I’ve noticed what might be a trend in some of the more postmodern (emergent, mega, whathaveyou) churches, but might be in the traditional churches as well. People who have been going to church for years, but haven’t made a decision about faith yet.
I was involved with a church plant for about 10 years and we had a few people who were in the worship center on Sunday mornings, participated in worship, prayer, small groups, community activities and so on, but had never identified themselves as Christ followers.
I started attending a new church about 6 months ago and found some striking similarities despite the more outward differences.
Size:
Old church = 75-100 on Sundays
New church = 1200-1400 on Sundays
Focus:
Both churches made a conscious and public decision to reach people who are searching.
Both consider small groups to be the way that community happens.
Both had an aggressive social justice program to meet local community needs.
Worship style:
Both churches have cool multi-media, multi-sensory, experiences on Sunday mornings.
Searching
Both churches have a minority population who consider themselves seeking, although they’ve been at that or other churches for years. My Uncle, in his mid 60’s, tells me that he’s been going to church for 25 years, and still considers himself a searcher. He’s not made a commitment to Christ either publicly or privately.
Intimate conversations with some have revealed that they like everything about church, but feel like they are struggling with the idea of “God”. This seems to go against the grain of everything I’ve learned about doing church in the past 15 years or so.
So what’s going on here?
Is the church failing them in some way?
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June 1, 2007 at 22:12
I’d wonder how these churches share “meaty” teachings and if they express any urgency in knowing God. Is is clearly stated that this is true and needs a decision? Do they say things like, “If you don’t know you’re going to heaven, you need to get this straightened out real soon”?
I also wonder if there is a forum for them to really sit down and talk this out or are people left to wander among the trees of Christian’s but never really confronted.
I’m not among many emergent, emerging, postmodern, fill-in-the-fad churches anymore, but have in the past. I wonder if the ‘searchers’ are often the equivalent of ‘nominal christians’ in more traditional churches. They’re comfy and need God to shake them to the core to get them moving.
June 2, 2007 at 00:00
I think communtiy groups are lame. It’s just about the only way to be connected in a large church, but instead of getting a “church community” you get a small group of people who may or may not represent the heart of the church. Our church switched to community groups a couple years ago, and now it’s like we have 5 or 6 groups of people who rely on and relate to only each other. It’s like a church-sanctioned clique which seems to exclude more than it includes. Now they hang out together, pray together, do Bible studies together, and no one attends the Wednesday night prayer meetings or any church-wide events because they already do all that in their once a week group, so why hang out with the rest of the church? My family is currently looking for another church, that does not participate in the communtiy group phenomenon.
June 2, 2007 at 02:29
Let me start by quoting Watchman Nee…he once said: “If whatever that we are doing (as the body of Crhist) doesn’t reflect and leads directly to Christ himself then it has no value.” I’m saying that because I feel like there are a bunch of churches nowdays, that are like a huge Hollywood movie.They have all these “special effects” (Great Worship, Great multimedia, great this and that) but have a poor script.
I feel like sometimes we get caught up in the superficial things instead of, getting deeper into what matters; Salvation is the greatest most indescribable non deserving thing we have ever been able to receive, however…salvation is the opening door and I feel that there’s brothers and sisters get stuck sometimes, is time to go deeper!
June 2, 2007 at 06:53
Perhaps someone should identify the purpose of “church”. Is it for fellowship of likeminded believers? Is it’s purpose to help each other along the path as God leads in directions that his word testifies? Is it to make people aware of who God is(ref. Job 38)? Understanding who God is and what He is about should help people understand why He did/does what He did/does and how to abide with Him as well as ‘why’ you should want to? Just what is the purose of any “church”?
June 2, 2007 at 07:09
Yes, I believe church today is failing many. The church today (in most cases) is preaching a watered-down Gospel message that becomes so seeker sensitive and so man-centered that it becomes the wrong Gospel message altogether.
Churches today are afraid to mention sin, hell and God’s wrath against sin. Many in today’s churches never are given the full Gospel message of repentance. The Law is rarely used to convict a sinner and show them their need for a Savior. Instead, the health, wealth and prosperity Gospel abounds. I detest this “gospel”.
Even in churches that do not preach a prosperity Gospel are more concerned about entertaining the congregation than preaching the glory of God, focusing on Him as our treasure. Instead, we have to have the big multimedia screens, the solos, the bands playing with all the lighting, etc.
Yes, I am a traditionalist and have a real problem with the “emergent” church but even those churches that are traditional are falling into the man-centered trap that Satan is so enjoying.
We need to get back to a God-centered church and one that truly teaches what the Bible says, not what man wants to hear to feel better about themselves.
(I now step down from my soap box…)
June 2, 2007 at 10:18
I can’t speak for other churches, but I think our church too infrequently challenges people to make that decision. I go to a small, decade-old, “seeker-friendly” church that does everything it can to make seekers feel welcome, which seems to include not “pushing religion.”
We’ve been at this church nearly since it began, and I think I only heard the pastor give an altar call (for lack of a better term) only two or three times. It’s possible the leaders are having personal discussions about faith with the noncommitted folks, but I think it would be easy to come to our church for years without ever hearing that we each need to make an individual, definitive choice to be a Christ follower.
June 2, 2007 at 14:32
While I understand the urge to get ‘em saved (pardon my flippancy), I think these Christian fellow-travelers should be welcomed.
Let me put it this way: We’re supposed to welcome unbelievers, right? Inviting a seeker to church is generally a good thing. Well, at what point do we turn them away? What is God’s deadline for suppressing doubt? 25 years? 25 days?
The unpleasant reality is that churches are full of people, including long-time Christians, with doubts and questions. We can’t just chalk that up to a lack of gospel preaching. It is the way the modern world works; we live in an uncertain age. There is no way to nag a questioner into belief; all we can do is preach the gospel and leave the results up to God. Meanwhile, the fact that these people are drawn to the church is a good thing, even if they linger on the threshold of salvation for many years. It’s no good to rush God along.
Many evangelical churches, you know, have hundreds of aisle-walking and baptized members who never darken the door anymore. And many have neighbors with lots of interest in God but no hope of getting answers in church. Those are problems. This is not.
June 2, 2007 at 21:21
Mega church’s are for entertaining as I see it. The smaller one’s (like mine) are “family’s” and exactly how you described. We have old bus’s that bring in the poor and destitute kids from the slums and a multitude of service’s during the week at Hobbs 1st Church of the Nazarene. As much as we few go out on Saturday mornings knocking on doors, fewer and fewer adults and teens come. We see this as an all out attack of the adversary as His return is getting closer and it’s getting wilder! We won’t give up or get burned out since “I do all things through Him who strengthens me” (after my 2 near death medical experience’s this past 7 years. Mega blessings to you all who “serve and obey, for there’s no other way”!
June 3, 2007 at 16:30
This is a very tough subject to address. I tend to have a really hard time with discussions like this because I am a Creative Arts Pastor in a medium-sized church in Nebraska. I would not consider us a “seeker-sensitve” church but I am sure that from the outside looking in some would consider us to be an “entertaining” church. It pains me to here people on blogs and in Christian communities over generalize everything and make broad statements about how the church is failing. Aren’t we who call ourselves followers of Christ “the church.” It is not our responsiblity to use the gifts God has given each of us to “spur one another on” and “glorify our Father in heaven.” The way I see it – Satan has done a masterful job of making Christians far more concerned about how other Christians live out their lives and in the mean time the people around us are going to hell.
I feel overly blessed by the church God has called me too and I would be the first to admit we are not perfect but we have a staff who are concerned about doing things God’s way and we have a number of people in the congregation who follow suit. We also have some people who have yet to start their journey of faith. It IS our responsibility to make the gospel clear to them but it is all God and His holy Spirit who will open the eyes of that person. And please don’t forget that there are many, many churches and pastors out their on their knees before God everyday asking Him to intervine and bring people to Himself.
Isn’t it great how God works – just this morning in our worship service we had communion and our pastor point blank asked people do you remember when you got saved. Where did it happen, the day you trusted Jesus as your Savior? The pastor actually had them tell us out loud (we are a community church that is not part of any denomination). We had responses everywhere from church camp, home, vacation Bible school to almost every major denomination you could think of. God is still in the business of saving people and He uses anything He wishes to make it happen!
Churches (not matter what you call them) will always have people in them who are searching for God. We can do everything we feel God has called us to do, but in the end – I can not know any ones heart. That is between them and God. This discussion is not a new one and it will continue far after all of us have left this earth!
Thanks for reading.
June 4, 2007 at 07:01
Sure the Church could do more. I would question the pastor about how much he cares about his church body growing in Christ. If his messages are so “fluffy” that a person could go for 25 years and not commit to Christ yet still stick around; I even question what growth he is doing for others in his church.
Ultimatly its his fault though. We are in responsible for our hearts. Many people come to know Jesus well before regular attendance in a church. My father committed to the Lord in his car on the side of the road while reading a Bible someone gave him.
Pray for your Uncle, he will know the Lord!
As my Pastor did say just yesterday, “Every knee will bow and confess Jesus is Lord, we just want people to do it before its too late.”
June 4, 2007 at 11:22
Leave it to humans to spoil the church. Just like anything that includes human beings, there are mistakes that are made. I’m sure you have all heard that if you find a perfect church, when you get there, you will ruin it. This is the case today in the church around the world. Yes, there are certain churches that compromise the message. But there are a variety of churches that work hard and pray much to please God in their service. This is not a question of right and wrong or size or the technology that is used in the church today. It is a question of diversity. Each church is different, we are a diverse people that proclaim the gospel via preachings, worship, multimedia messages, written materials, etc… The traditional church will reach some people with its methods, the multimedia large church will reach another population and so forth. What makes the church so great is its diversity, with it we can extend the hand that can present Jesus Christ as its savior.
June 5, 2007 at 00:52
I must agree with the person above who asked who we are to give God deadlines. If we go in believing that it is OUR job to save people, we have missed the point of this faith. We are to live our lives, share the good news, and trust God to save people. My pastor gave a beautiful sermon a few weeks ago in which she pointed out that, in many ways, “Christian agnostics” might have a more appropriate relationship to God than many of us who are casually sure of our faith. I firmly believe that God will never turn somebody away from Heaven because they did not use the “right” words to address God, did not cognitively assent to certain propositions about God or Jesus, or did not label themselves with the “right” religious group name (i.e. Christian). The word translated as “believe” means to “turn the way of” and if a person is seeking within this faith, they are turned in the way we are turned. Demanding a fake forced cognitive assent (which is NOT the same as “belief” despite what evangelical churches often teach) is not doing anything to advance the gospel.
June 5, 2007 at 20:37
If a church (and what is a “church”) becomes so natural, comfortable and social that it could be mistaken for a book discussion club or a Starbucks, we might as well hang it up.
Here’s Pauls Church;
“So if the whole church comes together and everyone speaks in tongues, and some who do not understand or some unbelievers come in, will they not say that you are out of your mind? But if an unbeliever or someone who does not understand comes in while everybody is prophesying, he will be convinced by all that he is a sinner and will be judged by all, and the secrets of his heart will be laid bare. So he will fall down and worship God, exclaiming, “God is really among you!”