People Leaving Church

Steve posted a blog about the alarming number of people (70%) leaving church between ages 18-22. There were many comments following his post, many of which were quite insightful. Here are my thoughts:

1. Our objective is people who love Jesus.

It is important to note that while church attendance may facilitate this objective, it its not the objective. It is also not a prerequisite to the objective of loving and pleasing Jesus.

If they love Him, they will seek to please Him by obeying Him. The goal of our teaching is to teach them how to please Him.

However, it is very difficult to objectively measure someone's love for Jesus. Therefore, we instead measure things that can be objectively determined, like church attendance. George Barna and Ed Setzer, who work hard to objectively measure everything, say that a growing number of evangelicals are following God apart from the conventional church

2. "Church" as it exists today bears little resemblance to the "gathering of believers" in the New Testament.

Today, a "church" is a legal entity with its own needs. It requires a steady diet of money and a variety of staff to care for it. Regardless of its creeds and assertions to the contrary, for many churches their primary function is not training Lovers of God but rather self-perpetuation. With staff to pay, mortgages to pay, buildings to build and/or maintain it is inevitable that budgetary matters become a central issue in many churches. How many times has a church's direction been altered to satisfy a key (read: wealthy) member? More often than any of us would like to admit.

I can remember when I first got the revelation that a church was not a building. Once freed from that constraint, the concept of church became much broader and I believe more Biblical. I cannot help but wonder if we are now due for another redefining of church which eliminates the formal organizational entity.

The fastest growing church in the world today is the underground church in China. I may be mistaken, but it it my understanding that for the most part, it has no formal organizational entity, staff, property or budget. It is simply a set of people who love Jesus and gather together when possible to share their love for Him and each other. This appears to be the closest thing to the new testament church around today.

3. People (Christians) in the church tend to be more healthy, mature, fruitful and productive than those outside the church.

The simple reality is that, far too often, Christians outside the church do not gather together informally and fulfill the functions of the body. They lack for input in their lives and output of their gifts. They become distracted, scattered and ineffective.

We need each other and do not function well as "Lone Rangers." We were never intended to do so.

An organized group of people (an organization) is able to pool resources to accomplish things that individuals or unorganized groups cannot.

Perhaps even an organizational legal entity is consistent with Paul's admonition that everything should done "decently and in order." Even the church in Acts had an administrative staff (deacons overseeing food distribution).

For all its flaws, the reality is that the church is the best thing going.... so far.

4. Ride the Wave

If the current trend of people leaving the church in droves continues, then there are two ways to deal with it.

1. Try to change the way we do church so that people don't leave.
2. Prepare people to survive and thrive and minister in the world to come... one in which the conventional church is less significant than it has historically been.

I think the answer is both...

More to come.

In the mean time check out Spiritual Obesity and A Time to Leave.