Conquering Co-Dependency & Consumerism In Church Culture

Those churches that sprang from American soil have avoided certain aspects of the feudal model, but unfortunately many have been co-opted by another system. Whereas Constantine poured the early Christian movement into the mold of Roman patronage, many American churches have been profoundly shaped by the mold of democratic capitalism. Ours is a free market system where “church shopping” makes complete sense to most people because the focus is on meeting the perceived needs of individuals. Over the past fifty years churches in America have continued this pattern by placing an ever-greater emphasis on attracting new members by providing staff-led programs tailored to the specific interests of various constituencies.

Apparently we need more than a better marketing plan or a new program to solve this crisis. What began as a dynamic grass-roots movement in Palestine that nearly conquered the Roman Empire gradually became a theology in Greece, an institution in Rome, a state church in Europe, and now a non-profit service provider in America. The question is: what will the next chapter of our story be?

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Why We Want Religious Systems More Than The Gospel

It was easy to speak boldly that my ministry was all about faithfulness to God and His Word. But when humility gave birth to brutal honesty, I freely began to admit that there was undoubtedly this constant undercurrent of concern about my future. If someone else in leadership began to be at odds with me, it could go sour and I could end up looking for another church. If a long-standing and prominent congregant took issue with me, they had the power to influence others against me, and I could end up looking for another church.  At almost every point in pastoring, I constantly stood a chance of losing something.

Reminiscing about this brought me to an important reality followed by an important question. The reality is this: people crave religious systems. The question is obvious: why?

Fear drives this inward compulsion to conform. You are afraid of not belonging any longer. So you behave the way you need to in order to stay with the group. When this translates into churchianity, you come to believe that staying with your local church is tantamount to staying with God. And to not conform to the church is to be marginalized or expelled by both church and God. 

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How Consumer Church Wears Everyone Out

I wonder if the American church is setting itself up for failure? If church structure— which is geared toward meeting every need, developing everyone spiritually and organizing all inward and outward ministry — results in a 90 percent failure rate, perhaps we should reevaluate.

I wonder if a “Come to us and we will do it all, lead it all, organize it all, calendar it all, execute it all, innovate it all, care for it all and fund it all” framework is even biblical? It sets leaders and followers up for failure, creating a church-centric paradigm in which discipleship is staff-led and program-driven.

This slowly builds a consumer culture wherein spiritual responsibility is transferred from Christians to the pastors, a recipe for disaster.

Evaluate your church culture and decide if you are making disciples or consumers.

 

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The Irrelevance Of Relevant Christianity

Do people want Christianity to be cool? What happens when churches become too driven by the desire to be trend-savvy and culturally relevant? Can a church balance hipster credibility within an orthodox tradition?

Further time will tell whether the legacy of the “hipster Christianity” phenomenon will be one of decline or revival for churches. It could be that in certain parts of the world, and particularly in cities, cool churches are exactly what is needed to inject life into stagnant tradition.

But my guess is that sooner rather than later it will become clear that what people want from church is something different than what is offered on the pages of Vogue or the streets of Brooklyn.

Christianity’s true relevance lies not in the gospel’s comfortable trendiness but in its uncomfortable transcendence, as a truth with the power to rebuff, renew and restore wayward humanity as every epoch in history.

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The Church Got Lost In Translation

In 1525, one of the first people to translate the Bible into English, William Tyndale, translated the word ekklesia as congregation. However, in 1611 the translators of the King James Version of the Bible chose to completely drop the Greek meaning of ekklesia and to replace it with the English word church which has a different meaning.  Since then, most English translations have followed the King James example and used church to replace the meaning of the word ekklesia.

However, the Greek word ekklesia, now lost to most English Bibles, has a completely different meaning than the word church. Ekklesia literally means “the called out ones.” It also was the proper name of the governing bodies of independent Greek city-states. These bodies (Ekklesias) were open, participatory, interactive assemblies that gathered to conduct city business.

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The Only Decision That Matters

People are no more lost now than they have ever been, and Jesus is no less Lord now than He will ever be. We dare not cower in our churches as though God has lost anything. The only decision handed down that matters is that the gates of hell cannot prevail against His church!

The first marriage was between a perfect man and a perfect woman. The last marriage will be between a glorified man, the Lord Jesus, and his sanctified bride, the church. Between those two weddings, humanity has marred and defaced the institution of marriage in many ways, including this new way. But the Lord Jesus will have the last say. Until then, I am doing all I can to make my marriage reflect the love of Christ for his church and to share the gospel of grace with everyone. No handwringing, no fear, no hatred, no bitterness. Just love of the Lord Jesus, of the truth, of my wife, of the Lord’s church, and of my neighbor–ALL of my neighbors. Though something in our culture has definitely changed, everything in the Word of God remained the same. I rest in that.

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Why New Testament Believers Didn’t Have Worship Leaders

You’ll see Apostles, Prophets, Teachers, Evangelists, and Pastors but you won’t find hide nor hair of a worship leader. Being a full time worship leader I had a bit of an identity crises when I flipped through the pages of New Testament scripture unable to find my job description. Then I realized something: Being a worship leader was something every Christian was called to.

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Churchianity And The Dones

Churchianity:  a mirage (of the kingdom of God taught and exemplified by Jesus as unfolded in the New Testament) that is always forming both near and around the new covenant community of Jesus by perpetual, generational layers of religious traditions created by well-meaning but largely grace-ignorant Christians, in order to supposedly help themselves and others honor God and follow Jesus better.

Dones:  people who have given up on the traditional church format.

Below is a list of resources to help understand why so many people are “done” with “churchianity”…

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Maintain Unity And The Bond Of Peace

“I have never yet known the Spirit of God to work where the Lord’s people were divided.” Like D.L. Moody, neither have I. Instead, most of us probably have seen too often how disunity hinders the Spirit’s work in the church and damages the church’s witness to the world.

Unity in the body of Christ can’t be taken for granted or taken lightly. Unity is a gift from God made possible by the cross of Jesus and made effective by the working of the Holy Spirit. It’s not something we can create, but unity is our responsibility to guard. The greatest threats to church unity come not from outside the church, but from within. So we need to be on guard against attitudes and actions that destroy unity, like these…

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Welcoming Makes Well

“Whoever welcomes this little child in My name welcomes Me” (Luke 9:48).

“Welcome” is a biblical word rich with a rich meaning. It is more than a smile and a handshake. It is more than what happens during the “welcome and announcements.” If we reduce a welcome to a greeting, we clearly have misunderstood the meaning of welcome.

When Jesus said, “Whoever welcomes this little child,” He didn’t mean “whoever greets … whoever shakes his hand … whoever puts on a friendly face ….”

A welcoming church is the fertile soil in which all people can experience change and growth through the power of gospel of grace.

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The Feudal System Lives On In Church Culture

A strange conversation can be heard in most church parking lots on most Sundays. It goes like this; “Did you get fed this week?”
“Yes I did, I loved what the pastor had to say.”

Or perhaps; “Did you get fed this week?”
“No not really, if it carries on like this we may have to go to another church.”

These startling expressions of dependence upon the pastor represent a deep malady in the American church. I call it Spiritual Feudalism because of the ‘peasant talk’ it uses and the ‘serf mentality’ it reveals.

Do you put your pastor in the role of a feudal lord?

Do you function with the a ‘serf mentality’?

Do you use ‘peasant talk’?

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How The Church Can Help Heal The Abuser And The Abused

In more than a decade of research, almost every article I’ve come across addressing sex offenders in church communities reveals pastors and leaders focusing exclusively on the sex offenders—the theological grounds for their presence, the church’s obligation to care for them, how to support them, how to monitor them, how to protect ministries from potential lawsuits due to their presence, and so on—at the expense of the victims/survivors and those who love them.

But offenders are not the only ones in need of a welcome in our churches. Too often when victims/survivors are considered, it is offender focused. Survivors are told they are required to forgive or reconcile with offenders. They are subject to shaming, silencing, and the policing of their emotions and tones by those who feel entitled to advise or rebuke them. Such pressure toward reconciliation is often shortsighted and lacking in compassion.

It is time to move toward balance by shifting focus to the victims/survivors. The reality of sexual abuse dynamics means that if we want safe communities for victims/survivors and healthy communities for recovering sex offenders then we must find true empathy for victims/survivors and how sexual abuse has affected them.

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How To Raise Godly Kids Without Going To Church

According to Scripture, it is the parent’s responsibility to raise up their children and teach them about God, but our modern way of doing church relinquishes these things to 45 minutes on Sunday morning and Wednesday night, in a building with a (generally) controlled environment, and to a person we don’t really know.

Isn’t that crazy?

How did we go from “Train up a child in the way he should go” (Prov 22:6) and “Teach these things to your children … ” (Deut 6:7; 11:19) to asking, “So what did you learn in Sunday school today?” on the drive home from church?

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Is Ministry For The Professionals Or The Body?

Pastors are under a lot of pressure.

In most churches today, we employ one person (or a small team) to do the job of many. The Bible tells us that God “ordained some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, some to be pastors, some to be teachers.” And yet, we position pastors to be all of these things at once.

The church already has everything it needs. We cannot outsource the work of the combined church to one individual, no matter how talented they may be.

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ISIS Beheaded 21 People Of The Cross But The Story Isn’t Over Yet

When the day is done and last of the lights are turned out and my head hits the pillow, all I can think of is the faces of The 21 and their surrendered heads, their heads carrying the full reality of the Cross. How the People of the Cross have let themselves be chained to petty and purposeless things instead of praying for the Persecuted Church in chains. How the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.

How once when I was a little girl, I tried to behead a dandelion in full orb and if you behead a dandelion in full head — you send a thousand more bravely out on the wind.

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False Doctrine Doesn’t Make You A Heretic, Divisiveness Does

So, in the New Testament sense of the word, “heresy” was the creation of a division, a sect, a faction, or a party. For this reason, the author of Acts uses the word to describe the different sects within Judaism (Acts 5:17; 15:5; 24:5; 14; 26:5; 28:22).

“Heresy” involved the dividing of a local assembly, not the rightness or wrongness of what the dividing party believed.

It’s true, of course, that a heresy could be created by someone pushing a false teaching on a local assembly, causing it to divide. Peter alludes to this when he warns that false teachers will secretly come into the church and introduce damnable heresies (2 Peter 2:1).

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Worshiptainment: The Bane Of The Church

The great heresy of the church today is that we think we’re in the entertainment business. A.W. Tozer believed this to be true back in the 1950s and 60s. Church members “want to be entertained while they are edified.” He said that in 1962. Tozer grieved, even then, that it was “scarcely possible in most places to get anyone to attend a meeting where the only attraction was God.”

 

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Church’s Confusion About Its Identity Leads To Confusion About How To Belong

Sometimes the world can feel overwhelming, especially among the younger people of my generation. There’s a really deep need to find our place in it. But it’s often the case that the institutions that used to broker connections—institutions like the church—are losing their influence.

We’ve forgotten how to belong—to institutions, to one another—and we need to recover some basic practices that remind us of our interdependence. The church could be a really rich place for that, but it can be confused about its identity, which makes young people like myself more confused about where to seek belonging.

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Men Are Sick Of Feminized Faith

The dominant narrative at the moment is that, while church attendance is down across the board, men in particular are staying home on Sunday mornings. And while there has been much hand-wringing over this reality, there has, to my knowledge, been very little serious introspection over it.

Too often, when we talk about “attracting men” to church, what we mean is tricking men to walk in the door by baptizing whatever infantilized conceptions of masculinity the broader culture has invented.

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Jesus Never Told Us To Plant Churches

We have a poor understanding of the local church. We operate from a poor definition of church planter. We have a poor understanding of our Commission.  We act as if Jesus has commanded us to plant churches.  We are commanded to make disciples.  It is out of disciple making that churches are to be birthed.  The weight of the biblical model rests here.  Not transfer growth. Not acrimonious splits. It is evangelism that results in disciples, who covenant together to be and function as the local expression of the Body of Christ.

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God Loves A Cheerful Tither, Right?

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” – Upton Sinclair

Does the Bible teach us to tithe? Are we spiritually obligated to fund the pastor and his staff?

Giving in the NT was according to one’s ability. Christians gave to help other believers as well as to support apostolic workers, enabling them to travel and plant churches. One of the most outstanding testimonies of the early church has to do with how liberal the Christians were to the poor and needy.

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C.S. Lewis Did Not Like Church

The idea of churchmanship was to be wholly unattractive. I was not in the least anticlerical, but I was deeply antiecclesiastical.

It was, to begin with, a kind of collective; a wearisome “get-together” affair. I couldn’t yet see how a concern of that sort should have anything to do with one’s spiritual life. To me, religion ought to have been a matter of good men praying alone and meeting by twos and threes to talk of spiritual matters.

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What Would Happen If We Let Jesus Lead The Church?

Pastor Challenge 2015 — Step aside and let the living Jesus lead at least 1 Sunday morning church meeting all by Himself.

Here’s how:  Begin by reading 1 Corinthians 14:26 to the congregation from a microphone on the floor in front of the platform.  (“What then shall we say, brothers and sisters? When you come together, each of you has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. Everything must be done so that the church may be built up.”)

Then go sit down in the congregation and watch what God does with ordinary people during the next hour or so.

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Why Believers Be Leaving

There are many Christians who have stopped going to church. They have not given up on God, have not renounced their faith, have not denied Christ, and have not become pagans. They simply are no longer going to church. That this is happening is not a matter of doubt, but why this is happening is in fact a difficult question to answer.

They can’t get enough of genuine Christianity and heartfelt worship. But they have gotten enough of churchianity. They are fed up with a church that increasingly resembles the world more than it does the New Testament.

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How To Criticize Church

There comes a point in the journey of every Christian where cynicism starts to look inviting. Even mature.

But there’s a difference between looking for ways to make the Church better and looking for things to complain about. Mature, humble criticism is selfless and redemptive; immature criticism is usually self-focused and doesn’t generally lead to change.

Humble criticism means noticing a problem and articulating solutions instead of looking for problems and wallowing in anger. It means being temporarily disappointed without being permanently disillusioned.

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The Real And Raw Reasons Why People Are Leaving Church

Hey Church, you may think you know why people are leaving you, but I’m not sure you do.

You think it’s because “the culture” is so lost, so perverse, so beyond help that they are all walking away. You believe that they’ve turned a deaf ear to the voice of God; chasing money, and sex, and material things. 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.

But those aren’t the reasons people are leaving you.

They aren’t the problem, Church.

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Being The Right Church Is Better Than Griping About The Wrong Church

A very popular phrase I hear is that we are the church. So I would encourage you, if you are dissatisfied with an aspect of your church (not including faulty doctrine, of course) rather than trying to find the right church, ask God to help you forgive your brethren and begin loving on them. Ask Him to help you be the right church.

 

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4 Bad Reasons For Joining A Church

Like many in my generation, I’ve done some moving around and with each new move I’ve had to begin the difficult process of searching for a new church home. If you’re like most, a day is coming when you too will be on the search for a new church to call home. When that day comes, you may want to think twice before using these all-too-common reasons for making your choice…

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Finding Community In A Consumer Culture

Community is core to the Christian faith. From the very beginning, fellowship and life together have characterized Christ’s disciples. But the centrality of Christian community to the church doesn’t mean that it’s easy—nor does it mean it always looks the same.

Today, as growing numbers of Christians struggle with the weekly gathering of a local church, the number of people attending church, and the frequency with which they’re attending, are declining. So what can leaders—inside and outside formal church contexts—do to foster true community amidst new realities?

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Sunday Sermon: Children Are An Integral Part Of A Worship Gathering

Rob Rienow explains why children should be involved in the gathering of the saints for worship. Believe it or not, this was actually the norm for millennia. It’s only in the last century or so that we had the genius idea to split families apart and do age-segregated ministry. Let’s examine the fruit of that and compare it to the fruit our ancestors saw as they worshipped together as families.

Click the button below to hear the audio of Rob’s message…

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Jesus Never Commanded People To Plant Churches

We have a poor understanding of our Commission.  We act as if Jesus has commanded us to plant churches.  We are commanded to make disciples.  It is out of disciple making that churches are to be birthed.  The weight of the biblical model rests here.  Not transfer growth. Not acrimonious splits. It is evangelism that results in disciples, who covenant together to be and function as the local expression of the Body of Christ.

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Charting A Better Course For Unity In The Body Of Christ

When the path to unity starts with the meeting/church service/ or gathering, then I think its trajectory is skewed from the beginning. I think mission is the better path to unity.

Unite in the furtherance of the gospel. Unite in the suffering and needs of those who aren’t congregating. Unite in the Making of Disciples. Unite in the work of mission.

I suppose there is some discussion needed to decide what that ‘one purpose’ is, but I’d venture to say that it is NOT primarily church services.

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5 Things We Can’t Do If We Are Going To “Be Missional”

I cannot define the word “missional,” at least not in an authoritative or definitive way, for everyone. But I can tell you why I think it must include Jesus’ mission to seek and save the lost (Luke 19:10).

This does not mean that much of the concern about the way the word “missional” has been used is not warranted. There are some serious and legitimate concerns. However, if we’re going to adopt the term “missional,” here’s what we can’t do and still be on Jesus mission…

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Revising Our Vision For Ministry To Students

I have this gut-wrenching feeling that many students will move off to college with nothing learned from church except food, games and shiny events. None of these things are bad, but they aren’t the crux of what will keep a student fixated on the face of Jesus once walking into the real world. Discipleship is key.

We must increase our expectations of a decreasing generation of Christ followers. We must press harder than we ever have before. We must not worry about what is popular, but instead what is biblical. We must pursue that of Christ, and direct students towards the purpose of the cross.

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8 Characteristics Of The New Spiritual Landscape

During the 20th century, there have been two spiritual currents that have occurred outside the organized church in the West. The first current occurred in the late 60s and early 70s. That movement came to a peak in 1972 and by 1979, it had all but died.

The second current began in the late 80s and early 90s. Right now, the landscape is changing rapidly. God is raising up new voices and new expressions of church which look very different from the traditional expressions we all know.

Here are the eight characteristics of this new spiritual current…

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5 Lessons The Tax Collector And The Pharisee Teach About Grace

Grace happened on God’s terms. Grace did not happen because of  spectacular accomplishments and achievements the Pharisee paraded before God. Grace did not happen because of  the Pharisee’s virtues. And grace did not happen because  prayer, a religious ceremony in a special
religious place, was taking place. Grace happened in spite of religious stuff.
Grace happened because the tax collector recognized his need. Grace happened because the tax collector knew that there was no way he had earned any spiritual commendations. He knew who he was, and threw himself on God’s mercy.

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The Church Is NOT Called To Plant Churches

There is no command in the Bible to go into all the world and plant churches. The Church is never told to plant churches until the end of the age or search out all people groups and plant churches among them. If our goal is to plant a church, then our goal has been accomplished.  Let’s have a party and celebrate.

But it’s not about planting churches. The Church is to make disciples of all nations.

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Christians Are Addicted To Their Services

I think we all know what I mean by a church service. There was a lot of time devoted to singing and then the obligatory public speaking (preaching), etc. etc. All of this undoubtedly organized by a clearly planned schedule. Most Western Christians have been to many “services,” some of us thousands of times. While there may be slight denominational variations, they are pretty much all the same, and they are all variations on a theme based on the prototype of the Latin Mass.

Jesus healed. Jesus delivered people from demonic oppression. The apostles healed and delivered people from demonic oppression. And, the early Christians did exactly the same thing. But there was something missing when they did it…the service.

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Sometimes Religious Structures Need To Die In Order For Discipleship To Thrive

What if church, the gathering of God’s people in a particular local, was supposed to be a temporary thing, a seasonal ecosystem that cycled through life and death, or a snapshot of ecclesiastical, historical, and geographical history. I know, ‘church’ is not a place, it’s a people. We all say that, but still act as if it is a place.

 

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Alan Hirsch’s Vision For The Five Fold Ministry In America

Missiologist, Alan Hirsch, talks with Ed Stetzer about the future of Christianity in America amid its increasingly secularized culture. They also discuss the importance of recovering a vision for the 5 key gifts Christ gave to his Church from Ephesians 4.

Note: Jump to the 6:15 mark in the video to bypass the fluffy stuff and get straight to the good stuff with Alan Hirsch.

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Believers In China Love Jews And Arabs

There was an early revival in China in the 1920s. Those early Christians had a vision to bring the gospel “back” from the ends of the earth (China) to Israel. They dedicated themselves to the “back to Jerusalem” movement. They felt they had received eternal life from the Jews and wanted to return to them the same grace.

The Chinese church loves Jesus, loves Israel and loves the Arabs. Today we are here, hugging you. Just as the sun rises in the East, so will this revival return to Jerusalem.

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The Last Thing To Do In Response To Bad Leadership Is To “Get Over It”

As long as the machine masquerading as “church” circles around to protect those that prey on the most vulnerable, I don’t plan to “get over it”. As long as church leaders give standing ovations to those who built empires on the broken backs of earnest seekers, I don’t plan to “get over it”. I hope to God you won’t either.

“Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.”

But when Jesus said these words, he wasn’t talking about protecting abusive religious leaders from accountability. He was talking about protecting vulnerable people from abusive religious leaders.

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Car Culture Is Really Affinity Culture And It Affects Church More Than You Think

The fact is undeniable: for megachurches, cars are essential. It’s probably more accurate to say that cars created the megachurch. Without them, these churches simply couldn’t exist in the form they do today.

The abundance of choices and the absence of limitations is the blessing and the curse of the car. And church shopping may not be a problem of character. Not only has car culture nurtured an emphasis on affinity, but it has also altered ecclesiology (our beliefs about the church). Cars have put church “consumers” in the driver’s seat like never before, and church leaders are forced to buckle up for the ride.

Note: Clicking the “Read More” button below will take you to the first of five pages of this article. Use the links at the bottom of the first page to navigate to subsequent pages.

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Moving From Churchy World To Authentic Community

I resigned as a staff pastor and went on a rather long journey. I was searching for the type of genuine spiritual community found in the Bible: one without unnecessary church buildings, institutional hierarchy or imaginary titles. After all, the church Paul describes as the Body of Christ has many unique members but there is clearly a single authority, a single Head to this Body, which is Christ.

Thankfully I now have firsthand experience living in community with other believers who get to fully function in their callings during church gatherings.

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Let The Parish Thrive And The Consumer Church Perish

In honor of Throwback Thursday, we are remembering a post from June in which a vision for local gatherings of believers takes the place of larger consumer-oriented gatherings that we are used to.

A movement is growing that will radically shift this generation’s understanding of that perennially elusive word: church. Oddly enough, if you go looking for this movement on a Sunday morning you’ll probably come up empty. Thousands of Christians are reclaiming the ancient idea of the “parish” and weaving together a shared life in the place they call home.

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A Glimpse Of Ebony & Ivory In The Kingdom Of God

One Sunday morning when Jimmy Rollins was 37 years old, he stood before the church, and what he saw was a sea of black. The church had a handful of white members and a roster of recurring guest speakers who were Caucasian, but Living Waters Worship Center was a majority African-American church in a majority white town, south of Baltimore. For Rollins, that meant it was a church that had lost its way. Rollins knew that the church needed to change…

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Can Organic Church And Institutional Church Play On The Same Team?

For several years now I have been involved in the “organic church” movement. For the majority of my Christian life prior to the above mentioned, I had been associated in some way with what is usually called the institutional church.

The question raised in this post is: “Can an organic church philosophy of growth exist within an institutional church?” I think it can, but only if the institution is willing to practice “release” instead of “control.”

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How Many Churches Are There And Should There Be That Many?

Lets go through Ephesians 4:1-17 verse by verse to look at a Bible definition of the body of Christ. We need to deconstruct what we believe about the church for a minute and see what the Bible says about the body and our faith and it’s action. To make sure what we believe is how it actually is. Remember our beliefs must be from the Bible and the belief made from the Bible in this context of defining the church (since this is its product). As we go through this chapter you will see what the church really is. This is very important because it describes the church as it should be.

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5 Things That Bring Unity To The Church

I’ve come to believe that instead of being a bunch of churches separated by music style or building, God sees one bride and one city church.

In my experience, we are a divided, fighting, graceless, defensive mess. If your facebook news feed is anything like mine you cannot ignore the Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill Church controversy that has everyone choosing sides. I do not believe that we should forsake truth or stop defending the oppressed for the sake of unity, but it is my belief that there is a deep problem that exists in our city that is larger than a single worship center or preacher. And unless we seek radical change, the disunity will continue for the Church of Seattle.

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What To Do When Church Gets In The Way Of The Great Commission

I believe one of the greatest barriers to effectively fulfilling the great commission could very well be the Church itself. As someone once said, “The quickest way to ‘church the un-churched’ may very well be to ‘un-church the Church’.”

After spending years as a missionary, and more time in a stateside school of ministry that was born out of one of the recent great American revivals, I can tell you this: The Church needs to be reincarnated and redefined.

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How To Detox From The Professional Paid Minister Mentality

This article is mostly written to those brothers and sisters who begin the journey towards total trust in God as your only financial source. The pull of gravity as you escape the gravity from the religious system can be quite overbearing at first. There is good news for the weary pioneer. There is purpose and fruit from all the difficulties we endure.

Since the religious system is fueled and sustained by money, your pocketbook will be the first to feel the price of your new convictions.

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The Collapse Of Evangelicalism And Where It’s Headed Next

As I pointed out in numerous times on this blog, the center of evangelicalism is collapsing. In this post, we will briefly survey the four major streams within evangelicalism with an eye to Christians in their 20s, 30s, and 40s.

The common link that ties all four streams together is this: Each group believes that classic evangelical Christianity is inadequate. It has failed to give robust answers to their most serious theological questions and depth to their deepest spiritual longings.

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Instead Of Church Split, Try A Church Merger

We hereby announce that our church [insert brand name here] has officially decided to merge with the Church that Jesus started almost 2000 years ago. Sorry for the confusion we caused by our decision to start a new church.

It’s time that our structures our statements and our actions reflect our faith in the Bible’s clear declaration that “there is one body.” (Ephesians 4:3)

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What To Do About The Problems Of Celebrity, Consumerism, And Competition In The American Church

Mike Breen: If we think through Celebrity, Consumerism and Competition, the anti-body against all of these is sacrifice. Learning to lay down what builds us up and giving to others instead. Learning to serve, rather than to be served. Looking for anonymity rather than celebrity. To build a culture of producers rather than a consumers. To live in a vibrant, sacrificial community fighting a real enemy rather than competing against the same community God has given us to fight WITH rather than AGAINST.

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Counting The Cost Of Apostleship

Many churches seem to have forgotten the two most basic impulses of an organism: reproduce and adapt.

Or to use more Biblical language: We have forgotten how to be an Apostolic movement.

Key to understanding what the Church is and how it functions is the APEST: Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Shepherds and Teachers who equip the church to carry on the work of Jesus in the world today.

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If The Church Loves For Money, Then Doesn’t That Make It A Whore?

Today’s Throwback Thursday recalls a post from a couple of months ago in which the author considers the implications to the Church’s identity when it operates for profit.

“When a body becomes a business, isn’t that a prostitute?” There is only one answer to her question. The answer is “Yes.” The American Church, tragically, is heavily populated by people who do not love God. How can we love Him? We don’t even know Him; and I mean really know Him.

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How “Slow Church” Corrects The Imbalance Of Mega-Church

Going to church these days can be a bit like eating at a fast food joint. It might be quick and tasty, but it won’t satisfy your soul.

C. Christopher Smith and John Pattison, are part of a loose network of writers, friends, theologians and pastors worried about what they call the “McDonaldization” of church. They say too many small churches try to mass-produce spiritual growth by copying the latest megachurch techniques.

Scott Thumma, a sociologist of religion at Hartford Seminary in Hartford, Conn., says the slow church movement makes for good theology.

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Prophetic Witness Against A Faithless Church

I worry that people will think that large gestures of protest are the way to change the world, rather than entering on the difficult daily path of ordinary resistance.

You see, Bonhoeffer had to be Bonhoeffer because the national church in Germany failed to be the church at all.

This is the forgotten lesson of Bonhoeffer: The Church in Germany had failed!

Note: See also the video about Bonhoeffer in the previous post.

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How To Love The Church Even After You Feel Like You’ve Been Lied To

Truth and lies, hope and despair, real and fake – all tied up in a neat package with a bow and sold to us with the label of “Christianity”. The men in the suits with all the words told us that what they taught was true. We believed them because we were children, and because their voices were the only voices we’d ever heard.

Then we grew up.

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Community Church That Is Truly In The Community | Tim Soerens

Today’s Throwback Thursday article recalls our previous post of an excellent conversation with Tim Soerens, the co-founding director of the Parish Collective. See what Tim has to say about disciples of Jesus committing to loving a place and how their presence in that place can be transformative.

Warning: This article might challenge your paradigm about church and community.

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What Evangelicals Can Learn From Catholics

The idea of Evangelicals learning from Catholics is not really a novel one. Many Evangelical missionaries study the history of Catholic missions to improve the effectiveness of their own missionary activity. Some Evangelicals, obeying St. Paul’s dictum to “test everything; hold on to what is good,” even study the writings of John Paul II on the theology of the body.

Although there are many treasures within the Catholic Church, the two that Evangelicals might find most beneficial are liturgical worship and an emphasis on unity.

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Why The Missional Movement Will Fail | Mike Breen

In honor of Throwback Thursday, I want to recall one of our earliest posts. Mike Breen puts his finger on a problem that is plaguing the so-called “missional movement.”

It’s time we start being brutally honest about the missional movement that has emerged in the last 10-15 years: Chances are better than not it’s going to fail.

If you make disciples, you will always get the church. But if you try to build the church, you will rarely get disciples.

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Can Spiritual Gifts Build Up The Church Online?

And He gave some as E-postles, E-prophets, E-vangelists, E-pastors, and E-teachers for the E-quipping of the saints for the work of service and E-difying the body of Christ.

E-Ministry to an E-generation?

There can never be a complete disconnect from organic stone & mortar ministry (1 Peter 2:5). Likewise,  the church cannot cease E-xtending our flesh wrapped hands in fellowship. But, she also cannot reject the E-world reality. How we minister to one another and those outside of the church, must include E-vangleism.

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Let Consumer Church Perish And Let The Parish Thrive

A movement is growing that will radically shift this generation’s understanding of that perennially elusive word: church. Oddly enough, if you go looking for this movement on a Sunday morning you’ll probably come up empty. Thousands of Christians are reclaiming the ancient idea of the “parish” and weaving together a shared life in the place they call home.

 

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I’ll Accept Your Fellowship, But You Can Keep The Guilt Trip

I once believed that warming a seat in a religious meeting was directly related to one’s relationship with God.

I don’t religiously attend any religious service. I am an irreligious Christian. I occasionally attend a church service in a building with members of my family. When I am invited, I speak inside buildings solely dedicated to a physically organized church. But my allegiance is only to Jesus. All buildings, earthly ministries (including the one in which I am involved), congregations and denominations lag far behind my devotion to Jesus.

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A Case Study In Making Disciples Of All Nations

People tend not to know us as individuals, but as part of “that group” that meets in “that house” behind the soccer field. I am Just fine with that. In fact, I prefer to be counted as part of a group rather than being known as a leader or “The Missionary.”

When one of our group was recently asked, “Where do you attend Church?” He responded, “Well, I don’t go to church per se, but I do gather with some brothers and sisters every Tuesday night in that house behind the soccer field.”

The lines between our professions and our “ministries” are blurry, and that’s good thing.

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Why Many Church-Goers Hate The Bible

It is well and good for the preacher to base his sermon on the Bible, but he better get to something relevant pretty quickly, or we start mentally to check out.” That stunningly clear sentence reflects one of the most amazing, tragic, and lamentable characteristics of contemporary Christianity: an impatience with the Word of God.

Indeed, in many churches there is very little reading of the Bible in worship, and sermons are marked by attention to the congregation’s concerns, not by an adequate attention to the biblical text. The exposition of the Bible has given way to the concerns, real or perceived, of the listeners. The authority of the Bible is swallowed up in the imposed authority of congregational concerns.

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Church As Hostel Or Church As Hostile

How can the church guard against a fortress mentality that closes the door to the surrounding community? It’s not so easy to be missional. It’s much easier to close ourselves off from the world, where the church ends up looking like Vincent Van Gogh’s painting of the Church at Auvers. Like his Father, Jesus will never despise a broken and contrite spirit, only those who have built fortresses around their souls to keep him in or out, as the case may be. The church can only guard against a fortress mentality if it breaks down the strongholds of pride and presumption and remains open to Jesus. Repentance is the missing key. Humility, not hubris, opens church doors and keeps them open.

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How Youth Groups Make Atheists And What To Do About It

A new study might reveal why a majority of Christian teens abandon their faith upon high school graduation. Some time ago, Christian pollster George Barna documented that 61 percent of today’s 20-somethings who had been churched at one point during their teen years are now spiritually disengaged. They do not attend church, read their Bible or pray.

According to a new five-week, three-question national survey sponsored by the National Center for Family-Integrated Churches (NCFIC), the youth group itself is the problem.

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Did We Ever Graduate From Children’s Church?

I think the well-intentioned efforts to meet the worship needs of children has contributed to an increasing trend toward a narcissistic faith. The children have their own worship service separate from the adults. The rise of youth-focused programs in the 1930s and 40s eventually contributed to a kind of Christianity lite, today. In many churches today, the point is more about having my needs met rather than cultivating a life of service to God and others for God’s sake.

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Bringing Back The Family Meal

In recent years, sociologists and educators across the political spectrum have encouraged families to do one simple thing to maintain connection with one another: eat. The issue isn’t just eating, of course. That’s a non-negotiable for all biological organisms. The issue instead is to eat together. The family dinner might seem cute and outdated in a mobile, crazy-busy current age, but there’s something of importance here.

The church isn’t an association of like-minded individuals. The church is a household of brothers and sisters. In order to get community right, we must reclaim communion.

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6 Ways To Jumpstart Disciple Making Movements

This article offers 6 insightful points about the beliefs and practices that lead to explosive and exponential growth of the Church in areas all around the world. When the goal is to make disciples who can reproduce and make more disciples who make disciples who make disciples and so on, these points make a lot of sense. Implementing these points might disrupt other methods that are out there, but maybe that’s a good thing.

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Church As Lover Or Prostitute

“When a body becomes a business, isn’t that a prostitute?” There is only one answer to her question. The answer is “Yes.” The American Church, tragically, is heavily populated by people who do not love God. How can we love Him? We don’t even know Him; and I mean really know Him.

I was pondering Martha’s question again one day, and considered the question, “What’s the difference between a lover and a prostitute?” I realized that both do many of the same things, but a lover does what she does because she loves. A prostitute pretends to love, but only as long as you pay. Then I asked the question, “What would happen if God stopped paying me?”

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Is Sunday School Destroying Our Kids?

The message of the gospel—the entire storyline of scripture—is God’s loving pursuit of people who run from him as fast as they can and who live lives unworthy of his love.

That’s why it’s called grace.

But our Sunday school lessons teach us to be good little boys and girls, and God will love us and use us. It’s the total opposite of the gospel. It’s a counterfeit of the worst kind.

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Being The People Of God

This 14 minute video offers flesh-and-blood examples of what it looks like for the people of God to live as a community on mission, as opposed to a bunch of people trying to do church. Jeff Vanderstelt of Soma Community in Tacoma, WA lends his voice to the dialogue on what a missional community looks like.

 

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Good Leaders Disappear

The best way to be noticed is to become a leader. Better yet, a spiritual leader. People beg for your time, they adore your advice, and they praise you to their friends. Many leaders with the largest followings are the men and women most desperate for attention. They work harder than you because they need more notice than you.

The problem with these leaders is that their lives primarily evoke their own praise.

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Why Small Groups Fail At Making Disciples

Small groups are things that trick us into believing we’re serious about making disciples. The problem is 90 percent of small groups never produce one single disciple. Ever. They help Christians make shallow friendships, for sure. They’re great at helping Christians feel a tenuous connection to their local church, and they do a bang-up job of teaching Christians how to act like other Christians in the Evangelical Christian subculture. But when it comes to creating the kind of holistic disciples Jesus envisioned, the jury’s decision came back a long time ago – small groups just aren’t working.

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