A Church Adrift?

I believe in the church.  However, the church is not a place you go to. It's a people.  People who have been called out of themselves and into and intimate relationship with God and others. Lately, I find myself struggling with the setbacks that are occurring in many churches as a result of a performance oriented and technological driven culture. It's unfortunate that many church leaders and groups have been seduced into an attractional, propositional, and colonial group culture.  Since the mid-1970's God has been calling his people into a real New Testament church life experience.  Somehow. this calling has gotten lost in all the noise and scrabbling to become culturally relevant. Having grown up in a very large baptist church with it's one hundred voice choir, thundering organ, and broadcast driven Sunday morning live radio productions; I find myself at a loss in the world of staged re-enactments of the stations of the cross, cold play like worship concerts, and large screen monitors having become the new stained glass windows.  Add to this, the idea that relevancy means "to do accept anything and measure our outcomes by numbers, cash and assets as a measure of success leaves me completely confused. I cannot find one piece of evidence of Jesus' staging a show with The Blues Brothers as being an evidence of faith.  It's cool and the show will draw crowds... but I can also turn on my light at night and attract a crowd too!  Of bugs. Lol  Is this the reason the Son Of God came to earth?  Crowds? Crowds are fun... and as a former musician I love all kinds of music (except country), lights, and stage productions but those things do not produce "disciples."  Discipleship is like raising kids - it's intentional, it takes time, and it involves teaching people self-discipline and building healthy relationship with God and one another. On average, it takes a unsaved person about 7 years from leading a person to Christ, discipling them, and engaging them into places of leadership. It's an awesome task to undertake.


Last weekend I had the opportunity to minister in a church modeled that was based on the contemporary church model I have been apart of since 1990.  I enjoyed my time worshipping and ministering with them. However, I noticed something about myself.  Just as God called me out of the Baptist Tradition he has moved me from something I loved into something that I don't quite understand yet.  Now this is not unusual for me.  It takes me about 5 years to figure out what I've gotten myself into. But it seems to me that God has his finger on the subject of incarnation, iniquity, and racial justice all at the same time. How this translates into a new way of doing things I'm not sure but I do know it involves participatory culture, holograms, and the idea of every church having it's own incarnational story.  God is a creative guy.  Not everybody is interested in being starbucked.  Individualized branding, customization and uniqueness is the way of the future.  We are all called to celebrate that creation.  I don't think the current post-modern church is prepared for what is about to take place.  What would happen if a whole city in an instant got saved.  So, if you live in a small city of 55,000 and currently 13,000 attend 42 different worship on Sunday mornings there are 42,000 sleeping in.  the average church seating runs safely around 300.  According to my stats those 42 churches are serving about 310 people each.  So if this little city were to have a revival break out in one day and the whole city had to be prepared.  Each church would have to take on an additional 1,000 people. Now if we were to really believe that God was going to change our city how are each of our churches prepared to facilitate the ministry to those new 42,000 converts.  Remember it takes 7 years to disciple them to a sustainable faith in Christ.  This is a lot of work. who's writing the circulum?  Who's preparing to outfit the church with the proper technological tools for the generation we are called to serve?  Who is going to handle, teach, train, and disciple the people? How many workers do you need?  How much seating, parking, adequate restrooms, and children's facilities would you need to administrate this church?  How much staffing do you need to meet the needs of a totally unchurched group of people?  how many people in your current church have read and studied the scripture to be able to teach it to others?

Years ago I had a very significant discussion with a major leader from the 1970's Jesus People Movement.  At the time, my friend was probably the darling of the Charismatic movement and was a profound bible teacher.  You had to wait to get in stadiums for 45 minutes ahead of time to just get a seat in his meetings.  His church was considered one of the first mega churches in America.  In 1973 is church grew to 3000.  I asked him what was the key to becoming an effective leader during that time. He explained to me that he made a shift in his ministry.  He had to learn the cultural language of the generation they served.  He choose a bible that was relevant to them - The New American Standard Bible.  His church had an awesome worship leader who's music brought song's like "Our God Reigns" to the church world. He told me that the key was to shift the preaching, teaching, and ministry to meet the questions of the generation.  Very powerful insight!  However, I think we are facing a serious problem in our time.  The current generation lives in time where "communication technologies" are causes breakdowns in people's ability to hold meaningful discussion. Recently, and American survey demonstrated that most people have an 8  second attention span.  We live in a world of soundbites. This makes it diffcult to read, teach, and hold the attention of an audience if you want people to learn the scriptures. One friend of mine is trying to offer 90 second biblical insights on his website daily. Tough stuff.  Critical thinking may be a thing of the past for many which is why many churches arew resorting to the entertainment model.  My thinking is that the contemporary model, altough attracting thousands, is still not reaching the greater population for Christ,  Currently,  90 % of Gen Y (digitals) now moving toward their thirties have never darkened the church's door and have not heard the Gospel.  America has become the number one mission field.  What bother's me is how many think the contemporary model church is the answer to reaching post-moderns.  It's not working.  It doesn't disciple people. Contemporary Churches lose 30% of their people every year.  Lights, music, and motivational teaching are not resulting in transformation.  I find most leaders from all denominations and various models of church life are struggling to meet the demands that are created by our new high tech culture. The greatest shift in our time will be how to help this generation develop "critical thinking skills," learning how to communicate, learning how to listen, discern and make good life decisions, and buiding relationship skills necessary for authentic success in their lives.  How we develop that will take time and a willingness to do our due diligence and reseach to change ourselves and the ministries we serve.