Spiritual Schizophrenia...And Its Cure

All Christians have experienced what we can call "spiritual schizophrenia" on a regular basis. We find in ourselves two voices, two natures; one the old, selfish way of living that the Bible calls "old nature" or "the flesh," and the other that longs to please God and live in a manner that pleases Him, what the Bible calls the "new nature." These two natures fight and war with one another on a daily basis, and we struggle and strive to live by this new nature rather than the old. And this struggle never seems to end, does it? We long more than anything else to "get it right," learning to finally live by this new nature and live a life pleasing to Him after all He's done for us. And if we can't do this...well, He won't be pleased with us, and our relationship with Him will suffer, we're told. And after years of this struggle and pressure to please God...well, I just get tired. Don't you? I can't seem to even remember all the things God asks me to do, much less do them. Once I feel I am getting a handle on my materialism, for instance, my pride seems to be a problem. I try really, really hard to be more humble (can you really try to be humble? Seems like an oxymoron, but I digress...), but as soon as I improve there, I realize I need to be more patient with my kids. So I work on that...only to find I am not sharing my faith like I should. And on and on it goes. If you are a follower of Jesus, I'm sure you can relate. In fact, the apostle Paul did so himself; this very struggle is the topic of Romans 7. As Paul writes in a parallel passage in Galatians 5, "For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want" (Gal. 5:17). Over the centuries, this frustration and struggle produced by these two warring natures has been experienced by all followers of Jesus.

But as Paul says in the very next verse in Galatians, "if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law." Could it be that in Christ, God makes no demands on His children whatsoever, and we are hence "free from law"? Could it be that all of our striving and struggling, in light of this new "law of the Spirit of life" ushered in by Christ's work, is all in vain? Paul goes on in this passge to describe for us the "fruit of the Spirit" that can only be produced by "walking in the spirit": love, joy, peace, self control, to name but a few. These attributes and fruits of a "holy life" are exactly that: attributes and fruits, none of which can be produced by our efforts, struggle, or striving. Just as a tree cannot "try" to produce fruit, neither can we.

Further, these attributes become meaningless and vain if they are sought in themselves as ethical ideals or to meet an obligation to God; any righteousness produced by our striving (and there indeed can be some!) is in fact "righteousness by law" rather than "the righteousness of Christ by faith" (Phil. 3:9) that God really desires for His children. Hence, these true fruits of the Spirit can only be descriptions of what real life looks like, and by definition are not prescriptions for how we get life. In fact...might the entire New Testament , and all the ethical "commands" of Jesus and Paul be descriptive of life in God rather than prescriptive commands? Come to think of it, maybe His grace really is all we need! And as long as we continue to misunderstand His grace and fail to recognize that we are already righteous in Christ, mistakingly thinking that God still has demands and expectations of us...we'll continue our ceaseless efforts to “earn” God’s favor and gain points on our scorecard with a God who's no longer keeping score. As Paul writes, "it is [only] God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure" (Phil 2:13)." At the moment we try to get on that treadmill of "getting it right", it becomes a self-righteous effort to accomplish what Christ already accomplished for us at the Cross; at best, this results in a righteousness far from the righteousness that Christ has in mind for us.

So what, then, does such effortless, yet fruitful Christian living look like? How is achieved? Simply asking the question demonstrates our ingrained religious thinking, as we again seek a five point sermon, flowchart, or “cookie-cutter” formula that will release us to Spirit-led living. Just as our forefathers under the law, we would much rather run to a formula, prescription, method, or a human mediator instead of seeking God for ourselves. No man can teach another how to personally know and experience God under the New Covenant (Heb. 8:12), but we are promised that He will freely reveal Himself to anyone who is willing to truly seek Him (Jn 7:17, Heb. 11:6) And as we experience and learn to live in this unconditional, agenda-less Love of the Father, we will increasingly find that through no effort of our own, the fruit of a holy life begins to be produced. This transformation cannot be found through religion, rule keeping, or principles, but only through a personal encounter with Love in the depths of our being. Truly, such a glimpse of His glory with the eyes of faith will make us like Him (1 John 3:2) in a way that religion cannot. Oh, that we would learn to enter that rest that is found in God Himself, and find Him transforming us in the innermost parts through that encounter! May God guide us in this quest, and tangibly demonstrate to us that His grace is truly enough!

The Value of Discipleship

Proverbs 20:5 reads, “the purposes of a person’s heart are deep waters, but one who has insight draws them out.” Truly, the depths of the human soul are staggering and beyond our grasp. Though unlike our Maker we are finite beings, Scripture is clear that we are indeed made in the image of this infinite, invisible God. As such, the human heart possesses a vastness, richness, and depth that we can never fully probe or understand. As 1 Corinthians 2 asks, “who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them?” Yet I must confess that as the years pass, I increasingly find I have been unaware of many of my own motives, fears, and hopes hidden deeply inside the recesses of my soul. I find I can scarcely understand the hidden stirrings of my own heart at times, much less those of another. Can anyone really say with honesty, even in the most intimate of marriages, that they fully understand their spouse and connect with them fully in the deepest reaches of their being? So it is to be made in the image of God, an infinite being Who it will take all eternity to fully appreciate and understand. How deep, eternal, and vast the human soul is in that reflection, with eternity set inside its unfathomable depths (Ecc. 3:11)! Truly, as the Psalmist says, we are “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Ps. 139:14) in the vastness and richness God has placed in our souls.

With this eternal glory of the human heart in view, CS Lewis wrote these well-known words: “ It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare… There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.” If this is indeed true, there is no greater calling given to human beings than to accompany another in a journey of the heart towards God. This quest is not one towards mere intellectual acceptance of theological concepts or moral principles, but a transforming encounter of one’s soul with its infinite and divine Creator. To walk with another on such a soul journey, experiencing together the healing touch of the resurrected Jesus in the deepest reaches of their soul, is a calling that truly transcends time and space, and one to which all the other pursuits of life seem vain in comparison.

Yet how ironic that we persist in measuring ministry success in terms of buildings, bodies, and programs, all the while overlooking this far more noble and eternal calling of discipleship and spiritual companionship that God has given His people. How sad that Christ’s workers often live in a spirit of defeat, feeling they are a failure if their church plant does not grow in exponential fashion. Would laboring in obscurity be so difficult for us if we simply realized the enormous depth and value of just one human heart? Truly, a lifetime of struggle for the sake of His kingdom is but "a momentary and light affliction" (2 Cor. 4:17) compared to this glorious work. Cathedrals will crumble, ministries will fail, and the applause of others will fade; but the privilege of accompanying another on a journey towards their inner transformation will last and bear fruit through all of eternity.

Truly, there are no mere mortals among us. May this highest of callings Christ has given us to “go into all the world and make disciples” be our only passion in light of the unsurpassing riches hidden in just one human heart. It is the only eternal work that is worth devoting ourselves to.

Kids’ Ministry: A New Scorecard for Success

As we’ve discussed in our last few posts, though traditional churches may make every effort to reach our children, a consumer-based paradigm of children’s ministry has serious flaws. As one calls it, pep-rally, just add water Christianity has been tried and found wanting.

As we seek a church home for our children, we must ask ourselves what our highest goal really is. For indeed, if our only goal for our children is to keep them in the church, off the streets, and off of drugs, our current mode of youth ministry will do just fine. But if our goal is a higher one, that our children might passionately love Jesus, youth ministry as we know it needs a radical overhaul. Survey after survey underscores the indisputable nature of this truth.

Suppose your child spends his entire life in the church, and passes through children’s church, junior high church, and youth group unscathed. Suppose he or she is one of the 10-20% of kids that not only graduates from youth group, but stays in the church. If everything goes according to plan, and even if he bucks the odds and stays in the church after all is said and done, is he really any better off? Kids’ church and youth group as it is presently constructed will produce children just like us; interested in Jesus, but not fully dedicated; loving Jesus, yet loving themselves; having a heart for the lost, but having little impact; wanting adventure for God, but shackled by the American dream. I don’t know about you, but my hopes for my children are so much more than this. If my children aspire to being just like their old man, that is a sad state of affairs indeed. For if I remain the highest example of the successful Christian life to my children, unoffensive, meek, and mild, I have failed in my mentorship of them. My hope and prayer for my children is that they might transcend the meager example that I have set, and truly “turn the world upside down” as the early church did. I truly believe that this will only be possible if they know a different church world than I have, where radical service, countercultural living, and the contagious spread of the gospel is the rule rather than the exception.

A New Paradigm of Family Ministry

In our most recent posts, we’ve been exploring the failures of traditional children’s and youth ministry and discussing what a more Biblical pattern might look like. If we are to truly embrace a more bold and effective template for youth ministry, we must first recognize that parents, not youth ministers, should be the primary spiritual mentors for their children. The church must also realize that its ministries should be divided among family lines rather than age demographics. Further, a truly successful youth ministry must involve the equipping of parents to fulfill the mentorship role for their children.

As previously discussed, it’s clear that “just add water” youth events and whimsical play areas do little to impact our children’s long term spiritual growth. Rather, the spiritual growth of our children always begins in the home. With this in mind, former youth pastor Ray Baumann once made a startling statement: “Youth ministries would be unnecessary if the believers took their mandate to parent seriously.” He goes on to say, “the last place I want my kids to hear about Jesus is on Sunday.” The most important life lessons that children need to learn are impressed upon children by their parents “along the road”, imparted to them in the context of daily living and through a loving mentoring relationship (Deut. 6:7). This is consistent even with the teachings of Jesus, who conducted some of his most meaningful discussions with his disciples between events, “along the road” to their destinations. Research among adolescents confirms these ideas: studies show that the more often families eat together, the better their moral, spiritual, and academic outcomes. How ironic that family meal time together, a far better indicator of our children’s spiritual outcomes, can often be pushed aside by social events at the church! Rather than busying our children with a myriad of church programs, sports, or other extracurricular activities, perhaps our children’s long term spiritual vitality would improve if we as parents simply spent more time with our children and took seriously our mandate to instruct them in God’s ways.

It is beyond dispute that no one can raise our children “in the nuture and admonition of the Lord” to the same extent that parents are able, youth pastors included. Yet, as any Christian parent will attest, this mandate is not an easy task. Our natural inclination, when feeling overwhelmed by such a responsibility, is to defer to the “faith specialists” in this area. It is certainly easier to let a faceless program disciple our children than to do it ourselves, even if that program does have a high failure rate. Too many parents feel they have neither authority or wisdom to offer their teenage children. Consequently, many Christian parents have come to believe that raising up their children to love Jesus simply means dropping them off at the various youth events the church offers, with hopes that these efforts alone will foster their spiritual growth.

But what does it look like to really disciple our kids, then? If age segregation and outsourcing to specialists isn’t the answer, what would a better option look like? I believe it starts with the church’s efforts to build into the family as a whole rather than the child as an individual. Its efforts to reach the younger generation must primarily be aimed at bringing the family together in a manner that bridges the generational gaps between its members. Above all, it attempts to make the family the highest priority within the church without the use of age segregation.

For instance, instead of a weekly service that is designed solely for adults, a more organic meeting is a great first step. Rather than avoiding our children in hopes they don’t distract us, children are free to contribute in an organic meeting, as families are able to share in the experience together. In all church endeavors, both Sunday morning meetings and beyond, this church would seek to provide shared experiences for all members of the family collectively.

Second, a new template for family ministry involves a family oriented approach to serving. This new paradigm attempts to divide church ministry into teams of families rather than teams of age demographics. Instead of separating serving projects according to age segments, the church’s serving events are separated into teams of families. This allows parents and children to share in the experience together, and allows parents to demonstrate to their children first-hand what the gospel looks like in action. Families are encouraged to pioneer their own methods of serving the community, in schools, in their neighborhoods, in parks, and on the streets. Youth ministry is not pre-programmed by religious specialists, but is engineered by families and children rising up to meet the challenge. This family oriented model of serving would foster the building of authentic gospel values within the family unit to a much greater extent than traditional models.

Thirdly, this view of family ministry would seek above all to protect and proclaim the value of family time together. The American family has so little time together today; why disrupt family time for the sake of church events? Rather than robbing families of their precious time together by replacing it with church programs, this new paradigm of family ministry recognizes the sanctity of family time. A truly family-based ministry approach must make family time a primary value of the church. This stands in stark contrast with a culture that values busyness over depth and honors production over intimacy.

This list is by no means exhaustive. Part of this new approach to family ministry recognizes the limitless possibilities in this pursuit, and empowers both parents and children to rise up and bridge the gap so prevalent in families today. Ultimately, the answers to these needs of our families will not be answered by youth ministry experts but by teams of father and daughter, mother and son. As relationships are built between parents and their children, and between the church and its children, our children’s long term spiritual growth will be positively affected. I believe that such a grass-roots, participatory approach to “bridging the spiritual gap” within families will produce fruit in our children’s lives as no age-segregated model is able to do.

In agreement with these concepts, Tracy Waal said this after 14 years of youth ministry: “Personal experience in youth ministry shows me that the #1 indicator of a teen’s spiritual longevity and commitment is the degree to which parents are involved in their kid’s spiritual development. The #2 indicator is the degree in which a teen connects with an older spiritual mentor outside the youth group.” A successful new paradigm for youth ministry must serve to make both of these relationships a reality.

The Failure of Age Segregation

In previous posts, we’ve discussed the failure of traditional paradigms of youth ministry. The reasons for its shortcomings are myriad , but none of them is larger than the age segregation that these ministries employ . Today, instead of the church becoming a church for families, the church has increasingly sought to appeal to each family member as individuals rather than collectively. There is church for children, church for high schoolers, and church for adults. On the surface, this separation according to age seems innocent, even necessary, but think of the division it causes within a church. Unintentionally, too often these ministries have become “churches within a church,” each having its own niche in the market but seldom, if ever, crossing paths with one another.

These divisions, unfortunately, create unique problems within the church, none larger than the trouble our youth eventually have in assimilating into the church at large. Our kids feel comfortable and at home in youth group, but the longer they’re in youth group, the more “adult church” seems like a foreign land. Though they feel to be part of the youth group, they don’t feel like part of the church at large. Our churches end up thus being a microcosm of our society at large, where teenagers have become a strange subculture of which adults are desperately afraid. As Tracy Waal says, “We have invented a foreign species called Teenager. They live in ghettos called Schools. A few of them visit Christian ghettos called Youth Groups on weekends. We are afraid of what is becoming of this species, but all our answers seem to revolve around throwing more resources at the development of the ghettos.”

This division where both parties seem distant from one another, if not afraid, is the natural conclusion of age segregated ministry. If neither group rubs shoulders with one another, how can we expect any other outcome? Further, when such a gulf exists between “youth church” and “adult church,” why should we be surprised when our kids leave youth group and never come back to church? After spending years tucked away in the nursery and youth group, they largely see “adult church” as being alien and irrelevant to their lives once they graduate from their age-segregated cloister known as “youth group.” Sadly, our kids never end up seeing the church at large as theirs to begin with.

Many youth leaders have made these observations of the deleterious effects of “age segregation” so prevalent in the church today. Youth today are in desperate need of mature Christian influences, but kids church and youth group is structured in such a way that this mature influence is difficult, if not impossible, to come by. As a result of this isolation and segregation in their younger years, many believers who were raised in these traditional programs report that their knowledge of the mature Christian life remains incomplete even into adulthood.

As Dennis Muse, leader of The Crowded House reminds us, Jesus never said “'let the little children be packed away in the nursery” but rather He said, ‘let the little children come to me.’” Try to imagine, if you can, the children being led to Children's Church during the Sermon on the Mount. Such an idea is ridiculous! As integral parts of the body of Christ, should our children be segregated from us, or should they be part of our gatherings, free to worship Christ in the same manner we are? Is not children combining with their parents to worship Jesus far closer to God’s heart than our age-segregated inventions?

Are children really a deterrent to our own spiritual development as adults? Perhaps our children can instruct us about God as readily as we can instruct them. Jesus said that “unless you are like a little child, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.” Maybe Jesus really meant what he said, and our children have so much more to offer us spiritually than we as sophisticated adults might realize.

Further, the church as a whole needs to take seriously its mandate to provide spiritual leadership for the next generation to follow Jesus. This can’t be done by a faceless program, but must be done by every member of the church. Every member of the church must recognize that it is not only the job of those “called to youth ministry” to raise our children, but is the responsibility of each and every member of the Body of Christ. Both children and adults both need each other if they are to grow spiritually; adults need children to edify them and draw them closer to God, and children need adults to provide the mature leadership they so desperately need.

It would seem, then, that such an attitude of ministry to our children would preclude “age segregation” that is so prevalent in today’s churches. Imagine, if you will, a church where adults, children, and teens are integrated together as one as part of Christ’s body. Imagine a church where children are exposed to the real needs of the community at large, are encouraged to pray for them, and rejoice when God intervenes on their behalf. Imagine a church where children serve the poor alongside their parents and truly make a difference in the world outside the church’s walls. Imagine a church where our kids are surrounded on Sunday mornings by an extended family of spiritual aunts, uncles, and cousins. Imagine being a part of a church that truly is a church for people instead of a church for segregated market segments. Perhaps this would be the beginning of a revolution in youth ministry in our midst that is long overdue.

Youth Ministry and Consumerism

In our previous posts, we’ve discussed the failure of traditional children’s and youth programs in the church. As recent studies and our own experience has shown, perhaps programmed, Hollywood quality kids’ ministry isn’t quite the answer for our kids that we’ve hoped for, and an entirely new paradigm is needed if they are to grow up and love Jesus passionately. But what might such a new paradigm look like?

First, a new approach to kid’s ministry must first begin with the rejection of consumerism. Churches are in constant competition with the church down the street to “wow” the kids and woo suburban families who are on a mission to find a church home that’s “best for their kids.” Many youth pastors will admit that much of today’s “youth ministry” is simply elaborate attempts to keep the kids entertained, keeping them in the church, and furthering their position as consumers and “takers”. Though very well intentioned, much of the emphasis of kids’ ministry today is on “fun”: fun kid spaces, fun games, fun songs, and fun pizza parties. It’s not the church’s fault this is the case, nor is it the students’; it’s the inevitable reality produced by today’s consumer church climate. Everyone knows that if the kids don’t have fun at your church, they’ll have it at the church down the street, and you’ll lose the opportunity to minister to those kids.

I am not at all saying that kids and youth ministry can’t or shouldn’t be fun. No kid wants to go to church and be bored to tears. Bands and lock ins, social events and games have their place in youth ministry; but it’s important to recognize that their effectiveness is limited. If our only goals for our kids are to keep them off the streets, off drugs and in church on Sundays, these things are of tremendous value. If mere sin avoidance is the goal, simple entertainment might hold the answer for our youth. However, if our goal for our kids is transcendence of American consumerism, full devotion to Christ, passionate evangelism, and countercultural living in adolescence and beyond, a radically different model is needed.

Your child might enjoy going to traditional kids’ church on Sunday morning, and that’s great. The highlight of his week might be Sunday morning, and that’s a good thing. He might even learn a few Bible verses, and that’s fantastic. But on a deeper level, is that experience changing him for the better? Does that ministry help him better exhibit the fruits of the Spirit? As a result of his Sunday morning experience, does he love better? Does he have more self control? It is these outcomes that should be the benchmark for a youth ministry’s success. To quote the Barna Group’s David Kinneman: “A new standard for viable youth ministry should be- not the number of attenders, the sophistication of the events, or the ‘cool’ factor of the youth group - but whether teens have the commitment, passion and resources to pursue Christ intentionally and wholeheartedly after they leave the youth ministry nest." I wonder if we define success in youth ministry in far different terms than we should.

Perhaps our best efforts at youth ministries have failed because they don’t offer our children enough. Perhaps many of today’s youth ministries offer mere fleeting diversion to our children when they should be offering them a call to radical living instead. Shane Claiborne suggests that if our youth leave the church, it isn’t because we don’t entertain them enough, but because we don’t dare them enough. Perhaps they reject the gospel not because we make it too difficult, but because we make it too easy. As another has said, we significantly cheat our children when we imply by our actions that vital discipleship can exist without a life of evangelism and compassionate service. It is only when our children see the radical alternative Christ offers to consumer living that they will truly embrace His call to live for Him.

For this reason, a radical church should offer its youth a call to something more. Imagine a youth ministry where our kids are encouraged to not settle for mere entertainment, but seek to make a difference in the world at large. Imagine a church where our children and teenagers see their parents knee deep in the needs of a world desperate for Christ instead of mired in the quicksand of consumerism. Imagine a church where our youth witness the mighty and miraculous hand of God in their midst on a regular basis. Imagine a church that is built on the premise that true believers give rather than receive. This is the kind of church that has the potential to change the world, one generation at a time.

The Failure of Traditional Youth Ministry

In our last post, we posed this simple question: do traditional children’s and youth ministries really produce children who love Jesus? One would think that the more time, effort, and money is spent in a church’s youth ministry, the better their kids’ long-term outcomes will be. But is this assumption really correct?

A few years ago, a major church denomination did an exhaustive study of their young people’s experience in church. The children studied were those “born under the altar;” they were in attendance at the church's youth programs since birth virtually every time the church doors were open. This denomination sought to know what percentage of these kids stayed in the church once they were free to make their own decisions regarding attendance. They found that at the conclusion of high school, 95% of these students left the church and never returned.

The findings of this study may sound shocking, but they are well in line with what other studies have revealed. The Southern Baptist Convention’s Council on Family Life reports that some 88 percent of children from evangelical homes leave the church shortly after graduation. To lay the blame at the feet of the “godless university” is unfounded; no statistical difference exists between those who attend college and those who do not. Similar research in New Zealand showed that 80% of students raised in youth group will abandon their faith in the first year after their graduation. George Barna’s recent research among twentysomethings revealed that only 20% of those in their early 20s who were raised in a youth group describe themselves as maintaining the same level of spirituality they had in high school.

In response to this data, the Barna Group’s David Kinnaman offered several insights. To quote Kinneman: "Much of the ministry to teenagers in America needs an overhaul - not because churches fail to attract significant numbers of young people, but because so much of those efforts are not creating a sustainable faith beyond high school. There are certainly effective youth ministries across the country, but the levels of disengagement among twentysomethings suggest that youth ministry fails too often at discipleship and faith formation.”

In contrast to these discouraging findings, however, a major missionary organization did a similar study, wanting to know how many of their kids (MKs),, raised in missionary homes in the missionary lifestyle, returned to the mission as adults. Bear in mind that these individuals had to not only return to a foreign land on their own, but raise their own support to do so as well. Much to the mission agency’s surprise, about 95% of their MKs came back to the mission as adults.

These findings are staggering. If children’s and youth ministries are really worthy of the importance we place upon them, one would expect a clear, almost linear relationship between church attendance as an adult and their experience in the church as children. Further, for those raised outside of the church, without the benefit of these programs, we would expect that their adherence to Christ would fade as a result if they are indeed as effective as claimed. Yet we find the exact opposite to be the case! How can children who are raised without the benefit of special youth ministries end up better off in the end?

It’s also no secret that surveys show no appreciable difference between the moral and sexual behavior of Christian vs. non-Christian youth. Research done by Campus Crusade for Christ shows similar findings. Based on their research, Campus Crusade’s Josh McDowell and Ron Luce have issued a joint statement: "Incredible as it may seem, ‘accepting Christ' and making a profession of faith makes little to no difference in a young person's attitudes and behaviors. The majority of our churched young people are adopting ‘a Christianity' but it is not true Christianity.” They found the findings of their study so compelling that they concluded: "We are at a crossroads where a fundamental change is required within youth ministry. We need more than a retooling—nothing short of a 21st century God-sent spiritual revolution will save this generation." Incredibly, 98% of youth pastors polled agree with McDowell and Luce's assessment.

For all the emphasis we place on kids and youth ministry today, we would expect different results than these. Perhaps programmed, Hollywood quality kids’ ministry isn’t quite the answer we’ve hoped for, and an entirely new paradigm is needed. But if kids and youth ministry in this country needs an overhaul, what should it look like? We will discuss this further in our next post.

“What About The Children?”

As Helen Lovejoy so famously uttered in “The Simpsons”, “What about the children! Won't anyone think of the children?" In any discussion about a new paradigm of church, it is this very question that looms large: What about the children? What role should they play in a radical church?” We must answer these questions if we are to clear the fog on what a new, radical kind of church might look like.

Prevailing assumptions about kids and youth ministry make it difficult for an alternative vision of church to become a reality in the middle class suburbs that so many of us call home. The greatest desire for many a Christian suburbanite is to find a church home that will meet their family’s needs, especially their children. Traditional thinking says that this should be done by finding the church that offers the highest quality “youth programs.” To this end, traditional churches trip over themselves trying to provide the highest quality experience they can for the kids. Between fountains, mascots, songs, skits, and interactive lessons, there is always something in most church’s kids ministry that will hold their attention. And as a general rule, the larger the church, the greater the children’s experience will be on Sunday mornings.

This traditional view of children’s ministry is undergirded by several main assumptions. First, churches reason that if children enjoy coming to church, their parents will be much more willing to come themselves. Second, it is assumed that the impartation of Biblical knowledge that occurs along the way will result in a change in our children’s behavior; right knowledge, it is reasoned, naturally will result in right behavior. This is the underlying presupposition of Western models of learning. It is also assumed that a positive experience in children’s church as a youngster will translate into greater adherence to Christ and His principles as one grows older. As the book of Proverbs says, “train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it” (Prov. 22:6). As Christian parents, all of us share this desire, and as we seek to raise our children in the “nuture and admonition of the Lord,” we long to see our children continue in Christ as the years pass, which causes us to seek the best church possible for our kids.

As the traditional view of children’s ministry unfolds, our attention turns to youth group as they grow up. Above all else, we desire our children to spend their teen years in love with Jesus, on fire for His name and living the adventure that Christ has created them to live. In a world where drugs, alcohol, premarital sex, and the pressures of the world abound, our fears that they will abandon the faith of their youth loom large. Above all else, teens value relationships with and the approval of their peers, and without that Christian peer influence in their lives, how will they escape the lure of the world and live their lives with single devotion to Christ?

Certainly the answer must be found in youth group, we would think. If our son or daughter, in the formative teen years, is highly involved in a church youth group, it would seem, our fears will prove unfounded. With a solid mentor relationship with a highly trained youth leader, a peer group free from the influences of a godless society, and an entertaining, drug-free environment to attend each week, perhaps youth group will prove to be the antidote to the lure of the world that sidetracks so many in their younger years.

The emphasis we place on the importance of children’s and youth group cannot be overstated. The experience that a church offers one’s children is probably the number one factor that influences where a family will make their church home. But the emphasis we place on these youth ministries is only reasonable if our basic assumptions are correct: that today’s youth ministries are powerful and effective in producing kids who love God.

But are today’s youth ministries as effective as we might think? We’ll explore this question in our next post.

To All Prospective Members...

Are you really sure you want to join our church? I wonder if you know what you're in for. Wouldn't you rather join one of those "successful churches" where its sheer growth in numbers proves that it's a movement of God? If so, beware; our church isn't really growing right now. We do get plenty of pats on the back from well-wishers, and quite often see new faces on Sunday mornings, but it's rare that one of these visitors actually comes back. The description of the early church in Acts 5 is eerily similar to ours most of the time: "No one else dared join them, even though they were highly regarded by the people" (Acts 5:13.) If you need a critical mass of people to prove to yourself that you're not crazy, don't expect to find that here.

C'mon, you don't want to join our church, do you? Don't you want a church with some great preaching? Where each and every service touches you in the depth of your soul? It's pretty hit or miss over here. In our church, there is no sermon; everyone just shows up and has the crazy notion that God is going to lead the meeting anyway. Some weeks, that approach works great; but sometimes, we end up just looking at each other with blank looks on our faces, desperately wanting to encourage one another but just not quite knowing how to do it. You never quite know what'll happen in our meeting from week to week: we've been interrupted by rain, poorly functioning furnaces, gale-force winds, sprinklers, head wounds, and marching bands, to name but a few. If you're looking for a stable, predictable environment for you and your family on Sundays, I can't suggest our church for you.

Are you really sure you want to start coming here? Don't you want a church comprised of deeply spiritual members? If you do, you might want to think twice before coming here; our church is a motley crew at best. The pastor talks too much and has an inferiority complex. More than once, we have smelled alcohol on the breaths of those who attend on Sunday mornings. Many of our members are financially strapped, stressed out, and desperately wish they were closer to God than they are, but find themselves continuing to get in His way.

You sure you want to come here? Don't you want a church with a quality kids' ministry? Well, we don't have a formal kids' program here; our "children's ministry" is sometimes better called "keeping our kids alive" when they end up running amok during the meeting. Now we believe that even though they may not be mastering much information on Sundays, they are witnessing the Body of Christ in action when we gather, something we know is of far more value. But if you feel that your kids need more structure than that, however, you might want to look elsewhere.

The reality of things is this: from an earthly perspective, there is no reason why anyone would want to join our church. Why would any card-carrying suburbanite want to join a shrinking collection of misfits that meet in a park on Sunday mornings if they actually were in their right mind? We have no formal programs, no building, no sermon, and don't even have a paid pastor! Truly, as Paul puts it, we're a bunch of "fools for Christ" (I Cor. 4:10).

But as you ponder what might seem to be our folly, another passage comes to mind that I must share with you too: "God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him" (I Cor. 1:27-29). True, maybe there is no earthly reason that you would want to join us...but maybe in our folly, God has us right where He wants us, and He's finally free to begin some amazing work in our midst!

I hate to break this to you, but you and your family might not learn alot of 401 level theology in our church, but you'd probably learn a great amount of the theology of learning how to fail, how to lose, and how to die. You won't hear a prosperity gospel here, nor enjoy the glitz and lights of a Hollywood quality stage show here; you will, however, learn a great deal about how to set your own needs at the door as you'll have no other choice. If your primary desire is to be edified and fed by others, you might want to steer clear; if, however, you realize that you have already been far edified and educated above your level of obedience, you'd probably fit right in. Besides, as you increasingly minister to the "least of these" in our midst, you'd probably find you'd be edified far more than you ever would have imagined. I must warn you that coming to our church might exhaust you, deplete you, and might result in the death of everything you hold dear. But I suspect you'd find that through that process, you'd find life in all of its fullness. For as Jesus said, "He who would save his life will lose it; but whoever will lose his life for My sake will find it" (Mt. 16:25).

I don't know, it's your call. Feel free to join our merry band of "fools for Christ" if you'd like, but only if you feel you're really up to the challenge. Just don't say I didn't warn you.

"Come And Die With Us!"

When things go wrong, our life is in shambles, and God seems distant, where do we turn? Often we turn to the encouragement of others, hoping a kind, caring word might give us the added strength needed to overcome our pain. Yet too often, attempts by others to be sympathetic and caring prove vain and fruitless at best or counterproductive at worst. Think about it; when you’ve gone through a time of sorrow and struggle, what is some of the cold comfort that has been offered to you? Maybe it’s been “things could be worse,” or the vainest of all encouragements: “Keep your chin up!” Perhaps others’ attempts at comfort have had a more spiritual bent: “I’ll pray for you,” or, “God has a wonderful plan for your life, and things will turn around!” But when we’ve prayed and prayed for that new job, to be able to finally leave the homeless shelter we’re living in, or for our illness to be healed and there is still no response from heaven, such trite cliches leave us even more frustrated than before. At some point, as the promises of a better day ahead slip from the grasp of our hope, where do we turn?

God’s solution for our suffering is a simple one: it is none other than Jesus himself. He offers us not tactics and strategies to cope with the sorrows of this world, but a Person: His only begotten Son. In our pain, our God does not provide mere vain, empty words but a tangible, visible solution to these trials: the cross of Jesus. Not only is our Savior a “man of sorrows and one well acquainted with suffering” (Is. 53), but He in fact bore, felt, and experienced our very personal sufferings as He suffered on the cross. Through His bearing of not only our sin at Calvary but our misery and sorrow there as well, when we suffer, He suffers; and when we mourn, He mourns. Yet the reverse must also be true for such divine comfort to be realized; as Christ died, so we must die. It is only when we bring our trials to the foot of the cross, and let our demands for their resolution die a slow, painful death that we can truly experience the resurrection power of Jesus (Phil 4). These demands the cross make upon us leave no room for bitterness, envy, or anger over our trials, but call us to “rejoice, as we are partakers of Christ’s sufferings” ( I Peter 4:12). Yet for us to truly “count it all joy” (Jas 1:2) in this fashion when we are faced with trials, a bloody and painful struggle must ensue as we choose to embrace the cross and bear daily the sufferings of Jesus.

But when this anguish and struggle has finally brought about our own death, the resurrection power of Jesus will truly be manifested in our lives (Phil. 4). When we have chosen to forfeit our own rights and claims in the pursuit of Someone greater, Christ promises that we will find that elusive joy, peace, and comfort in the midst of our suffering and pain. It is this process of submission to the cross alone and the resultant experience of His resurrection life that promises to bring about the encouragement that so many vain words, positive thinking and empty strategies cannot. May those of us at COAH so embrace the cross of Jesus in our trials today, and by God’s grace, may we die just a little bit more before this day is through. As Christ has invited us, so we invite you: come and die with us!

Consumerism: Steps Towards A Solution

On the face of things, all of us would rightfully decry the rank consumerism so prevalent in our churches today. But what would it look like for us to truly embrace a solution? How do we move from criticism of the existing model to the founding of a new model when it comes to the church?

Imagine a church that is built on the foundation of every member participation. Far from than being a mere minion in a faceless corporation, each member of this church, by their participation, is a minister of the eternal purpose of God. By their words and actions, each member passionately proclaims that it is truly “more blessed to give than to receive.”

Rather than only ministering inside, however, these members minister outside in the streets. Imagine a church that spends many of its weekly meetings not at a feeding trough, but dirtying its hands in the soil of a lost world. Rather than storing them in barns, this church sows the mustard seeds of the kingdom on weekends, finding ways to “be Jesus” to a world in need. A radical church such as this demonstrates true religion by visiting the orphan and widow in their affliction, rather than isolating itself in a universe of its own. Rather than sitting in a service every week, this church puts the gospel in action by showing the love of Christ to those in need. During these times, they not only serve the needy, but they build regular relationships with them as well. The children in this community experience the gospel as it was meant to be lived, and through their experience, find that Yahweh is a God who welcomes all.

Most importantly, by attempting to take church “outside the box” and explore new, fresh directions together, these believers are forced to rely on the Spirit of God for daily wisdom and guidance in these endeavors. As this church then “lives on the edge” in this way, stepping outside of their comfort zones and putting their own needs aside, the presence of God in their midst becomes evident in a tangible way to all. As the Holy Spirit is revealed in and through their congregation, those newcomers who witness His glory in their midst will “be convicted by all, and will fall on their faces and say that God is truly among [them]” (1 Cor. 14:24,25).

However, be warned: such a church cannot compete with the megachurch in quality of services and programs. From a consumer perspective, this model of church may be found wanting. Truly advancing the kingdom of God in this fashion would require every member’s commitment to making this dream a reality and their rejection of their own needs and wants. Those who hope to be ministered to without first ministering themselves will find themselves sorely disappointed with this arrangement.

Bob Hyatt says this: “We are doing our best to be a church community where people can belong before they believe- a church for the unchurched and the formerly churched. But that’s hard on the lifelong Christians among us- because we don’t get to have things done exactly the way we would like them. We are trying to think more about the people we are reaching than our own wants and needs. I tell our people, ‘We are not going to meet your needs. Your needs will get met, but by the people sitting beside you, not standing in front of you. We’d like to think that when we say “community” we mean it. I have told our people over and over again- you are the ones who will drive ministry here. We meet in a pub. There’s very little space for “kids ministry.’ I keep telling them- ‘I am not going to solve this problem for you. This is your community. If you love these kids, you’ll come up with something for them. I’m your pastor, not your cruise director. My job is to open God’s Word, and tell you what I think God seems to be saying through this book to our community. Your job is to figure out what that looks like and walk along side others who are also searching.’”

Without a doubt, this radical church’s success is predicated on every member’s commitment to full participation and service of the body. Certainly there are blanks to fill in, all of which must be answered by the body of Christ rising up together to find a solution. On the flip side, however, those who embrace such a vision through self-denial and commitment to those around them will find that God will provide for their spiritual needs in abundance. Far from their needs not being met, quite the opposite will be the case. Those who embrace service, self sacrifice, and the needs of others over their own will find that “all these things will be added to them,” whether in this endeavor or any other. For truly, “he who saves his life will lose it, but he who loses his life for [His] sake will find it.”

We have all the information we’ll ever need to serve Christ whole heartedly; we are educated far above our level of obedience. The time has now come for action. The time is upon us to leave the comfort of Ur for a better country; to slay the monster of consumerism once for all to embrace a larger vision. May we seek to be part of the solution rather than further contribute to the problem. Let us move forward to a vision of church that truly transends the consumerism of our day.

Jesus vs. Consumerism, Part 2

In our recent posts, we have explored the devastating effects of consumerism on today’s church. Applying the lessons of the shopping mall to the church flies in the face of Jesus’ teachings, who taught us that “Whoever will save his life will lose it, but whoever will lose it for my sake will find it” (Matt. 16:25). Yet the implications of this concept are more far-reaching than we might first realize.

How guilty are each one of us of neglecting Christ’s words and seeking to meet our own needs first and foremost when it comes to the church? You might renounce your own needs in theory, but would you be quick to look for another church if you felt you weren’t “being fed” at your own? If another church had better preaching, a better Sunday morning service, or could simply “do church” better than yours, would you still attend your church?

What about the needs of your family? Though you may be successful in deferring your own needs, do you attend your church with the needs of your family first in mind? Certainly we are no less of a consumer if we shop for our children than we if shop for ourselves. If advancing God’s kingdom meant putting not only your needs, but your family’s needs in second place on Sunday mornings, would you be willing to do this?

Similarly, we may be in agreement that church does not and cannot consist solely of a once a week service to be successful. Yet the fact remains that the quality of the events of Sunday morning is far and away the most compelling reason to pick a church today. If the quality of your church’s Sunday morning service dropped, would you still “patronize” that church? If you took the Sunday morning service away from your church, would you still have a compelling reason to be a part of that body of believers? Though in theory we might say otherwise, the vast majority of us choose our churches as if Sunday is the only day that exists.

How can picking a church based on what happens on its Sunday morning stage be consistent with anything but consumerism? If in fact we should be approaching church as a giver rather than a receiver, how can we decide to attend a church based on the quality of its programs and services? Rather, it seems that the teachings of Christ dictate that we must choose a church based on our ability to minister. If the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve (Mk 10:45), how can this not be the case for his followers?
The teachings of Scripture clearly show us the purpose of church is to encourage one another rather than to passively receive (Heb. 10:25). Rather than picking a church by Sunday morning quality, it would seem that making that decision based on the people within it is far more Biblically sound. That said, we must ask ourselves some difficult questions. At the church you attend, are you truly experiencing God in the context of community? By being a part of the church you’re at currently, are you helping others to experience God in their life as well? Since you began attending your church, what fruit have you borne? Have you become overwhelmingly more loving? Are you becoming thoroughly more patient? By being a part of your church, are you regularly seeing others come to Christ as you are involved in their lives? Are your children doing these things? These are the questions we need to ask as we determine where our church home should be.

In our next post, we will discuss what it might take for our churches to transcend the culture of consumerism so prevalent in our day.

Jesus vs. Consumerism, Part 1

If Jesus were on earth today, what would He say about the consumerism so rampant in today’s church? Let us allow our Leader to speak for Himself on this matter: “Whoever will save his life will lose it, but whoever will lose it for my sake will find it” (Matt. 16:25). This is an inexorable law of the Kingdom that is true in every aspect of human life. When a person seeks anything but the glory of God in his life, that person can be assured that he will not find what he is seeking. Safety, security, and comfort cannot be found by seeking them. A simple look at our society shows this to be true: though every attempt is made to pursue these things by the average suburbanite, fear, worry, anxiety, and a stressed out life style are at epidemic proportions today.

On the flip side, however, Christ promises His followers in the above verse that when they seek first God’s glory they will find the fulfillment of their own needs that they neglected in the process. As Jesus said, “seek first the Kingdom of God and all these things will be added to you” (Matt. 6:33). What are these things that will be added to us? They are the spiritual and physical needs that each one of us has that take a back seat to pursuing the advancement of God’s kingdom in our lives. When we pursue the coming of God’s kingdom first and foremost, rather than our own needs, Jesus promises that our Father will meet our needs in the end. When we pursue the edifying and service of others instead of concentrating on our own spiritual growth, it is then that our own spiritual growth becomes a reality. However, the person who pursues His own needs first will find neither the deeper life with God nor the fulfillment of those desires that he so desperately sought after.

With this timeless truth in mind, it is beyond argument that the attitude of the Christian should be not, “what can I get out of church?”, but rather, “what can I give to the body?” This precludes attitudes such as “church shopping” and the “feeding trough” mentality so prevalent in churches today. As Bob Hyatt says: “The church is not here for you. You are here for the church, your community, and your community; the church is here for the world. Jesus did not die to make you into a sanctified consumer. He died to bring you alive to God and to a desperately needy world.” It is clear that consumerism in the church flies in the face of the values Christ has espoused to his followers.

But do we really practice what we preach in this area? In our next post, we’ll explore the implications of Jesus’ teaching on this matter in our own lives today.

"Risk Exposure" and the Church, Part 2

In our last post, we discussed the concept of “risk exposure” as it relates to today’s church. Just as for any other living body, the church cannot truly thrive unless it is regularly exposed to risk, inconvenience, and danger. A simple look at either the natural world or the church itself will readily attest to the truth of this concept.

Without exception, as one scans the globe searching for the most vibrant and living examples of the Spirit of God at work, those churches that “live on the edge of chaos” will always be the greatest examples of the Body of Christ in action. It’s a natural fact of life that when human beings are placed in situations of challenge and danger, they bond together in ways that cannot occur under normal circumstances. The greatest examples of true community, then, will not be found in American churches, but will be found in the persecuted church, for it is only when the church is forced to step out of its comfort zone that real community will develop. In a personal sense, challenge in our lives is just as vital; our greatest spiritual growth occurs when we are stretched and placed in situations that build our faith. As the old adage goes, “What does not kill you makes you stronger.”

This concept of the importance of “risk exposure” is a basic concept that all reasonable readers can accept. However, it is ironic that our suburban churches are built on the exact opposite line of thinking. To a large extent, our churches are closed systems, peculiar cultures with little to no interaction with the outside world. These cloistered systems are maintained by cloistered individuals themselves (the clergy), who seek for stability, cleanliness, and convenience in all of the church’s ministries. When challenge comes to their people, however, they often have trouble adapting to these threats and seem to wither away under the pressure. For those who doubt this premise, look no further than the failing of our cloistered children and youth ministries in this country. Study after study shows that of children who are raised in a youth program their entire lives, 88% of them leave the church after their graduation from high school and do not return.

Yet the thinking persists in our suburban Christian culture that if we can protect our children in the safety of children’s church and youth group, they will grow up to be the spiritually sensitive adults we long for them to be. If we can find a high quality, comfortable, clean, and convenient spiritual home that meets our needs and our family’s needs, we think, we and our children will experience the deeper life with God He has created us for. Nothing, however, could be further from the truth.

Just as church history shows, it’s only when we experience church life on the fringes, when we relinquish our own desires and needs in a desperate attempt to bring God’s kingdom to earth that we as the church truly encounter God. It is only when we band together with other believers on a dangerous journey to a unknown place that we will experience true community. It’s only when we and our families are willing to risk all we have that we will become all God has intended us to be. As Hirsch says, “we cannot consume our way into discipleship.” For as Jesus said, it is only when we lose our life that we will truly find it.

With the words of Jesus as a backdrop, we will explore a more Biblical view of the church in our next post.

"Risk Exposure" and the Church, Part 1

In our last post, we explored the contradiction between suburban values and the dangerous mission given to the church by our Leader. Clearly, the Lion of Judah never intended for his followers to be identified by suburban, consumeristic ideals such as convenience, comfort, and security.

Just as for any other living body, the church cannot truly thrive unless it is regularly exposed to risk, inconvenience, and danger. A simple look at the natural world shows that any organism must be exposed to such challenges to respond properly and adapt to challenges from outside. A closed, artificial environment that is built on the elimination of these dangers cannot prepare the organism for the challenges that are to come.

Take, for example, the modern medical phenomenon of childhood allergies. The prevalence of allergies has reached over 50% in American children over the last several years. Many hypotheses have been offered, but one of the most compelling arguments is the overimmunization of children. Many allergists argue that if a child’s immune system is never exposed to these illnesses but is always given external immunity, one can expect a high prevalence of allergies in those subjects. An immune system that has not learned to mount its own defenses cannot be expected to function properly. Contrast this phenomenon with children raised on a farm or with pets in the home, who have shown in repeated studies to have far less prevalence of allergy than other children without the same exposures. Similarly, fish that are sequestered in the artificial environment of a fish tank are very sensitive to any changes in their surroundings. If the pH of their tank changes or any contaminants are introduced, the result is predictable: the fish will die. The idea is clear: natural exposure of the immune system to challenges produces an immune system that responds properly. Danger, risk, and exposure are essential elements to any well functioning living system.

Though this argument may sound a bit technical, the point is quite simple: a living system will not deal properly to challenges if it is not exposed to dangers from time to time and learns how to respond appropriately. This is a basic fact of life that is no less true in the spiritual realm than in the biological realm. Church history clearly shows that the church has always been its strongest when its very life was at stake. When the church has faced persecution and hardship, it is only then that the church has lived up to its calling of “changing the landscape” of the surrounding culture. This was true during the Roman persecution of the first century, as well as it is true today for the persecuted church in China and the Islamic Middle East. As Alan Hirsch says, “Christianity is at its very best when it is on the more chaotic fringes. It is when church settles down, and moves away from the edge of chaos, that things go awry.”

In our next post, we will explore the implications of this fundamental concept of “risk exposure” for today’s American church.

Consumer Church Meets Suburban Living

In our recent posts, we have explored the impact of consumerism on today’s American church and its inevitable consequences: passive, immature believers; “church shoppers”, burned out pastors, and a church culture of competition, to name a few. But if consumerism in the church weren’t enough of a problem today, there is the thorny matter of the suburban lifestyle that seems to make any movement away from consumerism well nigh impossible.

As many have noted, middle class, suburban culture values safety and security above all else. These things are primarily valued under the banner of “what’s best for our children.” Christian or non-Christian, pagan or Christ follower, there is no greater guiding principle in suburban culture than determining what is best for our children. Such motives can indeed be noble: what parent does not want their child to experience the best life has to offer, be all they can be, and to be kept away from harm’s way? However, as Alan Hirsch notes, when these 2 core values of safety and security merge with consumerism, comfort and convenience rise in importance alongside them. The result of this amalgamation in the Christian world is consumeristic churches that reflect these values.

This thirsting after comfort and safety runs incredibly deep in American churches today. Churches in our era desperately seek, above all else, to meet the felt needs of every member of the family. Such an approach is so pervasive that for the average suburbanite to imagine a church that does not meet our family’s overarching needs remains unthinkable!

One of the stickiest issues confronting today’s Christian suburbanite is that the middle class values that we hold so dear today are diametrically opposed to the teachings of Jesus and the values of the Kingdom. The kingdom that Jesus came to preach is one of adventure and of radical living that upsets the natural, complacent course of the world around us. The Christian life as God intended it is based on anything but comfort and certainty. As Jacque Ellul notes, “Christians should be troublemakers, creators of uncertainty, agents of a dimension incompatible with society.”

Yet in contrast to these kingdom values of risk and uncertainty, the American suburbs, in the words of Shane Claiborne, are “the home of the more subtle demonic forces- numbness, complacency, comfort- and it is these that can eat away at our souls.” It is clear that the Lion of Judah never intended for his followers to be identified by values such as ease and comfort. For us to settle into our cushioned pews while an unbelieving world heads for hell is the antithesis of what Christ has envisioned for His church.

Can the church truly fulfill its mission while simultaneously valuing comfort and security? In our next post, we’ll explore the necessity of challenge and risk if we are to truly grow as believers.

"Spiritual Bulemia"

In our last post, we began to explore the implications of the rampant consumerism so present in today’s church. To the extent that the American church has sought to cater to the needs and desires of today’s religious consumer, “church shopping” for the finest product has been the inevitable result. As Bob Hyatt says, “When we allowed American Church to become primarily attractional in nature, it also became competitive in nature. We send out mailers: ‘Come to our church! We have great worship!’ ‘Come to our church! We have Starbucks Coffee and Krispy Kreme Donuts!’ And big churches get bigger as small ones die because the big ones offer more and people flock there until the church down the road offers them something even better. It’s Wal Mart versus smaller stores but with special music and kids programs instead of bigger selections and low, low prices.” As many have noted, if we apply the shopping mall to the church, this sadly will be the end result.

But as Neil Cole says, when people are viewed as consumers, they will most certainly respond as consumers. When attenders are catered to as consumers of religious goods and services, the end result will always be a passive congregation. It’s no wonder that according to a recent survey by the Barna group, only 1 of 4 churched believers go to church expecting God to be the primary beneficiary of their Sunday worship. Rather, more than 50% of those polled believe that they are the primary recipients of a Sunday morning worship service. It’s a known fact that even in the most motivated congregation, only 10% – 20% of attenders are active in ministry. In today’s church, the vast majority come to church “to get fed.” I believe that the emphasis on the attractional quality of the Sunday morning service is largely responsible for this phenomenon, as in the words of Bob Hyatt, it creates “consumers of church primarily and community only incidentally.”

Now make no mistake: it is of vital importance today that the church seeks to make its programs as accessible as possible to unbelievers. For too long, the gospel remained the property of ivory tower theologians and choir robe wearing ministers before the “seeker sensitive” revolution of the late 20th century. At the same time, however, it’s important that we recognize that what we draw people to our churches with is what we draw them to, and that the medium with which we reach the lost does become our message as well. When the focus of our churches becomes lights, cameras, and skill in performance, it is a consumer mentality that is unintentionally communicated to the audience.

When this consumer mentality reaches its zenith in a church, the church is filled on any given Sunday with a crowd eager to be fed or, worse yet, to be entertained. When this becomes the case, the church needs to keep feeding and entertaining them if they want them to come back. This creates a vicious circle, where next week’s service must be better than last week’s service, and where church programs constantly need to be upgraded to keep the masses satisfied and happy. If the quality drops, even for a few weeks, attenders will begin to leave. Staff improvements and building campaigns are the order of the day to “feed the monster of consumerism.” And as Neil Cole, notes, “the monster is always hungry.” What’s left in the wake of the consumer monster is burned out pastors, stale worship, and a selfish audience continuing to thirst for more. Because of the effects of consumerism, our churches today are filled with what Shane Claiborne calls “spiritual bulimics,” believers who gorge ourselves on the Christian industrial complex but spiritually starving to death.

The effects of consumerism in the church, however, are even far reaching than those discussed above. In our next post, we will continue to explore its effects in the context of the middle class suburban culture that so many of us call home.

The Shopping Mall Meets the Church

In our last post, we began to explore the pervasiveness of consumerism in today’s American church, an epidemic that has left none of us unscathed. As an example of today’s “market definitions” of church, simply gather a collection of American churchgoers today and ask them this simple question: “What makes a good church?” Most of the answers you’ll hear will be similar: good kids programs, relevant messages, a cutting edge band, or right theology. But such an answer betrays a shallow understanding of what it means to actually be the church.

Imagine for a moment that we went family shopping as we go “church shopping” today. Imagine that as we searched for the perfect family, we interviewed and polled various families, all the while asking ourselves, “Which family has a nicer home? Which offers better school programs to educate me? Which parents make me laugh and feel good about myself?” Unfortunately, this is not far from what goes on when Christians “church shop,” seeking for the best purveyors of religious goods and services to meet their needs.

Unfortunately, churches themselves are to blame for stepping on the “hamster wheel” of consumer-geared church that makes “church shopping” possible. In most churches today, “church” has been reduced to a once a week event aimed at attracting people. It is widely believed by both clergy and laity alike that excellence in Sunday morning worship services equals a successful, prosperous, and desirable church. Most church ministry today is in fact built on this foundational premise. As another says, the idea goes something like this: “If we get our service right, and the preaching is relevant, the band is trendy, and the children’s ministries are top-notch, people will come to our church.” I love it how Neil Cole relates his recent experience at a church growth seminar, and the secret to church growth that was shared revolved around clean bathrooms and adequate parking. As he jokes, “apparently, the kingdom of God is held up by dirty toilets and poor parking.”

This formulaic approach to church ministry today is so ingrained that leaders remain puzzled when despite first rate Sunday morning performances, their church remains empty. I recently spoke with a pastor of a small church who echoed this same confusion: “Our service is so good…so why is our church so empty?” The answer is readily apparent: no matter how good your programs and services are, there’s always a bigger church down the street that can outdo yours.

Attempts to wow the masses can be effective for awhile, but what happens when the church down the street can figure out how do it better? Bob Hyatt talks about a church in southern California that hired a Disney engineer to come in and build their children’s ministry space to look like a giant mountain for toddlers. That sounds like a great idea, doesn’t it? It is…until, as Hyatt says, the church down the way develops a roller coaster ministry complete with laser show and cotton candy machines. Your church can always be outdone, and smaller churches resultingly feel a constant pressure to step it up to stay even with the competition. Unless you’re a Willow Creek or Saddleback, “keeping up with the Jones” in the marketplace of church is a battle than can never be won. Even for these kinds of megachurches, however, keeping up with the world can never be done. As Neil Cole notes, no church cannot outdo Hollywood. The church cannot expect to come up against the world, play its game, and win. In the end, the attempt to please the discriminating church consumer with special effects, lights and glitz is always doomed to failure.

But if a high-quality, once a week service is the end in itself for a church, how can one be blamed for seeking the highest quality service as they leave no stone unturned to find the best religious experience? When church is reduced to this lowest common denominator of excellence in Sunday worship, consumerism is the inevitable result. Seeking to please the masses will always result in the quality of that church being defined by the entertainment and nutritional value of the Sunday morning service. When the quality of the service drops, expect the number of attenders to drop as well. This scenario has been played out countless times in American churches whenever they go through a period of transition in their services.

In our next post, we will further explore the impact of consumerism on today’s church.

Consumerism In The Church: Part 1

Perhaps the biggest obstacle to a new and fresh vision of the church taking root in our day is the pervasiveness of consumerism in the church today. Increasingly over the last few years, the value of a church has come to be defined as its ability to meet the needs of ourselves and our family. In America, it has increasingly become difficult for the average Christian to view the church in any way other than consumerist, market terms. The threat that such consumerism poses to today’s church cannot be overstated. To quote Alan Hirsch, “the major threat to the viability of our faith is not Islam, is not Buddhism, is not relativism or loss of moralism, but consumerism.”

The signs of consumerism in the church today are all around us. The era of infatuation with the big is the trend in today’s business world, and it is no different in American Christianity today. Increasingly, the big-box megachurch has come to define the church for a new generation. Ran by charismatic leaders with one-in-a-million gift mixes and talents, these megachurches have increasingly pushed the small neighborhood church to the margins of Christendom just as Wal-Mart has starved out the corner drug store.

As we scan the landscape for signs of consumerism in the church today, consider the latest models of church growth. Modern church growth strategies attempt to mold your church’s services to fit a predetermined audience and demographic. Are you having trouble making your church grow? No problem; hire a church consultant to evaluate the effectiveness of its marketing and to suggest a multifaceted business plan to improve things. With enough demographic studies and formulaic strategies, your church can enjoy the same success as a Willow Creek or Saddleback.

Consider the rise of “church brands” in the form of regional church campuses so prevalent today. Some brands of church, by their visible and attractive nature, are more marketable than others, and many megachurches attempt to capitalize on this momentum through starting regional campuses. The influence of these regional campuses is spreading rapidly in our day. Just as the franchise restaurant has pushed the mom and pop eateries to the brink of extinction, so the “franchising of church” has made it difficult for the small neighborhood church to survive in today’s market economy. Certainly, these multisite strategies should be praised for their tireless attempt to spread the kingdom of God. Yet the mere fact that such spiritual tribalism exists in the form of “church brands” speaks volumes as to the pervasiveness of consumerism in the church today.

All of us have been affected by the rise of consumerism in the church today. To prove this point, simply gather a collection of American churchgoers today and ask them this simple question: “What makes a good church?” Most of the answers you’ll hear will be similar: good kids programs, relevant messages, a cutting edge band, or right theology. But can “shopping for the right church” who offers excellence in such religious goods and services actually be justified by the example of our Leader, who has told us that we must forsake all concern for ourselves to follow Him?

In our next post, we’ll continue to explore the impact of consumerism on today’s American church.

A New Paradigm of Compassion Ministry

In our last post, we continued to explore the importance of “choosing the right soil” as we seek to plant a church: the soil of the broken, the poor, and the needy. This For it is only when we choose the right soil with which to work that we can expect an overwhelming response to the gospel. But what implications might this have for the resource-hungry “institution of church” as we know it? How could the machinery of today’s consumer-driven church support the decrease in financial capital that would naturally follow? But even more importantly, how can the church truly pursue loving relationships with the needy if it remains the exclusive domain of a select few members?
One of the greatest obstacles to truly making serving a “way of life” in the church today is the overbooked schedules of its members. Unless radical steps are taken in our churches, committed relationships with the poor will never materialize for the vast majority of American churchgoers today. How can it be otherwise when Sunday meetings, prayer meeting, small groups, and leader’s huddles dominate our already harried schedules? Something in the church is going to have to go if we are to transcend these limitations and concentrate on what’s really important. For City On A Hill Community, this has meant incorporating service of those on the margins into our regular weekly meetings, as we exchange one traditional meeting a month for a churchwide serving project that week. On the first Sunday of every month, we worship God not by another church service but by serving the poor and needy together. The structure of this may vary from week to week; some weeks we go to a homeless shelter, perhaps others to a nursing home. During the summer months, we have decided not to meet in a home or private gathering place, but rather in a city park that is known as a place where the homeless of the city naturally congregate. Though we still have a long way to go before we truly realize God's heart for the poor, we hope that these are at least positive, beginning steps in the right direction. One thing is certain in our community, however: we’ve all agreed that we’ve heard enough messages about serving the poor and would rather begin to put these ideas into actual practice when we meet together.
I believe that God is calling His church today to employ radical, unconventional, and out-of-the-box measures today if we are to truly live up to our calling of serving those in need. The church cannot wait any longer for the needy to show up at its doorstep: as experience shows, these opportunities will rarely present themselves without any effort on our part. In our insulated suburban culture, the poor and marginalized rarely cross our paths today. A truly radical church recognizes this fact, and in response adopts a more proactive approach to reaching out to those in need. As Tony Campolo once said, “Jesus never says to the poor, ‘come find the church’ but He says to those of us in the church, ‘Go into the world and find the poor, hungry, homeless, imprisoned, Jesus in his disguises.’” The truly radical church takes this search for “Jesus in His disguises” seriously by “going into the highways and byways, and compelling them to come in” (Luke 14:23).
By proactively taking the good news of Jesus to the marginalized and needy around us and actually building the church among them, several beneficial results are produced. First, it fosters a lifestyle of caring for the needy in all of the church's members, a goal not attainable with present paradigms of church. Second, greater response to the gospel will be seen in the “good soil” in which such a church is planted, a phenomenon that is common to endeavors such as these. Thirdly, it draws unbelievers to the church who are presently alienated from traditional models of church, yet who desire to serve those less fortunate than themselves. By tapping into the common desire of both believer and unbeliever alike to make a positive impact in the lives of the needy, the gospel is freed from its “Sunday morning shackles” to bear fruit in the lives of many.
I believe that a radical new model of church is needed if we are to truly “turn the world upside down” with the message of Jesus Christ. It is high time for us not to seek not friendships with the rich and powerful but to identify ourselves with those on the margins in the example of our Leader. In the words of Minna Canth, “Christianity has been buried inside the walls of churches and secured with the shackles of dogmatism. Let it be liberated to come into the midst of us and teach us freedom, equality, and love.”

It All Starts On The Margins

In our last post, we explored the vitally important difference between poor soil and good soil as revealed in the pages of Scripture. The Word of God is crystal clear as to what people generally constitute poor soil: the moral (Lk 5:31,32), the educated (I Cor. 1:26), and the wealthy (Lk 18:24,25). But if this is true, this has enormous implications for how we should attempt to bring the message of Christ to the world. As Jesus said in the Parable of the Soils, “If you do not understand this parable, how shall you understand all of the parables?” Truly, identifying what is good soil and what is not must be foundational in our efforts to sow the seed of the gospel. Quite simply, our evangelism efforts are generally doomed to failure if we choose the wrong soil with which to work!

But in contrast to the poor soil of the middle class suburbanite that the church normally concentrates on, those who are enslaved to darkness, oppression, and poverty tend to respond enthusiastically to the gospel. Neil Cole reports that of the thousands of church plants his organization has begun, their most successful churches have begun among those fresh out of prison and dealing drugs! In fact, in his advice to church planters, Cole recommends that in an effort to find good soil, they should find the roughest, meanest, and most shady part of town to begin their efforts. If you’re having trouble finding good soil in the suburbs, Cole says, ask a local policeman where the trouble resides. Find out where the roughest bar is, where drugs are sold, or the homes where domestic violence lives. Or find a 12 step group to begin your outreach, not one that meets in a church, but “where the smoke is thick and the darkness thicker.” These people are enslaved to sin, desperate for a cure: these tend to be good soil. Wherever there is drugs, alcohol, or violence, Cole says, this is where the good soil is found.

Yet the idea of beginning a church plant in the soil of the broken flies in the face of traditional church growth theories. The first step in a traditional church plant generally involves rounding up a team of capable, gifted, mature leaders. Next, this team finds a growing locale in the suburbs where young families abound, and pass out flyers to get the word out that a new church has arrived in town, ready to meet their needs. This is a classic example of attempting to begin a missionary movement in the center. To be sure, God can bless efforts such as these, but as a general rule, not nearly as many will come to Christ as if one begins on the margins. The reason is simple: it’s all about the soil. Where the poor, broken, and marginalized live, there the greatest response to the gospel will be seen. For this reason, a truly radical missional movement in our day must begin on the margins, among those in bondage to sin and poverty. These are those society has forgotten and that have been pushed to the margins, yet these are those that represent the good soil that is ripe for harvest.

If we as the church actually realized these truths, we would naturally choose not to settle for occasional, distant acts of charity in our compassion efforts. Rather, we would insist on regular face-to-face opportunities to meet the physical and spiritual longings of those in need. To quote Shane Claiborne once again, “The problem is not that we don’t care about the poor; it’s that we don’t know the poor.” To truly serve the poor, we must build committed, loving relationships with them first and foremost. By building such relationships with the oppressed and marginalized of our society, the gospel’s transforming power is maximized. Further, when all individuals in the church pursue such relationships, it is only then that serving the needy becomes a way of life for all members rather than an isolated, sporadic event for a small minority.

But does not the present paradigm of church as we know it prevent this from becoming a reality? How can the burdensome financial needs of the church institution be met by those who are truly “good soil” with their large hearts but small wallets? What far-reaching financial implications might this have for our churches if we really concentrated on working in the “good soil”? Further, do not the overbooked schedules of the church’s members prevent true every-member, regular interaction with the poor? How can these two barriers be overcome? We will explore these answers in our next post.

Good Soil vs. Poor Soil

In our last post, we explored the limitations of traditional approaches towards caring for the poor practiced by the church today. As we saw, caring for the poor is not accomplished by short term mission projects, rare serving events, or mere charitable giving, but can only be done in the context of loving relationships. Christ calls His followers not to just open their wallets to those in need, but their lives, their homes, and their hearts to them as well. This call stands in sharp contradiction, however, to the current paradigm of the American church that view the poor as mere recipients of charitable acts rather than integral members of the church itself. For though we may
occasionally serve the poor in our churches today, rare is the church that attempts to actually build its membership among the needy. When it comes to church growth efforts, the needy are seldom part of these attempts, but remain a peripheral group that although are valued, remain separate from the church itself.

If the church is to prosper again in our day, it will only do so when it chooses to concentrate its building efforts among the poor and marginalized. As Alan Hirsch notes, all the great missionary movements in church history have begun on the margins rather than in the center. Examples of successful outreach movements do exist in the suburbs, but they are few and far between. The greatest responses to the gospel are almost always seen among the poor and marginalized, and church history bears ample witness to this fact. However, when a church grows more by transfers from other churches than from conversions on the margins, as is the case in most of our suburban churches today, the work of the Spirit is markedly absent in contrast.

This consistent response to the gospel at the margins is consistent with the teachings of Scripture on this topic as well. In the Parable of the Soils (Matt. 13), Jesus tells us that some people are good soil and some are poor soil. Jesus’ point to his disciples is clear in this parable: we cannot expect the same response to the gospel among all people groups. Not all groups of people are good soil. The Bible is clear on who these people groups are who tend to be poor soil: the moral (Luke 5:31,32), the educated (I Cor. 1:26), and the wealthy (Luke 18:24,25). All of these descriptions tend to be descriptions of the middle class suburbs that so many of us call home. Generally speaking, people like us, who are moral, churchgoing folk, fairly well educated and certainly well off financially, tend to be poor soil. It’s not that smart, wealthy people won’t come to Christ; it’s that relatively speaking, fewer from this demographic will respond than from others. For this reason, it is very hard to find successful church planting movements started in the middle class suburbs.

Simply put, the wealthy and educated suburbanite tends to be poor soil. It is this fact that has been overlooked in today’s church and one of the main reasons the church is floundering in America. If we continue to concentrate our church building efforts among the middle class, we will continue to see little response to our evangelism efforts.

So if we wish to build the church of Jesus in good soil, where do we begin? We will explore this in our next post.

Serving the Poor: The Importance of Relationships

In our last post, we contrasted the glaring contradiction between how the early church cared for the poor and the church today. Though the early church was known throughout the Roman empire as radical lovers of the poor, this is certainly not the case for the church today. Christ has given His church the responsibility to share His gospel, described as “good news to the poor”, with all people, yet today’s church has lost sight of this call. What steps must the church take today to realize that its message truly should be good news to the poor?

If the answer to this dilemma was conducting a periodic serving event, this would be an easy problem to solve. Church-sponsored serving projects at a homeless shelter or soup kitchen every few months are certainly a step in the right direction, and short term mission trips are to be applauded. Yet these types of endeavors, although of value, fall far short of the lifestyle of serving that Christ desires for His followers. Though these occasional events make us feel good about ourselves, how much lasting impact do these things accomplish in the world around us? Too often, the sporadic church-sponsored serving event does little but further insulate us from the plight of the poor by appeasing our consciences in the midst of our materialism. Steps need to be taken in today’s church to build a lifestyle of serving in its members that far transcends the sporadic serving event that characterizes our efforts today.

Nor can the mission of the church to serve the poor be fulfilled by mere charitable giving. Instead of individuals in the church housing, clothing, and feeding the poor themselves, these functions have increasingly become the domain of the various institutions and parachurch ministries that dot the Christian landscape. Our “providing for the poor” has been reduced to food drives at the church, where members bring the raw materials and the institutional employees do the dirty work of distributing. In this scenario, the churchgoer is able to feel good about his participation in “ending poverty” while sparing him the uncomfortableness of a one-on-one encounter with those in need. Similarly, independent charities can serve the same function to the wealthy suburbanite as the occasional serving event, as they appease our consciences while insulating us from the suffering of the poor. In both cases, the institution does the dirty work while the individual simply throws money or goods at the problem. Yet as Martin Luther King said, “true compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar.”

Christ’s intent for His followers is not the performance of sporadic acts of charity that serve our consciences more than the poor for whom it is intended. Neither should the church be a faceless distribution center where the poor receive what the rich have dumped. Sadly, this common approach leaves no one transformed and forms no radical new community. Rather, the church needs to remove itself, in words of Shane Claiborne, from “distant acts of charity that serve to legitimize apathetic lifestyles of good intentions but rob us of the gift of community.” Christ’s call to the church is that its members would not only open their wallets to the needy, but their lives, their hearts, and their homes to them as well.

As Shane Claiborne once said, “the problem is not that we don’t care about the poor; it’s that we don’t know the poor.” How true this is. Sporadic acts of charity and donations are wonderful things, yet these practices are limited in value because they are incapable of building relationships with those in need. This is the biggest limitation to traditional models of compassion ministries: they fail to build relationships with those in need. God’s kingdom is primarily spread by His followers loving one another; these loving relationships prove to the world that Christ’s message is true (John 13:35, 17:23). If in fact God’s kingdom is built by His followers “loving one another” in the context of relationship, how can we spread the good news to the poor without doing the same? As Paul says in I Corinthians 13, “though I give all my good to feed the poor, if I have not love, I am nothing.” This is what compelled the early church to bring the poor into their homes; even more than meeting their physical needs, they sought to demonstrate the love of the Savior first hand to those in need. Spreading the kingdom in the face of poverty is not by done by random or distant acts of charity; it is spread “like a mustard seed,” through one life at a time and through one relationship at a time. For the church is called not only to meet the needs of the poor, but to build loving relationships with them as well.

In our next post, we will explore the concept of the "good soil" on which today's church must be built if it is to again prosper in our day.

Caring For The Poor: The Early Church vs. Today's Church

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus asks His followers, “What are you doing more than others?” (Matt. 5:47). Centuries later, this question still haunts the church. In our last post, we discussed how little, if any difference exists between the lives of today’s “Christ followers” and the world around them. Yet in the early church, a striking difference between them and the world around them would be readily apparent. In the eyes of any first century Roman, the difference between the “followers of the Way” and the pagan world around them would be clear and unmistakable; in no area was this contrast greater than in their love and care for the poor. How ironic that in the church-activity saturated lifestyle of today’s American Christian, time spent with the poor is conspicuously absent. For more than any other description or characteristic, serving and caring for the poor defined the life of an early Christian.

The early church was known throughout the empire as the selfless ones who took it upon themselves to feed the poor, house the oppressed, and care for the underprivileged. The list of persons supported by the early church was enormous; they cared for the elderly, widows, orphans, prisoners, those who suffered shipwreck, and those who lost their livelihoods due to their faith. The common descriptor of the first century Christian was that of caring for the poor, marginalized, and oppressed as they would their own family. Even the pagan skeptic Julian confessed, “the godless Galileans feed not only their poor but ours as well.”

Throughout the pages of the New Testament, we see that serving and providing for the poor was to be the guiding principle for Christ’s followers. Providing for the needy was the main mission of the early church to those outside their community (Gal. 2:10). The first official church ministry was to feed the poor (Acts 6:1-6). In fact, the Bible teaches that the poor are the primary beneficiaries of the good news of the gospel (James 2:5). When asked what the gospel meant, John the Baptist responded: “anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none” (Luke 3:11). Similarly, James tells us what the Christian faith is when boiled down to its essence: “Pure religion is this: to visit the orphan and widow in their affliction” (James 1:21). In some of the most terrifying words of the New Testament, Jesus tells his followers that those who will inherit eternal life are those who provide food for the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, and visit the sick and the prisoner (Matt. 25:34-40). Clearly, the abundant teaching of the New Testament is that the gospel is good news to the poor.

The early church took these teachings seriously, and attempted to live them out as an integral part of their worship. As they did so, they did not settle for merely meeting their physical needs of the needy, but by welcoming them into their homes, feeding, clothing, and housing them as they shared with them the good news of Christ. For in the early church, the gospel was indeed “good news to the poor” (Isaiah 61:1).

Yet how different things are today. This ethos of providing for the poor has been long lost in the church today. Though today’s American Christian might agree in theory with the church’s mandate to serve the needy, their actions too often speak otherwise. For the vast majority of us, serving the poor has been reduced to an occasional church-sponsored serving event rather than a lifestyle of serving the disenfranchised that characterized the early church. In a survey done by Shane Claiborne, he asked participants who identified themselves as “strong followers of Jesus” whether Jesus spent time with the poor. Not surprisingly, nearly 80% agreed with this statement. Later in the survey, he asked that same group of self-identified strong followers whether they spent time with the poor, and less than 2% said that they did. Though many of us sense the importance of coming to the aid of those in need, few of us actually get around to doing it. Today, we’ve come to believe that caring for the poor among us is merely an attitude of the heart rather than a choosing of a lifestyle.

But how can it be any other way in the face of our American schedule? Take our already crowded day timers, add Sunday morning church, add weekly small group meetings, add volunteering in the church to the mix, and there’s little time for anyone outside of one’s own family, let alone for the needy. Combine the craziness of our schedules with the middle class neighborhoods in which most of us live, and our contact with the poor and needy among us is a rarity that few believers ever have the opportunity to engage in. It is a special event that must be scheduled, usually weeks to months in advance, shoehorned into an already jam-packed schedule. The net result is a church that has a heart for the poor, but no hands for the poor, insulated from the needs of the world in our detached Christian ghettos.

So what must the church do to begin to address its mandate to care for the poor? We will begin to explore this in our next post.