That is the question I am asking myself. It is a question that we wrestled with in a BILD course several years ago. I am just going to make some observations first of what I have seen in church and in bible studies I have been in. I encourage you to start thinking and questioning the church form you have if you are feeling uncomfortable in the culture that your church is presenting.
I saw more than a few of the guys in the course wrestle with the fact that the way they portrayed their church did not match up with what we were learning. It was hard for some, understandably. They were born and raised with a paradigm of how church is supposed to be-the structure, form, worship, leadership, etc. And what they/we were reading in the Bible was not lining up with their paradigm/model. It is a difficult thing to change one’s paradigm, I should know. Mine has changed on many things and it is due to what I have learned through experiences-some good, some not always so fun. And from where I sit, a lot of people are happy to live in ignorance. I admit it is easier but not very productive. And there are others that just insist that things are supposed to/will work out/happen the way they want. This is a very narcissistic view and is a spirit of pride.
My observations: in scripture the church was for the believers of Christ. They gathered together for prayer, study of the Word and fellowship. It was not for evangelism. They did evangelism during the week and when they came together they need to be recharged, to share what was going on in their life (good, bad, ugly) and be encouraged and built up again.
Today we see that we have tried to condense it all into a Sunday morning. Fellowship, evangelism, study of the Word and prayer (if there is time). We want to do our evangelism on a Sunday morning, that way we don’t have to do it the rest of the week. We just want the church to be a welcoming place to everyone. Then the pastor can do the evangelism and we don’t have to. It is a copout plain and simple. And we rarely share the struggles that are going on in our lives. Why? Because we want everyone to think that we are fine-show no weaknesses. So everyone puts on a smile and when asked “How are you?”, the answer is almost always “fine”. How sad that people feel that they have to put on the mask to people they are supposed to be brothers and sisters in Christ with. Do we really think we are fooling the world? We are NOT. They see the hypocrisy and they want nothing to do with it.
You have a lot of people that I will call the “fat and happy” people. Paul addressed these people in his letter to the church in 1 Corinthians. These people just want to be spoon fed. They want to come on a Sunday morning and sit, hear a sermon that makes them feel good. They do not want to be challenged or held accountable. This I dare say is the majority of the church in America today. And they will fall away when persecution comes because they do not understand. They want to think the Christian life is supposed to be a happy, easy; everything works out the way they think it is supposed to life. They will kick Christ to the curb because He did not do what they thought He should. And that is the kind of believers we are growing. God will hold us accountable. People are afraid of speaking the Truth and of letting others speak it either. They are afraid of attendance going down and the budget not being met. Many would just rather love people to hell. How sad that our fear, pride, and self-centeredness now controls us/the church.
Let me challenge you to do a study of the scripture and see for yourself what the church is to be. And I warn you that it just may change your paradigm. If that happens- what are you going to do about it?
There are many that think that there may need to be a revolution in this country to get back to where we need to be and I would suggest that we need a revolution(revival) in the Church (the Bride of Christ) to get back where we belong.
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