“I’m done with church, and I’m never going back!”
No, this isn’t a conclusion that I have come to—however, it is a conclusion that tens of thousand are coming to every weekend all across America. And more and more are asking themselves the once unimaginable…
Do we really need the Church (Big C) anymore?
I can almost hear my readers now:
- That’s stupid! Of course we need the church! Everyone knows we need the church!
- It’s the Bride of Christ, preacher boy!
- No, pastor Rob, not at all—the apostle Paul just went all over the world planting churches because it’s good aerobic exercise!
- Without the church, who will stop the gates of hell?!
But before we get all bent out of shape, I agree. However, whether or not I agree isn’t going to stem the tide of encroaching apathy where the church is concerned. And the fact that there are several hundred thousand “preachers” in this country doesn’t in and of itself validate the existence of the church. And to make matters worse, just because most Christians take for granted the importance of the church doesn’t mean everyone else is buying it. Truth is, the culture all around us in America is growing more and more hostile toward the Christian church every day. Add to this the fact that the church (Big C) in America is fragmented and going in a million different directions at once and an on looking culture just sits back and shakes its collective head dismissively.
Conclussion?
Who needs church with all its issues and baggage?
Think of how this must grieve our Lord and Savior! Millions and millions of the very people the Lord came to earth to reach are being repelled by none other than His Bride! Imagine a husband whose wife spent most of her time and energy trying to make him look foolish, pushy, unloving, condescending, absentminded, out of touch, or even down right evil! Show me a marriage like that and I’ll show you a couple headed for divorce.
But take a poll of the population regarding Christianity and specifically the church and many (if not all) of those descriptors are what you will hear.
I used to find this odd. I mean, why are people so hard on Christianity and the church? Whenever there is a natural disaster of any kind (The earthquake in Haiti, Hurricane Katrina, The tsunami in Indonesia, etc) it’s Christians who lead the way in caring for the homeless, sick, and wounded. In fact, no other group does more for the poor, the down and out, the infirme, and the lonely than Christians—whether there is a catastrophe or not. No one visits those in prisons and brings hope to the hopeless like Christ Followers. No one defends families more, cares more about marriage, loves the little children, protects women, and fights for the life of unborn babies then those born from above.
Yet, Christianity still seems to have some sort of sub-conscious “kick me!” sign attached to it. There are even millions who prefer the ideology of terrorists over the love and grace that comes with the gospel. This is not only illogical, it’s potentially life threatening—eternal life threatening.
Paul talked about this bizarre, circular firing squad reasoning in Romans chapter one—specifically verses 18-32. Take a moment to read it here.
What Paul is telling us is that it’s pretty much a no-brainer for each one of us to see that there must be a creator for us to have such a beautiful and intricate creation. Every work of art has an artist. Without getting into a huge evolution vs creationism debate (That’s not what this post is about), God makes it plain that,
“…what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” Romans 1:18-19
Look at those last four words again, “people are without excuse.” It doesn’t say, people won’t make excuses, it says they are without excuse. In other words, their excuses aren’t valid. They are just a smoke screen to hide and justify their rebellion. Oh how we sinful people love to rebel! And anything that interrupts our spiritual hissy-fit naturally gets demonized. And nothing more so than, you guessed it…
Christianity.
Again, it’s a response that’s completely illogical—beyond all reason. But it’s also something else…
Reality.
Christianity, and especially the church (Big C) has become polarizing in America (It’s been polarizing for a long time in much of the rest of the world) and now we come to the questions I really want to focus on in this series, Why? And What can be done about it?
And lest you conclude that these questions are not all that urgent, consider the following statistics taken from Churchleaders.com and Kelly Shattuck. You can see the article here.
– Less than 20% of Americans regularly attend church — half of what the pollsters report.
– In 1990, 20.4% of the population attended an Orthodox Christian church on any given weekend. In 2000, that percentage dropped to 18.7% and to 17.7% by 2004 (Olson explains that while church attendance numbers have stayed about the same from 1990 to 2004, the U.S. population has grown by 18.1% — more than 48 million people. “So even though the number of attendees is the same, our churches are not keeping up with population growth,” he says.)
– Established churches — 40 to 190 years old — are, on average, declining.
– The increase in churches is only 1/4 of what’s needed to keep up with population growth.
– In 2050, the percentage of the U.S. population attending church will be almost half of what it was in 1990.
So, the mad rush for the back door is undeniable, but the causes are still being ignored.
We can no longer do that.
Something’s causing the mass exodus. Let’s face it, people are looking for answers to life’s hardships. Some will try just about anything, but most won’t stick with something that simply isn’t providing any tangible results. And the results we want, well, we want then now, if not sooner. We don’t have much patience. And people have about as much time and patience to dedicate to church as they do to the latest fad diet. They’ll try it for a few weeks (at best) but if they haven’t lost much weight, you can forget it.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately, and that’s why I’m writing this series—to talk about the pink elephant in the room and hope that it spurs some on to make the changes necessary to stem the tide.