Two close friends of mine don’t attend church. Actually, more than two, but the two I am thinking of are interesting because, quite frankly, they are the two most influential people I know. I won’t get into what they are doing with their lives, but they are literally positively affecting thousands. And when I say positively affecting, I mean feeding them, getting them water, setting them free from slavery and so forth. And I seem to meet these guys all the time, people who love Jesus, love other people and are visionary leaders with no shortage of passion. And they don’t go to church.
It got me wondering, and I am hoping you can share your opinion. A recent survey we did on this site showed that the majority of readers attend church, and many people who read this blog actually work at churches. So I am guessing you’ll have an opinion.
Forgive me if I step on toes, also. I don’t know how to ask these questions without offending some of you. But to me, the landscape of church in America feels like this:
1. Leadership in church has to do with teaching and administrating mostly centered around education. Sunday morning is an education/worship experience, retreats are educational, youth group is way more experiential but it’s also heavily educational and so forth. So to be a leader in the church, your gifts and skills revolve around being a speaker/educator or an administrator of education and events. There are certainly categories outside that realm, but not many in the average church.
2. Church attendance, then, is mostly about learning something, something about God, about yourself, about how to live morally, about how to love God and receive grace and so forth. This is huge and important stuff we have all benefited from. However, in our culture, most of these truths are broken up into formulaic steps you can take to be more moral, have a Godly marriage, be a devoted follower of God and so forth. Again, all good stuff.
3. When Jesus chose his disciples, they weren’t a group of educators. Now this hurts, personally, because, well, if there were a broad category for what I do, it would be that of educator. I deal in ideas. But Christ chose a diversity of craftsman. Oh well, I always have Paul to identify with. Nevertheless, the genius here is that the gospel was at street level, accessible to the common man, not stuck in an ivory tower. The gospel translated by fishermen and carpenters might have been understood very differently than the gospel translated from a life-long academic or educator.
Are the leaders of your church as diverse as the Apostles, or are they mostly educators?
Now lets be fair. If you happen to be an educator, or happen to be somebody who likes the truths of scripture translated for you into doable steps, it might be hard to be objective. Would you still attend if, each sunday, the pastor didn’t give a sermon but went over blueprints for how to build better well-drilling systems, all as an answer to Jesus’ request to bring water to Him when He was thirsty? What if church were not educational but action oriented and experiential? Would we still have the same leaders? (I say this as an educational leader involved in church culture!)
But, that begs a question. If you are a visionary leader who doesn’t think in formulas, and has no calling to work in a church, where do you fit? Is there a place for you? If you want to build a railroad across Africa, for example, are you going to be helped by your church? That’s not to say the church should help you, because it has no obligation to do so, but the point is there is nothing aiding your life mission down at the local church. These people come for a while, then fade off, starting their own little communities of Christians following Jesus who are doing work not unlike they are doing. Because they are not educators or administrators of education, they don’t have a lot of practical application for church.
One could say they should not forsake the assembly, but they don’t. The assembly just doesn’t happen to assemble on Sunday mornings. in fact, the assembly scripture is talking about looks more like a dinner club than a community college or conference center, which is what many churches look like today.
So my question to you is, is church losing visionary leaders who could change the world outside the church mold? And if so, how can a church mold change to include more people than teachers and learners? Or do you think it’s doing just fine and those people should conform?
And my last question is, do you attend church, and why or why not?
Thanks for your openness and objectivity.
