Earlier
this year I described the Five
Stages of a Generational Revolution as Bad, Add, Keep, Build and
Protect. I observed emergents were still in the “bad” stage of their
revolution, they were mostly complaining about what’s wrong with the church
they are inheriting. Boomers were mostly in the “Protect” stage of their own
revolution I suggested, concentrated on defending the changes we’ve made to the
church. I’m a Boomer, so I’m more inclined to protect the church than criticize
it. However, since I work mostly with young people who are stuck in the
seeing-what’s-bad stage. So I’ve done a little mind experiment. I re-entered
stage one (a stage I left in 1980) and looked at today’s church from that
perspective, asking “What’s wrong with the church?” When I did this I found I
was able to complain almost as good as the youngsters. Here’s the list I made of “what’s wrong with
the church:”
1. Pathetic
quality of discipleship. We make
converts by getting people to “pray the prayer” or “come to church” but they
are little different than the world after their prayer and attendance. Our
“converts” are unchanged and they seldom change the world either. They are
“believers” but they are not transformed. They believe like a Christian but
can’t seem to act like one. We have watered down Christ’s radical call to
discipleship in order to make the entry gate wider. We have set the bar for
becoming a Christian so low that a little prayer will do if you toss in
attending church a few times a month and maybe give some money in the offering
plate. The passion and sacrifice of early church Christians is so rare among us
that when we see it we consider it “radical,” even dangerous. We say we want to
change the world, but we are not even able to change ourselves. The level of
true discipleship in today’s church is pathetic.
2. Dismal
world-changing effect. We have thousands of mega churches with superstar
pastors and entertaining and relevant music. It gives us the impression we are
making a difference yet fewer people attend church today than 25 years ago. We
have made little difference in the culture. We have multi-million dollar
Christian radio stations, Christian publishers, Christian TV stations,
Christian bookstores, and Christian colleges yet the world has greater
influence on us than we do on the world. We mostly talk to ourselves about
ourselves. We are the bland leading the bland. We make converts of our own
children and a few others but the vast majority of the world is simply indifferent
to God—they neither love nor hate God—they simply dismiss Him as no more relevant
than our insipid Christianity. We claim to be changing the world but mostly it
is the other way around.
3. Negative
witness. We have lurched into politics and specialized at
shouting at unbelievers for acting like they are, well, unbelievers. They remember us mostly for our negative scolding. We
have used boycotts, political referendums, cross-talk interviews and shouting
matches to make a difference. Mostly we have only made a scene. We are known in
the world as judgmental nagging scolds who expect unbelievers to line up with
our own convictions. All the while we ignore our own sins. We scold the world
for abortion and homosexuality and we dismiss our own sins of greed,
materialism, idolatry, lust, divorce and marital infidelity. We are hypocrites,
condemning the sins of the unconverted while giving ourselves a free pass. When
asked what they think of a Christian, most sinners don’t even mention helping
the poor, trying to cure AIDS or caring for creation. They mention our
judgmental attempts to make them line up with our own standards. We rejected
the judgmental legalism of our parents against us as youngsters then turned
around and developed the same judgmental legalistic attitude against those who
aren’t even converted. We are a powerful witness to the world—but it is mostly
a negative witness. We are models to the world of everything they don’t want to
become.
4. Imaginary
growth. Having given up on true radical transformation of new
Christians we now reject “counting conversions” because we no longer know when
to count one. We now count attendance and dollars. Evangelism means getting
people “churched.” We have seen an
explosion of mega churches so it looks like we have made gigantic gains. But
the actual statistics show that most of this “church growth” has only been
rotating stock among churches. There are not more people in church—they just
migrated from smaller churches to larger ones. The total number of Christians
attending church is declining even though we have more big churches than ever.
So we pretend growth but actually all we’ve done is gather the diminishing
troops in the parapet for a final defense. Mega-churches are booming but the
5. Success
over obedience. We have become completely captivated by the success
syndrome. We value success more than obedience. We honor the famous and
successful more than the obedient and pious. We would rather go “from good to
great” than sacrifice greatness for goodness.
We are pragmatists—if it works we do it. We know how to do things but
seldom why. Pragmatism trumps piety. We copy the values of business more
than the values of the kingdom. If you attract a big crowd and produce a big
income you are a hero. If you love God passionately and obey Him completely you
won’t be noticed. Our gods are success, big crowds, giant budgets, sprawling
multi-million dollar mega-complexes, large staffs, professional offices,
prestige and fame. When we have to choose between being successful and being good,
we invariably choose success.
6.
Ineffective missions. We have maintained a worldwide structure of missionaries
that is little more effective than we are at home. We send missionaries where
there is already a church existing that is more like the New Testament church
than we are. After we get there we turn them into something more like us and
less like the early church. We focus on denomination commitments and teaching
them our way of doing things. We arrogantly assume we have all the answers that
they need so we restructure their church to be like ours. We represent our
denomination more than the
7. Our own
Kingdom over God’s. Sometimes what’s good for my church can be bad for
the kingdom, but given the choice we do what benefits our own kingdom even at
the expense of the Lord’s Kingdom. Indeed, we don’t even recognize the
difference since most of us consider our own kingdom the same thing as God’s
kingdom—if it’s good for us it’s good for God. We pay attention to our own
church’s statistics more than our community’s statistics. Most of us don’t even
try to find out what’s happening to the
8.
Discipling Christian Consumers. We have discipled our people to become consummate
consumers of religion. We meet their
needs, cater to their musical preferences, entertain them, amuse them, impress
them with clever talks, titillate them with interesting videos, and turn them
into self-centered consumers of religion like it was pizza. Our religion is a
product to be marketed more than a way of life to be lived. We’ve taught our
customers to “get what you want or go elsewhere” so we make sure they get what
they want so they don’t go down the street. We know this is true because that’s
how we got most of them—from down the street.
9. Captives
of modernity. We have made the church a prisoner of modernity. We
have enshrined individuality, scientific approaches, reason, results,
education, goals, management, production, effectiveness, and business methods
as the ten new sacraments of our church. We downplay the leading of the Holy
Spirit, the charismatic gifts, simplicity and the role of the laity so we have developed
a sophisticated professionalized church and staff. The church we have produced runs
as smoothly as a business because it is
a business.
What’s wrong with the
church? Lots!
_____________
It wasn’t that hard for a
Boomer after all. Even Boomers can learn to complain about the state of the
church. Most Boomers aren’t inclined to complain because we are in charge now
and we don’t have much time left to change things. But, maybe Boomers and the
emergent generation could spend more time chatting together about the state of
the church. Maybe we agree on some of these things. Maybe we could find some
common ground? Are any of these complaints similar to what you emergents would
say? Is there any common ground where we can work together to fix “what’s wrong
with the church?”
So what do you think?
During
the first few weeks, click here to comment or read comments