Articles . Keith Drury . Volume 09 | Issue 01

What’s Wrong with the Church?

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, 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 giving 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 kingdom of God is flat—at least in the US and Canada. We are no longer fishers of men but keepers of aquariums. And we spend most of our time transferring fish from other aquariums.
  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 denominational commitments and teaching them our way of doing things. We arrogantly assume we have all the answers they need, so we restructure their church to be like ours. We represent our denomination more than the kingdom of God, and we hire converts by turning them into “rice Christians.” We organize elaborate and expensive “mission trips” and raise money for ourselves to send ourselves overseas to “teach people how to do things our way” when they’d be better off without our influence. We seldom bring them here to learn from them—we are always the ones to teach, since we have the money, so we send ourselves as teachers. We imagine we are teaching these poor “natives” how to become a quality church like us. We cling to 18th-century methods of missions and ignore the globalization of the world. We care for other races as long as they are far away and not in our country illegally. We love missions but spurn being missional. We will raise $100,000 a year to send a white American to do work that could better be done by a black African. We go places that barely need us because we say we are called to do it. We change things that shouldn’t be changed and stay longer than we should. When we’re done, we leave a crippled church dependant on outside help for decades. And most of the time we have (until recently) ignored addressing poverty, climate change, the spread of AIDS, community development, micro businesses, digging wells and nation-building—we leave these things to Bono or Bill and Melinda Gates. We love missions and mission trips more than being missional.
  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 church of God in our county. We tout our own statistics and assume that’s the end of the story. If our own church is growing, we pronounce God moving, even if the total number of Christians in our community is declining steadily. We do the same as denominations—as long as we can show gains as a denomination, we ignore the national statistics. We have constructed kingdoms of kings ruling over ever larger fiefdoms while the entire empire shrinks.
  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, spiritual 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!

(copyright 2009, Keith Drury)
www.drurywriting.com/keith