Category Archives: Relevant Church

The Church is Christ’s Bride, Not His Baby Mama.

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man-cheating-unfaithful-boyfriend-talking-to-ex

In case you are not up to speed on the last decade’s slang, a baby mama is someone with whom you made a baby, but have no commitment to and little contact with.  In other words, someone objectified, used, abandoned, and now mocked for being dumb enough to think the guy would actually be faithful to her.[1]

If you are a Christian does that remind you of anything?

I hear similar attitudes towards the church expressed in Starbucks every week. People waxing eloquent about how into ‘Jesus’ and ‘spirituality’ they are, but not so much ‘religion’ or the ‘Church.’ It is why 24 million people watched Jefferson Bethke’s spoken word video “Why I hate religion but love Jesus” last year.

I am most amazed when I see Christian leaders encouraging people to use the church as their ‘baby mama’ –  for their own desires and preferences, and when she no longer ‘does it for me’ to ditch her for a younger, sexier model. What I am whining about exactly? Here are a few examples:

  • Checking to see if the “good preacher” is on before going.
  • Having one church for worship, one for small groups, and one for preaching.
  • Changing churches because you just aren’t “feeling it” anymore.
  • Driving so far across town for a church you like that your unchurched friends would never think of coming with you.
  • Picking your church, not on beliefs, but simply because your friends all go there.
  • Criticizing the church you didn’t go to from Starbucks on Sunday morning.

For the love, have we lost our ability to pick something and stick with it!

The church has played right into our preference driven world by featuring ever-hotter, better packaged versions of itself.[2] And, as with a baby mama, after we have used her, we stand back and mock that she is hurting from our lack of commitment and fidelity. It is the height of fashion to stand close enough to the church to criticize it…sort of like standing close enough to a fire to urinate on it. …and just like people who have had too much beer on a camping trip, everyone laughs and no one asks the obvious question, “Helping or hurting?”

I get that the church has earned its negative reputation. We have often behaved badly. I get that the church has been irrelevant, unloving, unhelpful and invested more in carpet than cast-offs. Surely the church has often behaved as Hosea’s harlot wife, but even so, she is still Christ’s bride and the mother of believers. To quote Tony Campolo’s misquote, “The church may be a whore, but she’s my mother.”[3] Even gangsters have their mother’s backs. It is why “mama” jokes don’t play in the ‘hood. But the church isn’t a baby mama, even with her all her problems she is the spotless bride of Christ.

Bridal imagery, by the way, is all over the New Testament.[4] The church as Christ’s bride was a common image in the early church and remains such to groups with higher ecclesiologies (like Catholics, Orthodox and Anglican). The other feminine image of the church, the church as our mother, is largely from the early Christians, although it too has  roots in Scripture.[5]

What we have done, perhaps as an unintended consequence to the Reformation meets American pragmatism and individualism, is created a religion of me, by me, and for me. Our most holy Trinity of me, myself and I.

The historic vision of the church universal (catholic) is the Church as agent of salvation (proclaiming the Gospel), mediator of salvation (baptizing us into new birth in our spiritual mother, the Church), and means of sanctification (Word, Sacrament and service). It is also this bride for which Christ will some day return.[6] As Cyprian said, “If one is to have God for Father, he must first have the Church for mother”[7]

The motherhood of the Church, showing her as a birthing and nurturing institution, bearing fruit in many “sons of God,”[8] and the bride-hood of the Church, portraying a union with her bridegroom, are not just nice metaphors.  They are necessary to understanding our right place in the cosmos as God’s children.

The Reformers may have removed the direct mediation of the church from salvation, but they still had a very high view of the church. John Calvin, for example, wrote, “The Church, into whose bosom God is pleased to gather his sons, not only that they may be nourished by her help and ministry as long as they are infants and children, but also that they may be guided by her motherly care until they mature and at last reach the goal of faith.”[9]

The church needs us. It needs us to repent of our philandering and commit to her. It needs us as insiders, not as onlookers; As her children, rather than a cheap and unfaithful lover ever looking to move on to his next conquest.

[1] There is a name for people with the most baby mama’s: Big Poppa’s. Here is a website devoted to the professional athletes with the most children by the most women: http://www.complex.com/sports/2012/06/big-poppa-the-athletes-with-the-most-children-by-the-most-women/ Enjoy watching New York Jets, Antonio Cromartie try to remember all of his kids names.

[2] A friend, Dave Wright blogged about this recently at fusionmusing.blogspot.com The posts are under “Youthministry and church” 3 posts about a field trip to an exceedingly cool church sporting 1970’s psychedelic secular rock and very funny preaching.

[3] Wrongly attributed to Augustine by Tony Campolo in Letters to a Young Evangelical.

[4] See, for example: 2 Cor 11:2; Eph 5:21-33; Rev 19:7; 21:2, 9; 22:17.

[5] Passages such as Galatians 4:26, 2 John 1,4 and 5 and Revelation 12

[6] Rev. 21:22

[7] Cyprian, Letter 74.7.2, in Ancient Christian Writers: The Works of the Fathers in Translation

[8] Gal 3:26

[9] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, vols. 20-21

Case Study: PhoenixOne. Bursting at the seams with young adults.

Posted in Millennials, Relevant Church by

How do we engage the post-modern 25 year old? Certainly it isn’t easy. They are very conflicted. On one hand they distrust large events. On the other, they flock to things with momentum -in Phoenix that is PhoenixOne, a gathering of 20-something “young professionals.” In existence for 18 months, it is now attended by more than 1000 young adults.

What is PhoenixOne doing to gather the crowd?

First, they use technology well. All 1000 of them facebook and tweet the meeting. It is very organic in it’s invitation.

Second, they are relational. They work very hard to connect with people and help them connect with one another.

Third, they are in a place of “otherness.” They meet in a 100 year-old church-ancient by Phoenix’ standards. It is quiet. Solid. It feels stable – like a church.

Fourth, they bring in communicators who speak to their experience. Most of them are known names who have an audience already. They go for high content/good presentation over low content/great presentation. They have thoughtful speakers rather than uber-motivational types.

Francis Chan

Fifth, they have ditched the really big band for a guitar, piano and drums. It is actually quieter than the 40 year-old’s “relevant” church.

Sixth, they use technology, and they experiment with ancient liturgical forms. Chant, candles, confession, contemplation have as big a role as slick graphics. Young adults are rediscovering mystery, symbol and narrative…artfully done.

Ancient liturgical experience explained.

Seventh, they get people to work in the world for good. While the over 35 world is busy saying young adults are selfish, PhoenixOne has them active doing things for good. Young adults actually do want to do things-just not like we do them. We want to make church like the world and work in our churches to avoid the world. They want to make church churchier and then work to take Jesus into the world.

Eighth, and this one is important, they work to work together through difference rather than ignore difference. The mega-model ignores history and denominational backgrounds, to the point of hiding denominational affiliation, they engage in thoughtful dialogue around being blessed by the fullness of Christian tradition.

Are you noticing the relationship between the cultural realities of 25 year olds and how effectively reaching them includes both connecting them to one another and the world, and artfully adapting classic Christian worship practices and disciplines to connect them with God? 

The leader of PhoenixOne is my friend, Jeff Gokee. He is a student of his culture who is not afraid to innovate. When young professionals fill out “connections” cards, he reports, they list two or three different “home” churches:  One church  for music, one for teaching, one  for small groups…and PhoenixOne. Jeff says, “that is a crazy fact that is shaping how we do church in the future.”

Jeff confirms my two over-arching points: a “go” rather than “come” starting point and relationships blended with authentic ancient-future worship when they do arrive. About relationships Jeff says, “I believe the local church is truly is the hope of the world.  I have spent most of my life as a pastor trying to get people to come into my church context instead of going into theirs…I believe in order to re-engage this generation we have to be incarnate in their culture the way Jesus did 2000 years ago.  He goes to the women at the well…He visits Zaccheaus in his home…and he comes to all of humanity on the cross…we need to have a relational revival, because this generation wants to be known.” Worship, says Jeff, “is not just about singing and doing…it’s about being with God.  Sometimes that happens with a big band, sometimes that happens in silence, sometimes it happens when your clapping and don’t know the words. We don’t have to create worship…it’s all around us, we just get to join in wherever it’s happening.”

It is a new day for the church and the culture. There is an old expression from biology: Adapt or die.

Hopefully we will learn to listen to our young adults, read the tea-leaves of our culture and relearn what the early church knew – How to live in the world as a distrusted minority that prayed the Scriptures, worshiped with life-giving narrative and sacrament. They ventured forth from that rich transformed community to serve the world and spoke of the power of God in Christ everywhere they went. We can do this. We have done it before. We can do it again.

Why the big-box church works for the over 35 but not the under 25.

Posted in Millennials, Relevant Church by
Last year the church that kicked off the California suburban-megachurch movement, the Crystal Cathedral, was sold to the local Catholic Diocese. The decline is being seen in an attendance drop off among 20-somethings in most suburban model churches…and many leaders in those churches report that they are nervous…

Church for the over 35.

Church leaders have spent a decade wondering why the Seeker-Relevant-Saddleback-Mega-church model that works so well for upwardly mobile people 35 and older, is not working for people under 30. I believe the answer is deceptively simple: The world changed.

Ask yourself, “What world-shaking event occurred when today’s 25 year olds were early teenagers?” The answer: 9/11.

On 9/11 our fundamental understanding of what life was like changed. Forever.911

Put yourself in the mind of an over 35 year-old: In the formative years of those over 35 the world was a pretty nice place. A safe place. We knew that if we worked hard and got an education we would have a good job, make money in the market, move up the social and economic ladder, and retire comfortably on our 401k, the appreciation of our homes and Social Security. We were confident. Our viewpoint: The world was our friend.

Take a 25 year old today: In their formative years the world was not a very nice place. They do not remember an America that was not at war. People they have never met want to bomb their buildings and crash their airplanes. If they work hard and get a good education, they may work at Starbucks and will spend 20 years paying off student loans. The market is a risk and home ownership might be a loser. How can they risk being tied to a home with fluctuating value when they will have to change careers and locales multiple times? There will not be a pension. Their 401k is a crap-shoot. Social Security will be bankrupt. Will they ever retire? Their viewpoint: The world is not their friend.

The “Seeker” movement works for the 35 year old specifically because it is based on the premise that the world was our friend. On that premise we built churches modeled on the best the world had to offer – it was the church as Christian subculture: a shinier, happier version of everything secular. Think of what we imitate in our “relevant” church models: coffeehouse, concert hall, comedy club. They are all based on the idea that the secular world is a friendly place. Since, for 20-somethings, the world is definitely NOT their friend, we really shouldn’t be surprised when that secular model is not a big winner for them as “church.”

Author Dan Kimball noticed the beginnings of this cultural shift ten years ago in “Emergent Church.” In an attempt to reach unchurched millennials in Santa Cruz, California he assembled focus groups. He took them to different church environments. He found consistently that young adults wanted a church that was “churchy”…Ancient. Quiet. Solid. Holy. A place unlike the world. A place of “otherness.” Do you notice how those things whisper stability in an unpredictable, ever-changing world? Kimball’s young adults were actually surprised that the older crowd preferred “relevant model” churches. Their take: “If I wanted to go to the mall, I’ll just go. I want church to be church.”

How can the church engage the post-modern 25 year old? Certainly it isn’t easy. This generation is conflicted. On one hand they distrust large events. On the other, they flock to things with momentum. The good news is that today’s millennials seek the things from the church that the church did well for most of her 2000 years: community, a chance to make a difference in the world, and, most importantly, offer a transforming connection with the creator and redeemer of the universe. Unfortunately, we lost these as they eroded invisibly out from under the evangelical suburban cultural veneer. It is not too late. But it will take a new kind of church that is much less like the one we know and much more like the one the early fathers knew.

The big question is not whether the millennials will engage, but will the previous generations, builders of a church that fit a set of cultural expectations that are rapidly fading away, listen and respond by opening leadership opportunities to the next generation? Will the church develop new leaders, give legitimate responsibility to the next generation, and take new chances on historic ways of being the church?

USA Today: More Confirmation That 20-Somethings Are Bailing On the Church.

Posted in Millennials, Relevant Church by

Money quote: “One in three (32%) are under age 30 and unlikely to age into claiming a religion, says Pew Forum senior researcher Greg Smith. The new study points out that today’s Millennials are more unaffiliated than any young generation ever has been when they were younger.”

Read the article: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/10/08/nones-protestant-religion-pew/1618445/

Nancy Going, Veteran Youth Minister and leader of Luther Seminary’s youth ministry program who blogs on First Third comments: http://www.firstthird.org/blog/default.aspx?m=3924&post=1378 

Lets just stop pretending that this is not happening and start doing things differently to change it for the next generation- i.e. the kids in our youth group right now!

Is the way we are doing youth ministry emptying the church?

Posted in Millennials, Relevant Church, Youth Ministry by

My “Cool Church” post has become a love it/hate it item on the internet. One critique is that I am simply wrong in the premise students drop out of church when they leave our youth groups.

What does the data say? Back in 2009 Brett Kunkle gave a good summary of what is now undeniable: 7 separate studies say the same thing – Youth abandon the church after high school. http://www.conversantlife.com/theology/how-many-youth-are-leaving-the-church If you doubt him, how about David Kinnaman’s new book about 2o somethings abandoning church, “You Lost Me.”

Youth worker: Cowboy up! We have to face the facts. It is easy to blame the church, the parents, and the culture. But look at the data carefully:

-61% of churched high school students graduate and never go back. (Time Magazine, 2009)

-78%  to 88% of those in youth programs today will leave church. (Lifeway, 2010)

Think about it: All students leave church at 61%. Students in youth programs leave at 78-88%.  Implication: Students attending a church with NOTHING for them attend church at a 50% higher rate in their 20’s than if they went to a church with one of our youth programs!

Youth pastors, we might actually be harming the numbers for churches without youth programs. We are giving our lives to students and it turns out that NOTHING might have been better for their participation in the body of Christ as an adult. If that doesn’t make the hair on your neck stand up then nothing will.

Please hear me: I am NOT saying we should fire youth pastors and disband youth groups. We know from history and common sense that unled things die. I am also not one of those saying that youth ministry is “unbiblical.” Greg Stier wrote a good rationale for why YM is both biblical and vital; http://www.youthministry.com/articles/leadership/defense-youth-ministry.

However, if we have integrity we will look honestly at way students are leaving the church when they leave our ministries. We need to look at…

-The unproductive segregation of youth away from parents, the larger body of Christ and leadership in the main worship service-something most of us who are pastors would never risk because “excellence” would suffer. We need to help our students become participants, “givers” to the community of faith; not just “consumers” of religious services.

–What we count. Do you count “decisions”? “Attendance?” When I was on Young Life staff I kept a copy of all of the numbers our national organization gathered from us: clubs, campers, and conversions. I noticed that there was a fourth number that actually accounted for the other three: the number of leaders we had that went into the world of students. I found a ratio in effect: For every leader that would go to the campus to meet students in September, we had 7 students in “club” by December, 4 campers in June and 1.5 “commitments” by July. Our stellar Regional Director, Marty Caldwell, looked at several years of this data and immediately pointed out a truth: We become what we count. We need to count disciples who make disciples. We need to count the right things if we wish to develop the right things.

–Our failure to resource parents – the ones God has actually given “our” students to. Two resources: Steve Wright: ReThink and Rob Reinow: Visionary Parenting.

We can do better. We can teach our students to love doing the things Christians have spent 2000 years loving doing: To read the Bible, study it, live it. To love and serve their friends, and talk about their life and their faith…their convictions and even their doubts. We can model for them participating in and building real faith communities. We can build students who know how and why to pray…who worship and walk with God. We can make students who live grace-filled lives towards others and make different decisions for themselves than they would have because they are amazed at God’s goodness and mercy and love for them. There are good resources for this out there. Ken Moser’s, Programs to Go will give you 18 youth group meetings to get you started. http://www.effectiveyouthministry.com/programs-2-go.html. I have a “What we do in a discipleship group” that I can email you.

To quote Paul, there is “a still more excellent way.” It is an ancient way. A rooted way. A connected way. A way that resources parents and makes leaders “soul friends” to students and helps them live lives of faith and love as they walk with God and serve the church and the world.

Big changes take a great deal of courage and effort. But the fruit will be eternal. And that will be so worth it.

Mormon bishop to the Mega-Church: “Thank you!”

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“You have no idea what a gift you are to us.”

Several years ago I overheard a conversation in a restaurant that was so provocative I could not help first listening in and then eventually horning in.

It was late on a Sunday morning. In the booth over my left shoulder was a man who said he was a LDS bishop and his friend. They were discussing the service they had just attended at the largest church in Arizona. Fascinated at his viewpoint, and being aware that the Mormon church is still growing while Protestant numbers are waning, I turned around and engaged him in conversation over coffee -mine, not his.

He said, “I think the mega-church will be the best thing to ever happen to the LDS. If that is the best you have to offer, you are in big, big trouble.”

I pointed out, “Tens of thousands are flocking to those types of churches. They seem to be very effective.”

His insights on the mega church stopped me cold:

“They may have a lot of people coming in the front door but they surely will have a big back door with people escaping out. People will eventually want more than they are offering.”

The biggest problems?  He said…

-You make takers. We make givers.

-You are entirely focused on the individual. We focus on building a community.

He then described our churches as market-driven and led by focus groups rather than convictions. He called out two things in particular: Segregating our age groups and catering to people’s preferences.

Segregating: “What are you thinking putting all of the youth in a separate building and not letting the parents in? 16-year old Jenny needs to be sitting next to 80-year old Mrs. Jones in church. When Jenny shows up in her modest clothes, Mrs. Jones tells her, “Good job!” When Mrs. Jones needs help getting groceries out of her car, she calls Jenny. We make communities. You make people whose whims are catered to. What are you doing to actually help families?”

Catering to preference: “And another thing. You do music people like, with bands. We do bad music, sometimes on an out of tune piano, led by a retired music teacher. Our music is weird. It teaches people that they are part of something different from the world.

We make people who give rather than take and who know they are different and are part of a set-apart community. You blur the line between the church and the world. We emphasize it. 

Finally he said, “In thirty years, you guys won’t exist. We will be the only game in town.”

Was he right?

Surely he had very little expectation that the gathering of Christians is to worship the triune God and bring him glory. But does the mega-church? Is there a back door wide-open filled with people inoculated against the very Gospel our mega churches work so hard to communicate? Have we created a cult of the individual rather than a community of givers?

Please do not read my critique as an indictment on motives or on size per se. There are large churches working hard to be about others (see: www.mission68.org). The mega-church people that I know want to honor God and reach people for Jesus Christ. However, I fear we have embraced an ethic of short-term pragmatism. The mega-church has embraced a biblical message divorced from biblical and historically Christian methods. This is dangerous territory.

Next up: Why the “Saddleback movement” works for the over 30 but not those under it. And, Potential ways forward for both the church and the youth program.

Guest Blogger Followup: Owen Anderson, ASU Philosophy Professor

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(Owen is a long-time friend, a former youth group kid who stayed committed to the church through his 20’s, and is a very smart guy…he just arrived home from presenting a paper on Charles Hodge at the 200th anniversary of Princeton.)


Hi Matt,

I greatly appreciated your blog and identification of the problem.  I have one item to add to your list, and a thought to add to an item already on your list:

The Biblical Worldview:  The Biblical Worldview teaches the themes of creation, fall, and redemption.  This teaches the reality of God the creator, that the creation was made very good, that sin is not seeking, not understanding, and not dong what is right, that death entered the world after sin, and that redemption is given through an atoning sacrifice.  We see these themes from Genesis 1 to the end of the Bible.  Getting this foundation in place in the lives of believers allows them to go on and bear fruit.  It shifts the focus from mere converts to making disciples, and from otherworldliness to the glory of God.

McDonaldization:  If we have the glory of God as our focus, and are grounded in the Biblical Worldview, this will take us a long way from self-centered “worship.”  One way this happens is in the use of divinely inspired songs in public worship.  The book of Psalms covers all aspects of a believer’s life before God.  However, this book is generally ignored or used very sparingly.  Rather than choosing songs based on how they make us feel, the Psalms re-orient our thinking so that we learn a more God-centered piety.  Like the McDonalds example, songs that make us feel good for a short time but have no nutritional content are unhealthy.  The focus is on how we feel, not in the truths we are singing about God and the Christian life.  While many songs contain either actual falsehoods or are very simple in what they express, no one can make this charge about the Psalms.

What’s so uncool about cool churches?

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Unintended Consequences: How the “relevant” church and segregating youth is killing Christianity.

I recently spent six-months doing a rotation as a hospital chaplain. One day I received a page (Yes, hospitals actually still use pagers). Chaplains are generally called to the rooms of people who look ill: People gray with kidney disease, or yellow with liver failure, discouraged amputees, nervous cancer patients. In this room, however, was a strikingly attractive 23 year-old young lady sitting up cheerfully in the hospital bed, holding her infant daughter and chatting with family and friends.

Confused, I stepped outside and asked her nurse, “Why did I get paged to her room?”

“Oh, she looks fabulous. She also feels great and is asking to go home,” the nurse said.

“…And you are calling me because?” I asked in confusion.

The nurse looked me directly in the eye and said: “Because we will be disconnecting her from life support in three days and you will be doing her funeral in four.”

The young lady had taken too much Tylenol. She looked and acted fine. She even felt fine, but she was in full-blown liver failure. She was dying and couldn’t bring herself to accept the diagnosis.

Today I have the sense that we are at the same place in the church. The church may look healthy on the outside, but it has swallowed the fatal pills. The evidence is stacking up: the church is dying and, for the most part, we are refusing the diagnosis.

What evidence? Take a gander at these two shocking items:

1. 20-30 year olds attend church at 1/2 the rate of their parents and ¼ the rate of their grandparents. Think about the implication for those of us in youth ministry: Thousands of us have invested our lives in reproducing faith in the next generation and the group we were tasked with reaching left the church when they left us.

2. 61% of churched high school students graduate and never go back! (Time Magazine, 2009) Even worse: 78%  to 88% of those in youth programs today will leave church, most to never return. (Lifeway, 2010) Please read those last two statistics again. Ask yourself why attending a church with nothing seems to be more effective at retaining youth than our youth programs.

We look at our youth group now and we feel good. But the youth group of today is the church of tomorrow, and study after study after study suggests that what we are building for the future is…

…empty churches.

We build big groups and count “decisions for Christ,” but the Great Commission is not to get kids to make decisions for Jesus but to make disciples for Him. We all want to make Christians for life, not just for high school. We have invested heavily in youth ministry with our lives specifically in order engage youth in the church. Why do we have such a low return on our investment?

What are we doing in our Youth Ministries that might be making people less likely to attend church as an adult?

What is the “pill” we have overdosed on? I believe it is “preference.” We have embraced the idea of market-driven youth ministry. Unfortunately, giving people what they “prefer” is a road, that once you go down it, has no end. Tim Elmore in his 2010 book entitled Generation iY calls this “the overindulged Generation.” They ask for more and more, and we give it to them. And more and more the power of God is substituted for market-driven experience. In an effort to give people something “attractive” and “relevant” we embraced novel new methods in youth ministry, that 20 years later are having a powerful shaping effect on the entire church. Here are the marks of being market-driven; Which are hallmarks of your ministry?

  1. Segregation. We bought into the idea that youth should be segregated from the family and the rest of the church. It started with youth rooms, and then we moved to “youth services.” We ghettoized our children! (After all, we are cooler than the older people in “big church”. And parents? Who wants their parents in their youth group?) Be honest: Have you ever thought you know more than your your student’s parents? Have you ever thought your youth group was cooler than “big church”?
  2. Big = effective. Big is (by definition) program driven: Less personal, lower commitment; a cultural and social thing as much as a spiritual thing. Are those the values that we actually hold?
  3. More programs attended = stronger disciples. The inventers of this idea, Willow Creek, in suburban Chicago, publically repudiated this several years ago. They discovered that there was no correlation between the number of meetings attended and people’s spiritual maturity. They learned the lesson. Will we?
  4. Christian replacementism. We developed a Christian version of everything the world offers: Christian bands, novels, schools, soccer leagues, t-shirts. We created the perfect Christian bubble.
  5. Cultural “relevance” over transformation.We imitated our culture’s most successful gathering places in an effort to be “relevant.” Reflect on the Sunday “experience” at most Big-box churches:
    1. Concert hall (worship)
    2. Comedy club (sermon)
    3. Coffee house (foyer)

And what about Transformation? Is that not missing from these models? Where is a sense of the holy?

6. Professionalization. If we do know an unbeliever, we don’t need to share Christ with them, we have pastors to do that. We invite them to something… to an “inviter” event… we invite them to our “Christian” subculture.

7. “McDonald’s-ization” vs. Contextualization:  It is no longer our own vision and passion. We purchase it as a package from today’s biggest going mega-church. It is almost like a “franchise fee” from Saddleback or The Resurgence.

8. Attractional over missional. When our greatest value is butts in pews we embrace attractional models. Rather than embrace Paul’s Ephesians 4 model in which ministry gifts are given by God to “equip the saints” we have developed a top-down hierarchy aimed at filling buildings. This leaves us with Sunday “church” an experience for the unchurched, with God-centered worship of the Almighty relegated to the periphery and leading of the body of Christ to greater spiritual power and sanctification to untrained small group leaders.

Does not all of this work together as a package to leave us with churches full of empty people?

Here is an example: Your church. Does it look like this?

If you look closely, you will see the photo on the right is of a nightclub, rather than a church. Can you see what I mean about “relevance” and the clean Christian version of what the world offers? Your youth room is a pretty good indicator of what your church will look like 15 years from now. Because of the principle “What you win them with, you win them to,” your students today will expect their adult church to look like your youth room.

In summary, “Market Driven” youth ministry gave students a youth group that looks like them, does activities they prefer, sings songs they like, and preaches on subjects they are interested in. It is a ministry of preference. And, with their feet, young adults are saying…

…“Bye-bye.”

What might we do instead? The opposite of giving people what they want is to give them what they need. The beauty is that Christianity already knows how to do this.

Once upon a time our faith thrived in a non-Christian empire. It took less than 300 years for 11 scared dudes to take over the most powerful empire the world had ever seen. How did they do it? Where we have opted for a relevant, homogenously grouped, segregated, attractional professionalized model; the early church did it with a  multi-ethnic, multi-social class, seeker INsensitive church. Worship was filled with sacrament and symbol. It engaged the believing community in the Christian narrative. This worship was so God-directed and insider-shaping that in the early church non-Christians were asked to leave the building before communion! With what effect? From that fellowship of the transformed, the church went out to the highways and byways loving and serving the least, last and lost. In that body of Christ, Christians shared their faith with Romans 1:16 boldness, served the poor with abandon, fed widows and took orphans into their homes. The world noticed. We went to them in love rather than invited them to our event.

The beauty of where we are today is that, unlike the girl in the hospital bed, our fatal pill could still be rejected. It is not too late. We can leave the culture-centered models we have been following for more Christ-centered ones. More ancient ones. More rooted ones. And the most beautiful thing is that students actually enjoy them.

So many have commented on this post in the last month that I did a follow-up: O Yeah! And other things I wish I would have said on “Cool Church.”