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WHY WE LOVE THE CHURCH

Moody Publishers

Contents

Introduction: Open Basements, Bad Marriages, and Decorpulation (Kevin)..................................................................................................................................................................11Styles Make Fights (Ted)................................................................................................................................................................................................................211. The Missiological: Jesus among the Chicken Littles (Kevin)...........................................................................................................................................................................272. Turn the Page: Getting off the Road and Getting Back to Church (Ted).................................................................................................................................................................553. The Personal: On Hurt and Heresy (Kevin).............................................................................................................................................................................................734. Appetite for Deconstruction: Why church is boring, Christians are (insert: lame, close-minded, or cliquish), and the church doesn't care about (insert my issue). Why all of this is both true and untrue. (Ted).....................975. The Historical: One Holy, Catholic Church (Kevin)....................................................................................................................................................................................1156. Brief Interviews: Snapshots of Churched People (including Chuck Colson and Art Monk) (Ted)...........................................................................................................................................1437. The Theological: The Church of Diminishing Definition (Kevin)........................................................................................................................................................................1598. The Year of Jubilee: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Church (Ted)........................................................................................................................................................187Dear Tristan: To My Son regarding My Hopes and Dreams for Him as They Pertain to the Church (Ted).......................................................................................................................................199Epilogue: Toward a Theology of Plodding Visionaries (Kevin).............................................................................................................................................................................207Acknowledgments.........................................................................................................................................................................................................................231

Chapter One

The word on the street is that the American church is gasping its last breath. To cite just one example, popular church consultant and conference speaker Reggie McNeal argues that while the situation in North America is not hopeless, things are worse than we think and the problems are more far gone than we imagined. Unless the church in North America makes big changes (and fast), we are facing "sure death." Even more strikingly, McNeal suggests that the new realities addressed in The Present Future "represent tectonic shifts in the ethos of the spiritual quest of humanity." It doesn't get much more serious than that.

The church, according McNeal and many others, has lost its way, its influence, and its entire purpose. Without massive transformation, the church in North America will soon go the way of the dodo bird. In short, "the institutional church in North America is in deep trouble-and it should be, because it has lost its mission." The church, then, has two choices: change or die. McNeal is not the only voice crying in the wilderness. David Olson begins his helpful book, The American Church in Crisis, with this clear, if unsurprising, assessment: "The American church is in crisis." Similarly, Neil Cole opines that "American Christianity is dying. Our future is in serious jeopardy. We are deathly ill and don't even know it." "It's the institution of the church that's in its death throes," says another. Not to be outdone, George Barna, who has grown increasingly disillusioned with what he has seen and measured among Christians in the last twenty-plus years, concludes very matter-of-factly based on his "research data" that "if the local church is the hope of the world, then the world has no hope."

THE SKY IS FALLING (SORT OF, MAYBE)

Among those who feel like the church is almost or completely broken, two pieces of evidence are usually offered: (1) The church is losing people; and (2) the church has lost its mission. Let's start by looking at number one, the church's missing members.

The church in America, it is said, is dying a death of attrition. Our most faithful members, who also happen to be the most generous, are dying off. Young people are leaving the faith and not coming back. And the lost are harder to reach than ever. Ironically, as the mainstream media fears an impending Christian theocracy, Christians in America fear their own extinction, or at least their irrelevance.

Yet, the news is not all bad. In February 1939, pollster George Gallup started asking Americans "Did you happen to go to church last Sunday?" In that year 41 percent said yes. The wording has been altered slightly over the years, but basically the same question has been asked every year since. And the percentage responding "yes" has barely changed. From 2000 to 2005 the "yeses" in Gallup's church poll ranged from 40 to 44 Percent. In terms of actual attendance, we find that in 1990 on any given weekend 52 million people in America attended a church. In 2005, the number still stood at 52 million. The wheels haven't fallen off yet.

But the news is not all good either. For starters, far fewer people actually go to church than the numbers suggest. It's called the "halo effect"-people give better answers to pollsters than they live out in real life. By one estimate, only 17.5 percent of the American public actually attend church on any given weekend, even though more than twice as many report that they do. Furthermore, while the number of people in church has stayed the same over the past fifteen years (about 52 million), the percentage of churchgoers has decreased. Simply put, church growth has not kept pace with population growth. The same number of people may go to church, but since there are more people in the country, the number of churchgoers as a percentage of the whole goes down. So, according to Olson, while 20.4 percent of Americans went to church on any given weekend in 1990, only 17.5 percent went in 2005, and, by his estimates, only 14.7 percent will be in church on any given weekend by 2020.

This is not a good trajectory. Anyone who loves Jesus Christ wants to see His church grow. But keep in mind that these numbers do not represent declining overall membership,...