If you were over at Mike Duran’s and part of the conversation about the drop-off in church attendance I made (a tacky) reference to my own past writings on the subject. Here they are.
1. My Problem With Youth Ministries Pretty much as described.
2. Why People Don’t Go To Church A few of the top reasons I’ve gleaned from discussion on the topic with former, now embittered, church attenders.
3. At Least No Wives Have Yet Been Set On Fire. A discussion on the nature and cause of church splits and their effect on children growing up in the church community.
4. Mega-churches Part II A short (very) discussion about the effect of Mega churches on modern church culture.
5. A List For Modern Worship Leaders. A controversial post where I express some frustration with my experience with worship leaders of multiple churches of late. Several commenters take this criticism as a sort of betrayal of the faith as a whole.
6. Is Christianity Too Insular? More of a discussion on the structure of the culture of the faith. But with church implications
7. Dear Churches In America A discussion about church finances during the recession
There are more, but these, I think, are the key posts in my mind.
Dare I look? I tend to think that those not going to church are divided into unbelievers, church-phobic/wounded, and believers who hate the clippy-clappy-cake-bake traditions of modern churchery and churchianity.
I’d add one more category: those who know better but who have allowed the evil one to keep them from connecting somewhere.
That’s been me, twice, and I have nobody to blame but myself. I knew better but allowed myself to rationalize some really silly things. I thought that I was justified not plugging into a church body because of the way the pastor preached, or the ‘quality’ of the sermons. So I drifted away for four years and justified my decision as ‘I don’t need to go to church as long as I love the Lord and am reading / listening to material at home.’ The problem was, if I really loved the Lord, I’d have obeyed his commands, one of which is not to neglect going to church. The other was, I wasn’t reading / listening to anything at home. I wasn’t praying. I was just not going, and drifting further from God while fooling myself that I was too authentic to settle for going to /that/ church.
What I didn’t realize was how I was drifting away from God and starting to entertain some really wacky and destructive things. But more than that was how that lapse affected my son’s life. He was at a crucial age while I stayed away, and when I was convicted and plugged back in, he had already decided that he was agnostic, that you couldn’t know there’s a God. Now I’m terrified that my buddy, my intelligent and funny son may miss communion with God and eternity with the Body because I abdicated my responsibilities out of selfishness when he needed to be plugged in the most.
I’m now having to try to play catch-up. I’m trying to demonstrate that God exists by demonstrating unconditional love, but I’m imperfect, and he’s staring at the normal age of rebellion to boot without the solid foundation I had at that age, when I entertained my own toy rebellion. I pray for my son all the time, and we have a phenomenal relationship for a teen and his dad, but he remains resolute in his stance and I fear I’ve failed him spiritually when he needed me most because I wasn’t obedient when I should have been. When I stand before the throne of judgment, I won’t be able to point the finger at that pastor and his file cabinet of sermons. I won’t be able to point the finger at my wife who ‘should have known better.’ I will only be able to say ‘I sinned, I was wrong.’
If you think of it, pray for me, pray for my son.
And then get yourself to a good, Bible-based church before it’s too late for you, too.
Johne,
That’s long been my concern about opting out of church. For the record, we do belong to a good church now, and we persist in belonging in spite of various issues we have with expenditures.
I know a lot of folks like you who take their ball and stay home because they dont like the praise band or the tv or the, or the, or the. It always strikes me as a cowardly choice.
In my particular case my physical attendance at our church IS limited both by illness and the immunosuppressive drugs i take to treat it. I thank God daily that i have no children to be harmed by my limitations. I also thank God for mp3s that let me hear the sermon when i cant hear it in person.
As to your son…God is bigger than all and can fix anything. I have no doubt your present prayers and those of others will mend any damage you feel youve committed.
Yeah, those are pretty much the breakdowns, although my focus is more on the latter two, being married to one and being myself the other. Luckily we’ve been mostly able to work thru a lot.
It’s interesting how God works. I didn’t seek this out, but fell into a position where I post sermon videos and podcasts for our church online and post them on our church’s Facebook page. I was astonished that the leadership council for the conference I went to this week commented that they are aware that we’re posting our materials shortly after church is over, and think that’s very cool. I was just trying to serve where my interests and abilities matched an existing need.
I’d call that ministry irony, but knowing the heart and character of God, it is, in fact, what you would expect of the living God. ; )
May I ask what your church’s address is? I’m always looking for takeaway services. ;-).
Sure thing. The preacher is pastor Dan Wolf (who is distinguished in my mind by having a fierce love for God and the scriptures, and who also loves science fiction in general, Ray Gun Revival magazine in particular, and who doesn’t tease me too hard about all the cinema / literature pop culture references I can’t seem to help bring up in our small group Bible studies). We attend Foundation Bible Church, a small community church loosely affiliated with the Great Commission Churches. We don’t have a version of the Bible everyone has to use, we strongly believe in grace over legalism, and we like both the Packers /and/ the Bears (or at least that’s our official stance, ymmv).
The church Facebook page where I post both video and podcast links:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Foundation-Bible-Church/313160526832
The source link for the videos:
http://www.vimeo.com/user4013307/videos
The source link for our audio podcasts:
http://foundationchurch.podbean.com/
Our recent foray into listing the podcasts on iTunes:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/foundationchurch/id434921762
Dan’s great. He shepherds a tiny church in an area known as being part of the Bermuda Triangle of Church Plants. We had a gargantuan 120 people visit on Easter Sunday, but usually have between 60 – 80 on a regular summer Sunday.
If you really want to know what Dan’s preaching is all about, his Easter message is a great place to start: Something Worth Believing—Faith That Makes Sense. The sermon itself starts at about the six minute mark:
Heh. I added so many links that the post dropped into the moderation queue.
And I finally got to approve something from the Please Moderate files! Pretty much everything that’s dropped in there lately has been from Turkey and been about who knows what…time shares or bulk vitamin sales I think.
One thing that I note at Mike’s blog (both in his post and in the comments) is that “liberal” is used as a synonym for secularism. That sort of thinking turns away people too. I know people I consider to be amazing Christians of both liberal and conservative political persuasions.
Why oh why does the church need to be political? A church can teach good theology and let church-goers decide for themselves how that theology plays out in other aspects of life. Truly the Bible isn’t a good guidebook for how to vote because it mostly ignores what role government should or shouldn’t play with regards what it teaches.
I think alot of liberals (and truly alot of 20-somethings are liberals) hear the message that Christianity is, above all else (at least around here, it’s not even uncommon to hear a person’s voting record being used as the ultimate litmus test of the strength of their faith), about voting for conservative ideology, and think “Well if that’s what it’s all about, then I don’t want it.”
dolphin, thank you for pointing that out. I AM guilty of equating liberalism w/ secularism. However, when i do so, I’m not so much referring to politics as worldview. But I agree — there’s “amazing Christians of both liberal and conservative political persuasions.” I will try to make that distinction in the future. Thanks!
Politics is divisive. I tend towards one spectrum, but have learned a great deal from those who embrace the other. I believe Christ demonstrated elements of both.
The divisiveness of politics was one of the reasons most often given in my poll of people who are soured on church. As a formerly political person that grieves me. I feel like me and folks like me sold out God in favour of earthly power. It is also why i was called to back away from political divisiveness. My posts arent always as interesting, though…;-)
I went and read his post and pretty much disagree with most of it. What he does not address is the fact that if a child is raised in a Christian home they get most of their worldly knowledge from their parents. When they go to a school of higher learning they are exposed to new ideas and thoughts. The insular nature of a childs world view is the problem. If a person has a whole slue of views they can choose one more moral and ethical to themselves…they might find that non believers or Muslims or others are not the seed of Satan, but just regular people. The upbringing of a Christian child is the item he is amiss in not addressing and lays the whole blame on the school. The school is not the boogy-man, but a place of learning. That is the greatest evil in this mans view.
In one of the comments on his post he says “I attribute it in part to my relentless grilling of their faith and logical processes. And a deep suspicion and skepticism of academic elites.” He is admitting in a manner that he taught them fear.
He also tries to connect the following “Listen, the Church has survived centuries of persecution, corruption, martyrdom, even genocide, and now we want to blame… colleges? Jesus said that the gates of hell could not withstand His church (Matt. 16:18). I think the secular university fits in that category.” His post is a common sad attempt to teach fear and sadly a lot of people hold his view.
Gunner,
I’m kinda glad you brought that up. My focus on the original post was to talk about the ways in which the social church is failing its membership. I left the Otherness alone, precisely because I don’t feel that academic pursuit is in and of itself an Other.
I grew up in an intellectual environment with parents who were rigorous about teaching us critical thinking skills. No book was ever forbidden in my house, no matter what it was about.
As my parents have grown older my mother especially has become a lot more Other-directed in her thinking and it troubles me.
I completely agree that to separate ourselves from intellectual curiousity is the wrong thing to do, and to present academia as a monolithic wrong because of its Otherness is sort of fascist.
Gunner, two objections to your objections: (1) You’re assuming that a Christian home / Christian parents cannot give their child a reasonable, rational, accurate, “worldly knowledge.” (2) You’re also assuming that “the school is NOT the boogy-man,” that they are fair, objective, open and representative to all points of view.
And, to clarify, I do not believe secular universities are “the greatest evil” to American culture. I think I made that pretty clear in my post.
1) I think many Christians can have a balanced world view. I have that in my family. I also have members that speak against the secular world as if it were evil waiting to eat children. Even in the church I was raised in people who were ‘to intellectual’ about dogma, doctrine and faith were looked down upon. Many people go to schools of higher learning and keep their faith, but those that lose it are not the victims of ‘atheistic acedemia” as you said, but victims of new views that were never addressed fully at home. You said it was “the decline of religion” that is to blame, but your whole post spent more time on the evils of schooling that happens AWAY from parental control. If a child cannot think for theirself when they leave home then it is not the schools fault or the religion, but the parents.
2) I have to say that it is not the school, but the range of ideas that are the enemy of the students. You so kindly put education in with genocide and other evils to your defense is a bit lacking.
I think that maybe you do not see the schools as the greatest evil and I will concede that point…but the ideas are the threat and there is no defence unless you educate your children on the issues.