Unfortunately, if I had to do it all over again, I am not sure if I would have done things differently. That is how deeply rooted my feelings against the church are. For me, becoming involved in the church does not warrant the time, energy, hypocrisy, and drama that almost always exists in church organizations. I would rather take a hike in the woods, kayak on a lake in the early morning hours, or personally experience God in my camper than have all the angst in my life caused by attending church.
I have recently started reading a book by Skye Jethani entitled, With: Reimagining a Life With God. Skye Jethani also has a very popular website called SkyeBox. On one of his popular posts, he explains the un-churched and de-churched "movements" from the church. The following are some of the excerpts from that post.
The video below is referenced by Jethani in his blog. I thought it was a good explanation of the "un-churched" and "de-churched". The speaker in this video is Matt Chandler.
"Chandler attributes the exodus of young people to the proclamation (explicitly or implicitly) of a false gospel of “moralistic deism.” This understanding of the Christian life says that if you obey God’s rules he will bless you with what you desire. This represents a form of the prosperity gospel which saturates the Texas soil where Chandler pastors, but it’s also popular beyond the Deep South. (How many teens have been told that abstinence will be rewarded by God with great sex within marriage?) The problem arises when God’s blessing doesn’t come—or doesn’t come in the form we want. Divorce, illness, poor grades, failed relationship—virtually any hardship has the potential to destroy one’s faith in Christ and the church that represents him. So, according to Chandler, people walk away. They enter the ranks of the de-churched.
There is another group within the de-churched population that has not held to a false gospel of morality, and they haven’t walked away from faith in Christ. These Christians have simply lost confidence in the institutional structures and programmatic trappings of the church. For them the institutional church is not an aid in their faith and mission. Rather it’s become a drain on time, resources, and energy. It feels like a black hole with a gravitation pull so strong that not even the light of the gospel can escape its organizational appetite. (that's me folks)
In that same issue of Leadership, Matt Russell wrote about the year he spent interviewing de-churched people in his community. He wrote: "Most people left church not because they had a deep theological problem with something like the virgin birth or the resurrection of Christ. They left because people in the church have the tendency to be small and mean and couldn’t deal honestly with their own sins or the sin of others. As one man put it, “People in the church were more invested in the process of being right than in the process of being honest.”
So, where does this leave us? On one side the de-churched are leaving because they’ve received a false gospel that made promises God has failed to fulfill. On the other side are deeply committed Christians who are finding more meaningful authenticity, mission, and transformation outside the institutional structures of the church".
It seems to me that the church has forgotten that God exists and dwells within people, not the brick and mortar of a church. It seems to me that the church has forgotten that it needs to act like a church, not corporate America. It seems to me that the church has forgotten the greatest commandment of all... to LOVE.
Stay tuned for Part 2 in next week's Campfire Sunday Sermon.
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