Is the American Church Non-essential?
I’m a pastor of a local church. I’ve been in some form of ministry for about a decade. So much of my lifestyle, passion, and vocation has been wrapped up in ‘doing’ church. I love the church. And so it breaks my heart to see the American church weak in the knees right now, reeling from a punch to the temple by this pandemic. As people scramble to survive and hold on to some sense of sanity, our culture is quickly identifying and holding on to what is “essential.” And the church is being treated by the culture as “non-essential.” It’s being dropped. But I really can’t blame them.
An artist named Tyson Motsenbocker synthesizes the way many in our culture feel about the church in his song Sunday Morning. This is the chorus.
Well is God just a feeling
You can use at your will?
Beat your heart inside the loving
Pull the trigger when you kill
Well your promise of a new life
Read closer to a warning
So I don't blame anyone for passing
What gets sold on Sunday morning
Much has been said about the sharp decline in church participation over the last 20 years. The internet is full of statistics that bear witness to the imploding institution of organized Christianity in America. Here is an example of a study I find helpful. But it’s not all doom and gloom for the church. The statistics point out that there remains a remnant who are still deeply engaged in The Way of Jesus. And as first hand experience has taught me, God is still alive and well. He is still preserving his church in America.
But what is undoubtedly happening is the fat is being burned off the American church. It’s like a boat crashing through a violent storm. The excess non-essentials are being thrown overboard by the crew. What’s hard to watch is that cultural Christians have spent more time holding the dessert fork and now they can’t find the oars.
The reason I can sympathize with people who treat the church as non-essential is that the American church is obsessed with what is non-essential. What passes for church in many places is nothing more than glib religious entertainment—a sideshow of surface level platitudes delivered by people desperate to keep their hulking organization profitable. I know that sounds harsh. But I’ve been there. I’ve felt the pressure of that mindset. I still wrestle with it. As a worship leader for many years I feel the first hand pressure to keep people’s attention and ‘engagement.’ Which ironically is what every online marketing strategy is obsessed with right now. And I’m not saying engagement is wrong. A deep engagement and attention between lovers is a beautiful thing. But a cheap grab for attention is like pornography; it’s gross. There’s a difference between a lover’s engagement and a Hardees commercial. The problem is that the church has been trying to tell a deep love story by engaging people like a Hardees ad.
So as the culture rocks in the boat, terrified, anxious, lonely, scared of death, I am not at all surprised that people are passing on the consumer Christ the American church is so desperate to sell. In an effort to grab the attention of the consumer the church has tried to make Christ more palatable. We have minimized his death, his blood, his terrifying judgement, in order to appeal to what people actually want to hear. What passes for sermons in many churches is nothing more than a moralized TED talk. And what happens when the church tamps down the unpopular parts of the Bible’s message, and sands over all the rough edges, is that you get a church that makes absolutely no sense of any real problem any real person has. When the church is more concerned with getting kids into a ball-pit then they are getting people into the grave of our baptism, that’s when we have lost it. We deserve to be treated as non-essential.
But the Christ of real Christianity is not like this. The real Christ walks through the barren wilderness devouring the Word of God as his only source of sustenance. The real Christ terrifies the demonic, enlightens the ignorant, and heals the festering corruption of this world. And most of all, the real Christ willingly embraced the torturous death of the cross, conquering death itself. This Christ beckons us to join him. This Christ alone makes sense of suffering. It’s not going to be pretty. It’s not easy. In fact, Jesus himself said his followers should count the cost in living his way. “Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple” (Lk 14:27). But the reason we follow Christ is not to avoid suffering but to join him in it so that we may also join him in his glory. The point of church is not to offer people a false illusion that our boat sails on comfortable seas. The real church sails on the choppy waters of real life with Christ himself in the boat.
As I write this our church is engaged in the season of Advent. I am haunted by its story. I am haunted by the brokenness of the present and the longing for renewal. But I’m also thankful that the incorruptible Christ joined us in our corruption and promises to make us incorruptible. But the path to glory is through the door of death. Because death has a way to demonstrate what is important. Why do you think the Gospels spend so much time on the death of Christ. This is ultimately why I am optimistic that the church will emerge healthy and purified by this pandemic. Entertainment only church will die. Superficial church will die. The evangelical industrial complex will grind out and halt. And what will emerge will be what has always been. The people of God sojourning through this world as exiles following Jesus home. But until we arrive home we must listen for the voice crying out of the wilderness, the voice in the stillness, the voice of God saying, come child—come and die so that you may live.