here and another one from over there and use them to prove your point.  The Bible becomes nothing more than a collection of facts that can be dissected, positioned, extrapolated and preached.  Preachers today seem to have all the right illustrations and answers to any given problem.  They pour two parts from one test tube in the beaker and a couple of drops from another and the expected chemical reaction is the result.  There is little room for the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Tozer saw this as the shortest path to dead pulpits and dead churches.  You can be,” Tozer delighted in saying, “straight as a gun barrel theologically and as empty as one spiritually.”  The goal of reading the Bible is not to know more about the Bible, or to be able to quote the correct scripture at the correct time, but to be a pointer.  A pointer to God Himself.  The Word of God, while extremely important, can become more than the source of those words.

Tozer’s second concern was a growing practicality of  programs in the church; to insert methods and techniques to make the Church more palatable with the world.  He called it pragmatism.  It was an attempt to make the church more popular.  It was to add things that were more fun, more exciting, more attractive to the world.   He wrote,The temptation to introduce “new” things into the work of God has always been too strong for some people to resist. The Church has suffered untold injury at the hands of well-intentioned but misguided persons who have felt that they know more about running God’s work than Christ and His apostles did. Let me interject here.  There is nothing inherently wrong with any method unless it dilutes the message or pushes out God. Methodology has become rampant in the church today.  No longer do we sing hymns about the blood of Jesus.  No longer is the bread and cup venerated as a means of grace; instead we have prepackaged cups with bread in the tear off.  It is neater but is it better?  Is convention better than the graceful God.  I wonder what Peter would think of our church service if he silently crept in the back of these new relevant churches.

Third in his triad of concerns for the church was the lack of true worship.  He remarked over and over again about the loss of the sense of majesty, reverence and awe.  The Church as he saw it, was trivializing the very thing it was trying to accomplish. He saw it becoming a form of entertainment.  Hymns were being replaced by gospel songs, (and now by choruses sung over and over again).  The pulpit was becoming a place of humor and endless illustrations. He heard too many laughs and not enough sobs.  According to Tozer, “Worship is to feel in your heart and express in some appropriate manner a humbling but delightful sense of admiring awe and astonished wonder and overpowering love in the presence Our Father Which Art in Heaven.”

AMEN and AMEN

Your comments are appreciated.

Church, Life, Ministry, Ramblings, Uncategorized

Passion

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Passion is what energizes life. It is the zing in our waking.  It is the empowerment to go one more time. It turns the impossible into possible. In fact, if you don’t have any passion in your life, your ministry, your church, or in your salvation, you will become boring, dull, routine, monotonous. What I am saying here is, if you don’t have passion in your life you are not living. You are existing. God made you to live a passionate life and to serve him and his people with vitality. Life with vibrancy, energy, and enthusiasm is not the exception, it is the expected norm. He wants you to have this in your life.  If you are not living on the edge of excitement you are probably just taking up space.

In John 10, Jesus said “My purpose is to give life in all its fullness.” God wants you to live a full life, a fulfilling life, which is the basis for a fulfilling your calling to be one of his followers. If that’s true, that’s the kind of life God meant for us to live. Life is meant to be enjoyed, not merely endured. Sadly, however, countless thousands of pastors, hundreds of thousands of Godly church members and ministry leaders are simply enduring, holding on for the ride and hoping to survive until death without blowing it too badly.

The apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 1:9, “God, who got you started in this spiritual adventure, shares with us the life of his Son and our Master Jesus. He will never give up on you. Never forget that.” God’s will for you is to live and lead in a spiritual adventure. The life that God plans for you is not a mundane boring life. It is an adventurous life. Helen Keller once said, “Life is either a daring adventure or it’s nothing.” I often think the same should be true of our spiritual walk – it’s a daring, bold adventure, or it’s nothing.

Brent Hobbs defines passion this way:
Passion is waking up in the morning wherever you are and bounding out of bed because you know there’s something out there that you love to do, that you believe in and that you’re good at. Something that’s bigger than you are and you can hardly wait to get at it again. It’s something you’d rather be doing more than anything else. You wouldn’t give it up for money because it means more to you than money.

Church, Sermon Illustration

Church and Grace

The minister in a small town who stopped one Sunday at a café to eat something and had his Bible and sermon notes to read through. A man sitting in the corner yelled out “are you a preacher or something?

“Yes” he said,” I preach at the Christian Church here in town.” 

He got excited and said,”Hey, I’m a member of that church.” 

The church was small and the preacher knew all the regulars .. “I’ve been preaching there for about three months and I’ve never seen you there.”

The other man looked a bit puzzled and said to the Minister ..  “I said I was a member of that church.  I never said that I was fanatical about it!”

The church may be seen as old fashioned or boring, but it still is God’s plan. Let me quote Philip Yancey “Yes, the church fails in its mission and makes serious blunders precisely because the church comprises human beings who will always fall short of the glory of God. That is the risk God took. Anyone who enters the church expecting perfection does not understand the nature of that risk or the nature of humanity. Just as every romantic eventually learns that marriage is the beginning, not the end, of the struggle to make love work, every Christian must learn that church is also only a beginning.”

The church with all its foibles is still filling the gap that no one else seems to want to step into.  The church should and has to provide a place for grace. It is a place where the past does not dictate the future.  It is a place where acceptance is first and foremost.  Grace, the unmerited favor of God. It is the free offer to the hopeless for hope.  It is a free offer of love to the most unlovely. It is a free offer of peace in a world trying to pull itself apart.  The one thing the church should do is offer grace .. that wonderful God quality that lifts people up to a new life full of hope and joy.. something that can change their lives forever.

I am just trying to discover why people who need Jesus the most don’t like being around us? Why do we make them feel so uncomfortable, so out of place? In what ways is God calling us in the church to be a more grace-full community when the wounded are in our midst? If only we could share the truth of Jesus to more people in the words of John 1:14 “The Word became a human being and lived here among us. We saw His true glory, the glory of the only Son of the Father. From Him all the kindness and all the truth of God have come down to us”. That’s the message of the church that people need to hear.

 

Church, Ramblings

Exodus and the Chosen leaving the church

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I was just reading the story of the Exodus of the Israelites out of Egypt. You know the story. It started with “Let my people go” and the stubbornness of Pharaoh followed by plagues. Finally, after God killing off the first born of Egypt, Pharaoh let them go. The chosen people packed all their stuff and left.
But Pharaoh had second thoughts when he realized there would be no one to build his temples, no one to clean and keep up the property. There would be no one to harvest the crops. It was a bad thing to be on the other side of that great Exodus. I can see the panic in the faces of all the Egyptians because the very people they had depended to do the menial and the mundane were moving out.
Sort of like what is happening in the American Church today. Those who have been the ones to carry the burdens are dying off, and the next generation is not there to pick up the slack. The Church looks out the palace window and only see a massive exodus.
Like the Egyptian’s, the church has seen the warnings. Great plagues of modernism, relativism, and entertainment was not enough to keep the keepers of the kingdom placated. I can almost hear the travail of the ones left behind as they see the numbers dwindle, the cash flow slows, and the talent was disappearing. Like Pharaoh, the leaders figured if we do one more program or one more campaign we can make do with what we have. New efforts are made to entice the fence sitters to become the new servants now in the desert on their way to the promised land. Pharaoh tries to manufacture passion from the shrinking faithful.
There have been hundreds of surveys, papers, books, and studies as to why the numbers are just not the same. Some would blame the culture. The all permeating, all powerful perversity of the media is poisoning the culture in which we live. When people move out, or even silently simply walk softly into the night; you think that the gays and the Muslims and the Atheists and the pop stars have so screwed up the morality of the world that everyone is abandoning faith in droves.
Church this is not the reason there are fewer seats in the pews.
The world is not the problem it is the church. The world in which the Church lives has always been bad. If anything, it is easier now than any other time in history.
So what is the problem?
First the church has imperceptibly moved from its very foundation. We have become one more infotainment venue. The stage, and the lights, and the bands, and the video screens, have all just become white noise to those really seeking to encounter God. In the effort to be more relevant we have become more irrelevant. The morning service has become no more than ear and eye candy for an hour, but they have so little relevance in people’s daily lives that more and more of them are taking a pass.
Yeah, the songs are cool and the show is great, but ultimately Sunday morning isn’t really making a difference on Tuesday afternoon or Thursday evening, when people are wrestling with the awkward, messy, painful stuff in the trenches of life; the places where flashy video displays simply don’t help.
We can be entertained anywhere. “I can get more entertainment on TV.” Until you can give us something more than a Christian-themed performance piece—something that allows us space and breath and conversation and relationship—many of us are going to sleep in and stay away.
Second on the list of problems is the very language we use is exclusionary. There is a spiritualized insider language that puts distance between the haves and have nots. And putting them on a big video display does not make it better.
Our language should be very simple. Churchy words and about eschatological frameworks and theological systems don’t help. Talk to them plainly about love, and joy, and forgiveness, and death, and peace, and God, and they’ll be all ears. Keep up the church-speak, and you’ll be talking to an empty room soon.
We need you to speak in a language that we can understand. There’s a message there worth sharing, but it’s hard to hear above your verbal pyrotechnics.
Next in my list of issues is that the church sees itself as a building. The walls are not sacred. The high tech sound system, and video displays are not the church. Hiring a children’s director because no one seems to love children is not the church. All the money seems to be spent on the things inside of the church, but the 140 some odd waking hours a Christian has cannot be met with one or two hours of entertainment in well-appointed pews with the temperature just right to keep us from falling asleep.
If our goal is to have better Jesus-stuff than the church down the street’s Jesus-stuff, then we have missed the mark. Most of the churches money, time, energy seems to be about luring people into the church instead of reaching people where they are.
The church needs to reach out, to forsake the family centers and go to the families that are hurting. The greatest mission field is just a few feet outside of the walls.
While I am on my soap box, let me tell you the church is fighting the wrong battles. I know from firsthand experience that the church likes to fight. Onward Christian Soldiers. We know you like to fight, Church. The problem you are fighting the wrong battles. The fights you choose are just not worthy of your energy. It is easier to put up a sign against the latest social injustice. Or even worse, you pick fights between yourselves in the name of theological orthodoxy. We make stands against all kinds of evil. From homosexuality to what entertainment should be viewed by the masses. And in the meantime there are hungry on our streets. Every day we see a world suffocated by poverty, and racism, and violence, and bigotry, and hunger; and in the face of that stuff, you get awfully, frighteningly quiet. We wish you were as courageous in those fights, because then we’d feel like coming alongside you; then we’d feel like going to war with you.
I don’t know where I found this but it rings true, “Church, we need you to stop being warmongers with the trivial and pacifists in the face of the terrible.”
The last reason the pews are slowly becoming empty is that church love doesn’t look much like love. It is terribly selective. The pattern of the through the ages has followed a simple formula: 1. BELIEVE, 2. BECOME 3. BELONG. You had to believe before you allowed to become a part and once you get to a place in your life where you have arrived (become) you could find a place to belong. It was spawned out of the persecution of the church where you had to be extremely vetted to enter into the church. But I would submit we need to change. Jesus did it differently.
Jesus hung around the riff raff of society. The disciples did not believe Jesus was God until the last. They saw Him as the Messiah but not until the resurrection did they finally figure it out. Jesus’ methodology was to include everyone provide them a place to BELONG. He created a place of acceptance. Belong, Believe, Become
It feels like a big bait-and-switch sucker-deal; advertising a “Come as You Are” party, but letting us know once we’re in the door that we can’t really come as we are. We see a Jesus in the Bible who hung out with lowlifes and prostitutes and outcasts, and loved them right there, but that doesn’t seem to be your cup of tea.
There seems to be an unwritten list of do and don’ts that must be checked off before you will include some. The church seems a little exclusionary. Can the church love those that cuss and drink and get tattoos, and God forbid, vote Democrat? Is there a place for the great unwashed? Is there a place for the broken family? Is there a place for those who are sinners?
Now before you get all in a huff and label me a person that just doesn’t get it. Or start to judge me for my opinions, remember that is the problem. There is no place for disagreement, there is no place of discussion. It is your way or the highway.
Even if we are the woman in adultery, or the doubting follower, or the rebellious prodigal, or the demon-riddled young man, we can’t be anything else right now in this moment; and in this moment, we need a Church big enough, and tough enough, and loving enough; not just for us as we might one day be then, but for us as we are, now.
Maybe you’re right, Church.
Maybe I am the problem.
Maybe it is me, but me is all I’m capable of being right now, and that’s where I was really hoping you would meet me.