Thoughts on the Church Part 1

“Hello, Brother Steve.” Yesterday at church I was greeted by someone with this phrase. I don’t often get greeted this way anymore and it brought me back. When I pastored in Kentucky it is common to greet fellow Christians with that term, whether they went to your church or not it was still Brother or Sister so and so. This moniker comes from Jesus. In Matthew 12:50 Jesus says “For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” Paul continues this familial connection in 1 Timothy 5:1-2 “Do not rebuke an older man but encourage him as you would a father, younger men as brothers, 2 older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, in all purity.” Times have changed and where I live we don’t use those terms anymore. In our churches we talk about being a family and we have those feelings for the people in our church but it seems that we have lost that idea of looking at fellow Christians outside of our church as family. It seems churches in America have adopted more of a individualistic attitude.

Several years ago it became popular to produce T-shirts in our church emblazoned with a “I Love my Church” logo. The Church I served at the time had made several shirts with that logo on them. There is nothing wrong with loving your church; in fact you ought to love your church so much that you get involved, you serve and you give of your time, talents and your treasure. However, due to our individualistic attitude in Americans it seems that we are loving our churches at the expense of the Big C church. In Matthew 16:18 Jesus says, “I will build my church, and all the powers of hell will not conquer it.” Jesus says my church not my churches. The Apostle Paul expounds on this idea extensively through his writings. In Romans 12:5 he writes, “so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Ephesians 4:4 he writes “There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling;” He writes on this theme at least 14 times so we should know that this is important. In John 17 Jesus prays that we would be one and He and the father are one. So to Jesus there is not your church or my church, there is the church.

Unfortunately it seems that this isn’t happening. Churches in America have become tribal in nature. Author Seth Godin has defined a tribe as “a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea.” All of us are in some sort of tribe, whether it be a family, organization or a church. A tribe is not a bad thing but it can be in the church in how we treat people who don’t go to our church. We love our church family but do we love THE church family? Are we rooting for all churches and all Christians or just those inside our walls? Even pastors are not immune from this feeling of my church over your church. Pastors can be VERY tribal. This tribalism is hurting us and it’s hurting our churches. The more tribal we get the more inward focused we will turn.

A new study from Barna states that 1/3 of active Christians are not attending church and some have no intention of going back. A recent poll from Gallup found that church membership is at a all time low of 47%, down 20 points from 2000. These numbers paint a painful picture for the American church. It’s interesting that we have some of the largest churches in the history of the world but we have less overall attendance and the impact of the local church is waning in it’s local community. What’s causing this exodus from the church? Is it that people have walked away from their faith? Gave up on Jesus? That’s what we, in the church, tell ourselves to make us feel better about people leaving but that’s not the whole story.

One of the biggest trending topics on social media is #churchhurt. The stories that are shared there are heart breaking. Former faithful attenders of church, people who love Jesus, are disgusted by what they have seen and experienced and it has driven them away from the church with no intention to go back. In the last 4 months, I have had numerous conversations with people who have been hurt by the church. These people are committed Christians , who love Jesus, but have real issues with the church. These people come from all over the country, many of them messaged me when I resigned from my church. Their stories have been shocking and have saddened me and caused me to rethink my approach to the institution of the church. Some of the things they have described have been things that I have experienced and some I thank Jesus I haven’t had to endure. I have also spoke with 10-12 former pastors, who are former pastors because of how they were treated by the local church. I identify with their stories and empathize with them and know that they are all too real.

These people love Jesus passionately but have been devastated by the community they were supposed to do life with; by the very people they called family and once they left they were out. No contacts, no messages, they were out of sight out of mind. Many stories are like this:

“ I have been gone from our church for more than 2 years and never heard one word from the majority of people. Not one damn, "What happened?"

Or this one from a friend of mine.

“ Haven’t been to church since my cancer scare in September and only two folks have reached out to ask why” .

I have also heard from at least a dozen pastors who have gone through similar things. One said to me “

Sometimes I wonder if people really care for us or if they care more about what we can do for them.”

That is a heartbreaking statement and I feel for my friend. Another said

“The situation caused me to despise everything at the church. It’s a miserable experience,”

Another pastor told me that when he left his church he started getting unfriended on social media by members of his congregation almost immediately. He said,

“It was like they wanted to erase me completely from their life. I had served them, done their weddings, funerals. Visited them when they were sick and they threw me out like yesterday’s garbage.”

One lady, whose husband was on a staff of a church, told me that when they left they were abandoned by everyone, including people they had been friends with for 18 years. Friends who they had vacationed with, raised their kids together and did life with were suddenly gone because they had left the church. Another lady said

“People who leave are seen as ‘outsiders’ & subsequently treated like you’re not ‘one of them.’

Shouldn’t we be better then this? Shouldn’t we care about those who leave our church? Aren’t they still our brother or sister? Recently I was told the story of a lady who decided that God was calling her to leave her church and go to another one. When she told the ladies of her small group the reaction was like she had left the faith. The comments from her friends and the people she was “doing life with” were so mean and hurtful that now she’s in no church. We have got to do better. Maybe the reason church membership is declining is because the unchurched see that we can’t love one another. As my friend Steve said, “It is possible to have friends from other churches.” It’s possible to root on another church. It’s possible to still maintain a closeness to people who leave your church.

It’s possible to say I love THE church.