I am a believer in the role of the local church. In fact I will work and do work hard to see the local church take it’s place in the community in bringing people to a saving knowledge of Jesus, and redeeming lives from the pit.
Sometimes I get discouraged. Sometimes I have to ask myself if I am living in the past. It takes a swift kick along side the head to make me ask questions I didn’t want to ask. That’s why this article by Jim Rutz (Mega-Shift) hit me pretty hard. My paradigm was messed with.
I love congregational worship and involvement when it is full and free. I put myself in the place to experience this a couple times a week. Why can’t church be like Rutz describes? It’s not the people. It’s the leaders. I am one. So it’s me. Ouch.
'Don't-get-bored-to-death' ChristianitySometimes I get discouraged. Sometimes I have to ask myself if I am living in the past. It takes a swift kick along side the head to make me ask questions I didn’t want to ask. That’s why this article by Jim Rutz (Mega-Shift) hit me pretty hard. My paradigm was messed with.
I love congregational worship and involvement when it is full and free. I put myself in the place to experience this a couple times a week. Why can’t church be like Rutz describes? It’s not the people. It’s the leaders. I am one. So it’s me. Ouch.
In the old Spectator Christianity, you go to a large building once a week, sit down in a row, and keep your mouth shut except for the singing, which often these days is drowned out by high-powered sound systems cranked up past ninety decibels.
This kind of frozen religion is a vestige of the days of our forefathers, when the pastor/priest was the only person worth listening to and was often, in fact, the only one who could read.
Even today there is such a gulf between the clergy and laity that you dare not send in a lay substitute for your pastor to fill the pulpit when the good reverend is sick or on vacation. The result would typically be somewhere between embarrassing and pathetic.
In other words, what we have today is an outdated, two-tiered church composed of performers and spectators, producers and consumers. As a layman, you go to church, play the role, put some token money in the plate, shake hands with a few friends, go home, and turn on the game.
The pastor, on the other hand, is stringently required to spend hours polishing an uplifting sermon, especially in Protestant churches. (The most commonly heard reason for leaving a church is, "I wasn't being fed.") The pastor is expected to be the Holy Man wearing Holy Robes standing in the Holy Pulpit in God's Holy House on the Holy Day to preach the Holy Sermon (the term spoon-feeding springs to mind). By playing our very limited role in this unbiblical charade, we peons accumulate Brownie points and are somehow absolved from any failure to do our part.
This, my friend, is miles and miles from the exciting picture of the church that we see in the New Testament, which commands us in 54 places to do various good things for "one another": love one another, honor one another, bear one another's burdens. All an impossibility when we're sitting silently in rows. It commands us to keep the family of God highly interactive and we disobey this word from the Lord to our own peril.
My happy news for you today is that this interactive, high-responsibility church is growing rapidly around the world, even as the traditional, institutional, top-down, pyramid church is fading. Twenty years from now, according to top pollster George Barna, 65 to 70 percent of the Christians in the U.S. will be in The New Christianity: small house churches, office churches, and campus churches, where all of us will be learning to use our individual spiritual gifts: teaching, helping, praying, encouraging, singing, dancing, reaching out to help the lost, and changing the world.
What sparked this column was an article from John White, U.S. coordinator of Dawn Ministries, quoting statistics compiled by St. Louis pastor Darrin Patrick based in turn on research by Barna and Focus on the Family. The article contains much wisdom even for non-Christians, and I suggest you read it. Unintentionally, it also sounds the death knell of the institutional church system. How? By simply outlining the plight of today's traditional pastors:
* 80 percent of U.S. pastors and 84 percent of their spouses feel unqualified and discouraged in their role as pastors.
* 80 percent of seminary and Bible school graduates who enter the ministry will leave in the first five years.
* 1,500 pastors leave the ministry each month due to moral failure, spiritual burnout, or contention in their churches.
* Almost 40% polled said they have had an extramarital affair since beginning their ministry.
* 70 percent said the only time they spend studying the Word is when they're preparing their sermons.
* 70 percent of pastors constantly fight depression.
* 50 percent of pastors are so discouraged that they would leave the ministry if they could, but have no other way of making a living.
* 50 percent of pastors' marriages will end in divorce.
Add to this the tortured feelings of pastors' wives:
Eighty percent of pastors' spouses feel their spouse is overworked and wish they would choose another profession. The majority add that the most destructive event that has occurred in their marriage was the day they entered the ministry.
Makes you wonder if this is really what God had in mind for His church, doesn't it?
By Jim Rutz
© 2006
2 comments:
I'm not surprised at all. The church is exactly what WE'VE made it. Here's a few reasons why...
lack of a real worship life, lack of focus, fear, lack of freedom, doing the same old same old, fear, leaders who are burned out and coasting, people who come to church to "do their time", fear, lack of a real prayer life, not having a true relationship with Jesus Christ, fear, not totally relying on the Holy Ghost and relying on ourselves, fear, doing what we know and not daring to be different, lack of evangelism, TALKING a lot about Jesus and not connecting people into a true relationship with the Living God, fear, lack of wisdom, serving when it's convienent for us, fear,...I'd go on but you get the point. Here's a final point...excuses, excuses, excuses...
It all starts at the top, beginning with ME. Craig Groeschel has a brand new book out called "Confessions of a Pastor: (The Dark Side of a Pastor's Life - A Breath of Fresh Air)". I just picked up a copy last week and have really enjoyed reading it. In the book, Craig relates openly and honestly the feelings and thoughts that many pastors and church leaders feel every day. For instance, listen as Craig relates the first time he ever felt free to be authentic while preaching. He writes...
"One Sunday, after another week of performing my best for God, I stood to preach His life-changing Word. As I approached the pulpit, the truth hit me squarely between the eyes. I hadn’t prayed at all. Not that day. Not the day before. Not the day before that. To the best of my knowledge, I hadn’t prayed all week.
And I called myself a pastor. That’s when it dawned on me: I had become a full-time minister and a part-time follower of Christ. From the outside, I looked the part. “God bless you,” I’d say, followed by the promise, “I’ll be praying for you.”
But that was usually a lie.
Stepping onto the platform to preach that morning, I admitted to myself that I was not a pastor first, but a regular, scared, insecure, everyday guy whose life had been changed by Jesus. And if Jesus really loved me as I was (I knew He did), then why should I go on trying to be someone I wasn’t? I stumbled through that sermon, forcing the words to come out. The message was superficial, plastic, shallow…but somehow I got through it. I drove home that day ashamed of the role I’d played so skillfully, but feeling cautiously hopeful I might learn to be myself.
All week long I agonized. I prayed as I hadn’t prayed in months: God, what if I tell them who I really am? What if they know I’m terrified? What if they reject me? Talk bad about me? Fire me? I swallowed hard. Then I ventured a step further: Is this what You want me to do? I thought I sensed God’s assurance, but I wasn’t sure. Desperately I hoped it was Him leading me,
and not just my own whacked-out thoughts.
The next Sunday arrived, and I walked to the platform uncharacteristically unprepared—not one written note. The only preparation was in my heart. My throat dry, nervous beyond description, I stared at two hundred very committed churchgoers. They stared politely back.
Silence.
Finally I spoke. “My relationship with God is not what it should be.” My voice quavered with each syllable. No one moved. I plunged ahead. “I’ve confessed to God, but now I’m going to confess to you: I’ve become a full-time minister but a part-time follower of Christ.”
You could have heard a communion wafer snap.
I continued speaking, opening my heart and inviting everyone inside. The message that Sunday was unembellished: no humor, no quotes, no poems. It was void of clever sayings or points starting with the same letter. But the message was true. I held nothing back. It was the biggest public risk I’d ever taken. It was also my first authentic sermon. I had preached many times before, but this was the first time the real me made a showing. In the middle of my talk, something started to happen,
something new…
God made Himself known.
The reality of His presence is hard to describe, but it’s even harder to miss. Some people cried quietly in their seats. Others sobbed openly—not so much for my sins, but for their own. Before I had finished my confession, many gathered at the altar to repent along with me.
As the tears and words flowed, God’s peace replaced my fear. His assurance pushed away my doubts. Christ’s power invaded my weakness. In that moment, Jesus became as real to me as He had ever been. The Savior was with me…and I believed He was pleased. “Well done,” I felt, more than heard.
That’s when it all changed. I became a full-time follower of Christ who happened to be a pastor. No more make-believe. No posing. And no playing games. From that moment on, I would be who I am.
Or nothing at all.
********
If WE don't believe it and SHOW it and have the Spirit of the Living God dripping from every pour of our being, how in heaven's name are we going to show others? Talk is cheap. Actions speak volumes. We need to be truly "crucified with Christ".
I'm glad I'm sold out to Jesus. That's what makes me a little radical to some. Good! I want to not only hear the words "well done, good and faithful servant", I want God to look me in the eyes and hear him say to me "remember when do did "that", that was AWESOME!"
That's my tithe, or 20% (I can afford more than the 2 cents because my riches will be in Heaven.)
Ben
This is a good post, Gene. Another aspect of this institutional church is that, unlike the bible where two or three prophesy, evalgelicals limit the "worship service" to one speaker: the pastor. This begs the question: how will this man ever be "fed"? He has no spirit-directed word in his direction every week. His only source of admonishment comes from pastor's conferences.
And the pastor will without blinking fill his pulpit with somebody who lives two thousand miles away, is known by nobody, but just happens to have graduated from the same seminary, rather than with a non-clergy man from his own congregation that he's been discipling for a decade and a half.
My conscience is quieted each Sunday by knowing that somebody else has everything under control.
Post a Comment