What’s Keeping Churches from Making Disciples?
Most churches know that discipleship is the main mission of the church. It’s in most mission statements. Yet, what kind of person does the church produce? The Christ-commanded product is a disciple who makes disciples.[1]
Disciples trust Jesus as Lord and Boss, and follow Him by imitating His life and obeying His teachings.[2] Jesus calls disciples to deny themselves, take up their cross daily, and follow Him. This means disciples have repented of sin, forsaken the world, and committed their lives to follow Him. Historically, being a disciple involved learning, studying, and passing along the master’s teachings.[3]
Is this what the church is making? Many would say no. To a great extent, I agree. Even back in 1988, Bill Hull said,
The evangelical church has become weak, flabby, and too dependent on artificial means that can only simulate real spiritual power. Churches are too little like training centers to shape up the saints and too much like cardiopulmonary wards at the local hospital. We have proliferated self-indulgent consumer religion, the what-can-the-church-do-for-me syndrome. We are too easily satisfied with conventional success: bodies, bucks, and buildings. The average Christian resides in the comfort zone of “I pay the pastor to preach, administrate, and counsel. I pay him, he ministers to me… I am the consumer, he is the retailer.”[4]
While churches are biblically mandated and should be structured to make disciples, many churches prioritize attendance and attractive programs over discipleship, which results in discipleship deficiencies. Discipleship involves more than mere head knowledge; it involves intentionally instructing Jesus’ followers to “observe all that Jesus commanded” and to become disciple-makers themselves.
So, Hull says, “The crisis at the heart of the church is that we give disciple-making lip service, but do not practice it.”[5] If that’s the case, what are some of the issues keeping churches from making disciples?
1. Cultural Values
The cultural air that we breathe has an imperceptible impact. Christian Smith does a good job explaining some of the cultural values that we can easily unknowingly imbibe in his book, Why Religion Went Obsolete.
David Foster Wallace once told this story:
There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way. The older fish nods at them: “Morning, boys, how’s the water?” The two young fish swim on for a bit, and then one of them looks over at the other. “What the heck is water?”
It can be very difficult to be aware of our own culture and the impact that it is having on us.[6]
Our culture of consumerism and materialism is a big factor. So, Soong-Chan Rah, for example, has said,
Market-driven church that appeals to the materialistic desires of the individual consumer has resulted in a comfortable church, but not a biblical church. The church’s captivity to materialism has resulted in the unwillingness to confront sins such as economic and racial injustice and has produced consumers of religion rather than followers of Jesus.[7]
My point here is that our culture, even our church culture, does not place high value on discipleship. Although we may say we do. Our actions, or inaction, speak louder than our words.
We must let the Bible dictate our church culture, not culture.
2. Budgetary and Building Needs
Related to number one above, we have a church culture in America that is very dependent on buildings and budgets. We often think that for the church to continue, it has to “pack the pews” so the doors can stay open and the lights can stay on. Thus, the budgetary concerns can easily take precedence over all other concerns.
Here’s our thinking: What good can the church do if the church closes? Sunday comes quickly, and we need to have good sermons and programs if we hope to bring in the tithe or at least some form of giving.
Discipleship can easily take a back seat. Discipleship can be slow. Jesus walked, talked, and trained His disciples. This took time. Lots of time. Actual years. Yet, a movement of multiplication can happen when we make disciples.
We have conditioned ourselves for a type of fast-food or industrial revolution discipleship mentality. We want disciples quick, right off the express line. But that’s not how disciples have ever been made. But perhaps, especially now in our increasingly post-Christian, Bible-illiterate world.
We must care more about building up the actual body of Christ and not prioritize the church building (and budget).
3. Pastoral Identity Issues
Sadly, having been in pastoral ministry for 17 years and worked in various church contexts, sometimes there are pastoral identity issues that prevent pastors from investing in discipleship. It doesn’t feed a pastor’s ego if a lot of people don’t show up (however, “a lot of people” is defined). But Jesus didn’t always have a lot of people around Him. And sometimes when He did, He would say some very controversial things, and then many would leave. Christ’s goal was not a crowd, but “little Christs.”
A pastor’s ego is not fed when he equips others to do the work of the ministry, when he gives away ministry, helps others faithfully lead, shrugs out of the limelight, and pushes others towards success. But Christian ministry was never supposed to be about anyone’s ego.
But you know what is fed when a pastor doesn’t feed his ego? The church is fed, and it thus grows in both size and maturity because it is functioning as Jesus always intended it to function. Not as a one-person show, but as the church body being loving light wheresoever the church body finds itself throughout the week.
The church is an immaterial reality, and it was never meant to be bound by a material building; it was always meant to find physical expression in the living and breathing, walking and talking (incarnate), temples of God that Jesus’ people are. Just as the word of God was not bound, although Paul was bound in prison, God’s church is not bound to a building.
It is most healthy when it’s out loving in the wild world. That’s what it was always meant for. The telos or purpose of a candle is to be a source of light in darkness. It’s the same with the church. The church is called to be light in darkness and salt in a world of rot and decay. Notice, Jesus did not give the church something aspirational when He said, “You are the light of the world.” Jesus said something ontological. He said what we are.
I’m concerned that many pastors’ call to serve the church is self-serving. Pastors are often concerned about “their” church, not the Church. Pastors, sad to say, can be more concerned about their building being full rather than heaven being full.
The church is to make much of Jesus the Good Shepherd and not exalt any human.
4. Lack of Leadership Diversity (APEST)
“APEST” stands for apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers. The Lord of the church has given these varied gifts to the church so that it will be balanced and mature (see Ephesians 4). Sadly, however, these gifts often find expression disconnected from the other gifts.
(It’s important to note that when I talk about APEST, I am talking about gifting. Not office or authority.)
Churches with certain types of leaders will move in certain directions. Teacher types tend to be thinkers, writers, researchers, and theologians. Shepherds tend to be carers, counselors, and community builders. Evangelists tend to be recruiters to the cause, apologists, and networkers. Prophets tend to call people to change, have holy criticism, and care deeply about social issues. Apostles pioneer, innovate, and create new approaches and structures.[8]
It seems the most common type of church, at least in the West, is the shepherd/teacher church.[9] This often results in a “knowledge-based community where right doctrine is seen to be more important than rightdoing.”[10] There is often an overemphasis on the sermon and Sunday service, and community, discipleship, and evangelism are an afterthought.
Again, diversity and balance are important. “The one-dimensional teaching church attracts people who love to be taught and tends to alienate other forms of spiritual expression. This is seldom a good thing because such churches simply become vulnerable to groupthink or even mass delusion. This has happened way too often… witness the many one-dimensional charismatic/vertical prophetic movements of the last century. Or consider the asymmetrical mega-church that markets religion and ends up producing consumptive, dependent, underdeveloped, cultural Christians with an exaggerated sense of entitlement.”[11]
The fact that “we have sought to negotiate our way in the world without three of the five functions (by elevating teaching and shepherding and neglecting evangelism, the prophetic, and the apostolic) accounts for so many of the problems we face in the church.”[12]
5. Lack of Commitment to the New Testament Ideal
Many times, we don’t know what we’re aiming for when it comes to disciples. We often lack a clear definition, or it’s a knowledge-based definition. Churches often emphasize orthodoxy (right belief) over orthopraxy (right practice). This results in many churchgoers who know a lot but don’t necessarily do a lot. But the great commission doesn’t just say “teach.” Its aim is practice. The Great Commission says, “teach them to observe everything I have commanded” (Matt. 28:20).
The church body is made up of individual members who together and separately worship, reflect, and share. The church is not an institution or an event. It is a living and moving organism. It is embodied all over every sector of society. So, we must ask, are disciples being made who make disciples who know, grow, and go?
The New Testament ideal is every believer practicing the missional mandate. It’s not just about knowing, but about going and doing all that Jesus commanded. The church must have growth goals or metrics that match the mission that Jesus has given to the church.
6. Lack of A Model to Emulate
The Apostle Paul said, “Imitate me as I imitate Christ” (1 Cor. 11:1). Jesus is the New Testament ideal. We are to imitate Him. And “Jesus poured His life into a few disciples and taught them to make other disciples.”[13]
So, we have an example to emulate in Jesus and Paul. Christian leaders must also provide examples and practice what they preach.[14] If pastors, for example, are—intentionally or unintentionally—held up as the Christian ideal, there are certain implications. If pastors mainly study and teach publicly or mainly function as CEOs, then that’s what is being modeled to people. And not lived everyday discipleship.
Conclusion
Good things often distract from the best things. And actually, some of the things churches do that they think are good only serve to create a culture of consumerism. Things must change. We must obey Jesus and make disciples who make disciples. We must make whatever structural and organizational changes are necessary to ensure we’re carrying out Jesus’ commission.[15]
I propose a new approach to “doing church” because, to a great extent, the way we’re currently doing church, at least in the West, is not working. We are not making disciples who make disciples in accordance with our Lord’s command. To a great extent, the church is making sitters. We must take our Boss’s words seriously and make structural and organizational changes.
Transformation happens less by argument and more by creating new rhythms and practices that shift not only people’s thinking but also their values and core commitments. We think, practice, and love our way into transformation. As Alan Hirsch has perceptively said, “The best way of making ideas have impact is to embed them into the very rhythms and habits of the community in the form of common tools and practices.”[16]
We need to stop just talking about discipleship and having programs for discipleship. We need something more radical. We need to scrap the old ways that allow for abstraction, and instead create regular rhythms that embody application.
Notes
[1] See Bill Hull, The Disciple-Making Pastor, 14.
[2] See Michael S. Heiser, What Does God Want? (Blind Spot Press, 2018), 94–95 and Ken Wilson, Finding God in the Bible: A Beginner’s Guide to Knowing God (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2005), 86.
[3] Robert B. Sloan Jr., “Disciple,” in Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary, ed. Chad Brand et al. (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2003), 425.
[4] Bill Hull, The Disciple-Making Pastor, 12.
[5] Hull, The Disciple-Making Pastor, 15.
[6] Alan Hirsch, 5Q: Reactivating the Original Intelligence and Capacity of the Body of Christ.
[7] Soong-Chan Rah, The Next Evangelicalism, 63.
[8] There are a few Johns who stick out as teachers. John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, and John MacArthur. Here are some other examples: George Whitefield (evangelist/apostle), John Piper (teacher/prophet), Charles Spurgeon (evangelist/prophet), Mother Teresa (shepherd) Richard Baxter (shepherd/teacher), Teresa of Avila (prophet/teacher), St. Patrick (apostle/shepherd) John Wimber (apostle/evangelist), David Platt (teacher/prophet), Hudson Taylor (apostle/evangelist), Catherine Booth (apostle), Dietrich Bonhoeffer (prophet/teacher), Billy Graham (evangelist), and Martin Luther King Jr. (prophet).
[9] “The church is actually perfectly designed by shepherds and teachers to produce shepherding and teaching outcomes. The organizational bias of the inherited form of church organization is in a real sense a reflection of the consciousness of the people who designed it in the first place!” (Alan Hirsch, 5Q).
[10] Hirsch, 5Q.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Spader, Four Chair Discipling, 36. “These few disciples, within two years after the Spirit was poured out at Pentecost, went out and “filled Jerusalem” with Jesus’ teaching (Acts 5:28). Within four and a half years they had planted multiplying churches and equipped multiplying disciples (Acts 9:31). Within eighteen years it was said of them that they “turned the world upside down” (Acts 17;6 ESV). And in twenty-eight years it was said that the gospel is bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole world” (Col. 1:6). For four years Jesus lived out the values He championed in His Everyday Commission. He made disciples who could make disciples!” (Ibid.).
[14] Jesus had a specific method which we would be wise to observe and follow. See, for example, Matthew 9:35-39: “Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.'” Jesus went, taught, proclaimed, healed, saw, and had compassion. He equipped disciples and sent them out into the harvest. He didn’t want them to sit in a building or do ministry in a building. What’s needed and what Jesus told us to pray for is laborers sent into the harvest.
[15] “Not much will change until we raise the issue and create controversy, until the American church is challenged to take the Great Commission seriously” (Hull, The Disciple-Making Pastor, 15).
[16] Hirsch, 5Q.
*Photo by Nellie Adamyan
Bloated Churches Aren’t Necessarily Healthy Churches
Bloated churches aren’t necessarily healthy churches. This is especially true since we live in an extremely consumeristic culture, and churches are closing all the time. Transfer growth is very common, but it’s not exactly a mark of health.[1] The reality is “the churches that are growing are picking up people from churches that aren’t growing, not from conversion growth.”[2]
This is the case for most of the biggest and brightest churches in America.[3] In fact, “Studies show only 3-5% of American churches are growing primarily through conversion growth. The remaining growth is mostly transfer growth.”[4]
This has been happening for decades. Bigger churches are getting bigger, and smaller churches are getting smaller. It’s part of the great evangelical recession. It’s what happens in times of decline. “In the same way book stores consolidated when Amazon and online book sales emerged, or General Motors consolidated after the Great Recession, getting rid of Pontiac, Hummer, Saturn, and other divisions to focus on its remaining brands.”[5]
Church bloat is a consolidation of resources. Similar to what happens during a siege. It is a “game of attrition.” Mega churches have a type of efficiency that results from consolidated resources. They can have fewer pastors per attendee, can repeat church services, and livestream at other campuses. Higher-paying pastoral positions can be supplemented with lower-paying positions. Mega churches have found a way to get the “most bang for their buck.”
The bloating is not mainly a positive trend. It’s actually a sign or symptom of some negative trends in America. Christian Smith lays out some of those in his book, Why Religion Went Obsolete. The bloating is a sign of the times. Thus, the growth or decline of a church is not necessarily the direct result of local leadership. It could rather be due to trends beyond the control of leadership.[6]
What are some of the potential downsides to church bloat? In the past, I’ve shared about the potential and common problems with mega church. If church bloat continues, then those accompanying problems are very likely to increase. Here are a few: superstar pastor culture,[7] reduced pastoral care, fewer connections and community, and a consumeristic mentality.[8] Also, consolidation of resources and growth in the size of one church is not necessarily growth in the Church (That is, the Kingdom of God). This is certainly the case if the church is growing primarily through transfer growth.[9]
How Do You Avoid Church Bloat?
The treatment suggested for human bloating is avoiding the consumption of gas-producing foods. It’s similar for the church. We stop church bloat by stopping consumerism.
When the emphasis is on serving inside the church building it leads to bloat. Service inside the building leads to a sedentary lifestyle instead of service in the local community where it’s most needed. The church body must exercise the muscles of evangelism and service or be atrophied.[10]
The church has always been called to serve and do things like watch kids. But the New Testament never hints that it should primarily take place in a church building. Quite the opposite actually. The church is to be light in darkness, which entails the church being involved in the world, not closeted away from it.
It should also be noted that when someone’s belly is bloated, they feel full, but there’s not a lot of substance or health inside. It’s similar in some churches. Things look full and may even look healthy, but it’s just bloat. People are in the seats, but disciples aren’t in the streets.
As has been wisely said, “More people doesn’t always mean more disciples” and “Showing up isn’t growing up.” Healthy churches make disciples who make disciples. The goal is four generations of disciple-makers (2 Tim. 2:2). The goal is disciples who make disciples. The goal is not church bloat. Church bloat looks full, but full is not healthy.
Notes
[1] Competing with the church down the street is not exactly making a big dent in the ledger of heaven and may be a distraction from hell.
[2] Carey Nieuwhof, “5 Disruptive Church Trends that will Rule 2025.”
[3] “Even when a church is on a list like Outreach’s Fastest Growing or Largest Church list, a deeper drill down shows that a lot of growth is simply transfer growth” (Carey Nieuwhof, “5 Disruptive Church Trends that will Rule 2025”).
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Of course, this is not to say that leadership plays no role. It is very important. But, to take an example to demonstrate my point, churches that were set up well for livestream pre-COVID-19 had a growth advantage over those who did not.
[7] Mega churches can easily become a breeding ground for toxic leadership and a lack of accountability.
[8] What if church bloat is a symptom of pandering to people’s insatiable pursuit of pleasure in the form of convenience and lack of need for relational commitment? What if popularity and church bloat could potentially be a symptom of something sinister? What if the growth is not through healthy, real-life, and whole-life apprenticeship to Jesus but something else? What if the pull is not discipleship but the offloading of duty? Instead of drawing near to God, and He will draw near to us (James 4:8), we have convenient worship experiences. Instead of bringing up our kids in the instruction of the Lord, we have a youth group. Instead of practicing the one another passages, we have the occasional handshake or community group on our terms when it’s convenient. Instead of evangelism, we have invitation. Instead of Kingdom growth, we have church bloat.
[9] It should also be pointed out that our evangelistic strategy is very expensive. In the USA, we spend roughly $1.5 million on church functions per baptism of one new convert (David B. Barrett and Todd M. Johnson, World Christian Trends AD 30-AD 2200, 520-29). Notice, this is a convert, not a discipled and faithful follower of Jesus. Part of the reason for such expense per baptism is most American churches have a “come and see” model instead of a “go and tell” model.
[10] A bloated church ironically can lead to a cachectic church.
*Photo by Kate Tweedy
Quotes and Takeaways from Christian Smith’s Book, Why Religion Went Obsolete
Christian Smith’s book, Why Religion Went Obsolete, is a sobering wake-up call. We would be wise to consider his well-researched work. And wake up to reality and make adjustments to meet the challenges ahead as best we can.
Smith[1] contends that a profound and multifaceted cultural shift has made traditional American religion increasingly irrelevant and unattractive. He argues that “Religion has not merely declined; it has become culturally obsolete.”[2] The irrelevance of religion is different than just decline or secularization. Instead, Smith basically summarizes the problem this way: “The vibes are off.”[3]
The cultural air we breathe essentially contains pollutants that subtly shape people. It makes them not care about or have time or attention for religion. We may not like it, but we can’t change reality by ignoring it. But it’s not just the surrounding culture that is at fault for the decline. The church itself is liable. One of Christian Smith’s chapter titles is fittingly, “Religious Self-Destructions.”
Many Christian leaders don’t realize the extent of what’s going on. Or they would rather stay the course, doing more of the same. Yet, if we continue on this course, we will get more of the same but with increasingly less successful results. If Christian leaders don’t make the necessary changes, they will burn up and burn out. They will think the answer is more—more of everything and better everything. But that’s not the answer. If we understand the problem incorrectly, we will not be able to come up with the correct solution, and we will be weary and discouraged.
Imagine someone buys a brand-new electric car. But when it starts acting up, they open the hood and start looking for the carburetor. They look around for spark plugs and try to change the oil. They’re frustrated because they don’t know what to do, and nothing looks familiar. But they just keep trying to do the same old thing.
What’s the problem? They’re treating an electric car like it’s a gas-powered one. Same idea on the outside—four wheels, steering wheel, gets you from point A to B—but a completely different system under the hood. We assume what worked before will work again, without realizing the “engine” has changed. We can’t keep using gas tools on electric systems.
We aren’t in Christendom anymore. Christians are speaking a dying language. Church buildings and institutions are increasingly seen as out of touch. Increasingly, America resembles Europe and the culture of Rome at the time of the early church.
What’s the solution?[4] Christian Smith suggests getting down to the core. What are Jesus’ followers trying to do and why? What are the essential core traditions, identities, and missions—without which we would not exist—versus cultural positions that may seem non-negotiable but are actually liabilities? We can’t scramble to just try to keep the status quo intact. A whole new paradigm is needed.[5]
10 Quotes from Why Religion Went Obsolete
“Traditional religion has been losing ground among Americans, especially younger ones, no matter how you measure it: affiliation, practices, beliefs, identities, number of congregations, and confidence in religious organizations have all been declining” (p. 34).
“American religion’s demise has not been due to its farfetched belief contents—as most atheists and some secularization theorists would have it—but because of its own fossilized cultural forms that it was unable to shake. Religion in the Millennial zeitgeist felt alien and disconnected from what mattered in life—in short, badly culturally mismatched. The vibes were off” (p. 338).
“Church closings overtook new church plantings in the latter 2010s.18 In 2014, an estimated 4,000 new Protestant churches were planted, while 3,700 closed that year, resulting in a net gain of 300. In 2019, before COVID-19 spread in the United States, about 3,000 Protestant churches were started but 4,500 closed, resulting in a net loss of 1,500 in one year” (p. 32).
“In 2000, the median number of attendees at a worship service was 137 people. By 2020, that number was reduced to 65—a 52% loss in size in 20 years” (p. 32-33).
“In the mid-1980s, more than two-thirds of Americans believed that clergy had high or very high moral standards. By 2021, however, those ratings were cut by more than half, from 67% in 1985 to 32% in 2023. The ratings by younger Americans, ages 18-34, fell even more sharply, from a high of 70% in 1985 to a mere 22% in 2021” (p. 35).
“Most Americans see religion as a non-essential—an option, a supplement, a life accessory from which someone may or may not benefit” (p. 47).[6]
“The decline of traditional American religion is a massive social change, the kind that doesn’t happen often, and it can be difficult to wrap one’s head around how such a massive change can occur” (p. 60).
“In brief, one key takeaway about the Millennial zeitgeist is this: through immense, tectonic shifts in global and national sociocultural orders, the terrain on which religion and secularism have long contended as binary rivals has undergone upheaval and reconfiguration. New players have gained in numbers and influence. The cultural landscape has become more complex and, for religion, more challenging than before. Understanding the big picture adequately requires recognizing the larger significance of this rise of spirituality and occulture” (p. 335).[7]
“Not all Americans pay attention to these denominational culture wars. But those who do quickly learn that these religious groups are not simply collections of believers who share similar creeds and convictions. They are bureaucratic institutions-an immediate red flag for those who distrust organizations-with complex administrative structures” (p. 269).
Many “believe religious institutions are at best superfluous and at worst dangerous” (p. 347).[8]
Notes
[1] Christian Smith is the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Sociology and founding director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Notre Dame.
[2] Christian Smith, Why Religion Went Obsolete: The Demise of Traditional Faith in America, 2. “The decline of traditional American religion is a massive social change, the kind that doesn’t happen often, and it can be difficult to wrap one’s head around how such a massive change can occur” (Ibid., 60).
[3] Smith, Why Religion Went Obsolete, 338. “The issues, rather, thrash around the semiconscious subjectivities of young people who rove about their lives with fine-tuned antennae sensing whether or not things give off the right ‘vibe.’ Does it ‘resonate?’ Does it give off ‘good energy?’ Life in this dimension is sorted out in realms of tacit, intuitive, instinctive knowledge and response–always informed by the background zeitgeist. Cultural mismatch meant that, for most younger Americans, traditional religion did not resonate, so they discarded it.” (Christian Smith, Why Religion Went Obsolete, 64)
[4] It has been wisely said, “Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.” Perhaps part of the problem is the current “design” of the church.
[5] Christian Smith, Why Religion Went Obsolete, 372. Many do not understand the need for a new paradigm. “The denial is also present within many churches, as older believers pastors and laity alike-respond to the falling away of young people from faith with either flat denial of the seriousness of the problem or by resorting to failed strategies that at least feel familiar. A Southern Baptist pastor friend focused on evangelizing youth complained bitterly to me that the church’s state-level leadership was spending a fortune on programs that made sense in the 1980s, when those leaders were young, but that had no chance of working today. This allowed the leaders to believe that they were doing something to address the crisis of unbelief among the so-called Zoomers, when in fact these leaders were only propping up illusions of a glorious Christian past” (Rod Dreher, Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age, 101).
[6] If church is simply a “service” where we go and sit, then to a great extent, most people’s perception is true.
[7] See also, for example, Carl Trueman’s book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution.
[8] “Institutional religion compelled them to distance themselves from religion” (Ibid.). “One can subtract the institution and retain the essence of religion” (Ibid.).
The Solution for Church Decline is Not More of the Same
In his book Why Religion Went Obsolete, Christian Smith argues that a significant cultural shift has made traditional American religion increasingly irrelevant and unattractive. He argues that “Religion has not merely declined; it has become culturally obsolete.”[1] The irrelevance of religion is different than just decline or secularization.
The cultural air we unknowingly imbibe essentially contains pollutants that subtly shape people to not care about or have time or attention for religion. We may not like it but we can’t change reality by ignoring it. But it’s not just the surrounding culture that is at fault for the decline of church in the West. The church itself is liable. One of Smith’s chapter titles, “Religious Self-Destructions,” is spot-on.
Many Christian leaders don’t realize the extent of the problem or would rather stick to the same old ways. But if we keep doing the same thing, we’ll get the same results, but with less success. If Christian leaders don’t change course, they’ll burn out and become discouraged. They might think the answer is to do more of everything and make everything better, but that’s not the answer. If the problem is misunderstood we will not be able to come up with the correct solution.
Imagine someone buying a brand-new electric car. But when it starts acting up, they open the hood and start looking for the carburetor. They look around for spark plugs and try to change the oil. They’re frustrated because they don’t know what to do and nothing looks familiar. But they just keep trying to do the same old thing.
What’s the problem? They’re treating an electric car like it’s a gas-powered one. Same idea on the outside—four wheels, steering wheel, gets you from point A to B—but a completely different system under the hood. To fix it, they need a new kind of knowledge, a new toolset, and probably a whole new way of thinking.
Sometimes we try to fix new challenges in the church using recycled methodology. We assume what worked before will work again, without realizing the extent of change that has taken place and the challenges ahead.
We aren’t in Christendom anymore. Christians are speaking a dying language. Church buildings and institutions are increasingly seen as out of touch.
American religion’s demise has not been due to its farfetched belief contents—as most atheists and some secularization theorists would have it—but because of its own fossilized cultural forms that it was unable to shake. Religion in the Millennial zeitgeist felt alien and disconnected from what mattered in life—in short, badly culturally mismatched. The vibes were off.[2]
Christian Smith suggests getting down to the core. What are Jesus’ followers trying to do and why? What are the essential core traditions, identities, and missions—without which we would not exist—versus cultural positions that may seem non-negotiable but are actually liabilities? We can’t be satisfied with just trying to keep the status quo intact. A whole new paradigm is needed.[3]
The solution for church decline is not more of the same, and I don’t believe the solution is mega church either. I think the solution is Christians getting back to the simple center of Christ and Christ-formed communities without all the unnecessary clutter and cultural-Christian baggage.
(I plan to layout more of my thoughts in a few posts to follow)
Notes
[1] Christian Smith, Why Religion Went Obsolete, 2. “The decline of traditional American religion is a massive social change, the kind that doesn’t happen often, and it can be difficult to wrap one’s head around how such a massive change can occur.” (Smith, Why Religion Went Obsolete, 60) “In 2000, the median number of attendees at a worship service was 137 people. By 2020, that number was reduced to 65—a 52% loss in size in 20 years.” (Ibid., 32-33).
[2] Ibid., 338.
[3] Ibid., 372.
*Photo by Paul Volkmer
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