Coming back to Ohio to visit family and the conversations I have been able to have with all sorts of people is continuing to open my eyes and heart to a lot of things surrounding “how we do church.” I have talked to people who have to still keep their kids with them during the weekend service, in the pews. I have heard church services that are still playing country western southern baptist worship music, the same stuff they played when I was a kid - and it was old then.
I have seen churches trying to be corporate like the rest of the churches they look up to - and not realizing that adopting that sort of controlling paradigm isn’t only irrelevant - but that that it limits their crowd growth, spiritual growth and emotional growth.
I have seen small church America but I am seeing it through new eyes, that want to see good - but only see the same that it will always be - and wondering if that is okay. I have seen churches trying to be corporate like the rest of the churches they look up to - and not realizing that adopting that sort of controlling paradigm isn’t only irrelevant - but that that it limits their crowd growth, spiritual growth and emotional growth.
What I haven’t see in any of these churches are people 35 and down (barring the family members of people who run the churches). I had to ask two pastors I hung out with until 4 am whether there were many young adults in the area at all. I was shocked to hear yes - because by looking at the church communities I saw or interacted with I would have thought they had all moved out and on to other more metropolitan areas. I can accurately say there isn’t a church here that even mildly entertains the idea of hearing what the next generation’s concerns, faith needs and prompts are.
This is obviously just a small sampling of typical America church, but the same was evident in churches I interacted with in Cincinnati, and even out in California now. Church the way it is being done is not going to last. The churches that insist on being corporate, command and control and overly focused on religious tradition will just gradually struggle to their death.
And church planting has never been more needed. Current or long standing churches are the last place that the changes that need to happen will ever occur. New churches need to planted without the baggage and counter-Christ traditions. Church needs to enter into the global conversation about life and love - but start doing so reasonably. I think the reason that Christians are so misunderstood and chided is because they have an unreasonable perspective about how to interact with people who aren’t Christians.
I said, “Working in this church has raped you of your humanity”, and he agreed.
A friend I had a conversation with talked about how after being a pastor for a while that he felt more fake, and that he was into the routine and tradition of it all - and had lost some of that caring and relational priority. I put it as, “Working in this church has raped you of your humanity - it has taken the heart to care for your fellow man in a natural way out and replaced it with a crusade.” To which he laughed and said to the effect, “You haven’t changed…”
I am not sure what the sum of these things mean, but I know instead of being encouraged by how church and Christianity continues to try and impact the world through the local church, I have been saddened by the overwhelming evidence that most of these churches are built and run for self gratification instead for the execution of the Commands and Commissions that have been handed down to them.
