Faith Venture

Most of my study and thinking regards individual personal spiritual practices and discipline. One ancient and generally accepted spiritual practice concerns some manner of corporate worship.

Many younger Americans have been rejecting churches. These include both evangelical and Roman Catholic churches.

I ran across this thought in my reading:

Losing My Religion–If people reject the church because they reject Jesus and the gospel, we should be saddened but not surprised. But what happens when people reject the church because they think the church has rejected Jesus and the gospel? What if people don’t leave the church because they disapprove of Jesus, but because they’ve read the Bible and have come to the conclusion that the church itself would disapprove of Jesus? That’s a crisis.

Russell Moore

I’ve struggled with those thoughts, trying to effect some change from the inside. Still, I wonder…

We need the encouragement of meeting with others. We do not need the discouragement of theological/political battles that seemingly leave Jesus on the outside, looking in. Perhaps this is one of those dynamic tensions upon which life is built.

The Gallop organization has conducted a survey of Americans for more than 60 years on the topic of belonging to a religious congregation. For most of the 60 years not surprising to most of the world’s observers, the percentage hovered around 70%.

This year, 47% of Americans say they belong to a church, synagogue, or mosque.

Having been in church leadership at times, I’ve heard many excuses. And many plans for church growth. There exist doctorate degrees with an emphasis in church growth. I know of one such graduate who grew a congregation from 650 to 250. MBAs and economists talk of negative growth rather than decline. I guess that sounds better.

Most blame cultural influences.

I’d suggest that church leaders seriously ask and answer the question, “What have we done to turn people off?”

One of the accepted spiritual disciplines is meeting with others.

But most of us just want to associate with welcoming people. Not divisive ones. Where meeting is more than attending a “rock concert and a TED talk”. Where, perhaps, we can have a cup of coffee or tea with others and share what living in the kingdom of heaven has meant this past week.

Two metrics seem to matter. And as we say in manufacturing, what gets measured gets managed. The metrics are attendance and money.

There is no metric for the status of people’s hearts. And that is what matters to Jesus.

In the pandemic, most of us are not meeting with many people. As we begin to ease out of the isolation, perhaps we look for small gatherings of seekers and learners and worry less about rock music, smoke machines, flashing lights, and a rocking sermon.

Worship appears on the list of spiritual disciplines discussed by Richard J. Foster and Dallas Willard–my mentors in spiritual formation.

I seldom discuss this practice. Maybe because I grew up in a liturgical church. I suppose the liturgy was the worship. My wife grew up in an evangelical church. For her worship was singing hymns and having prayers and listening to the choir. Then the preacher used 40 minutes or more of the 60 minutes to exhort the people to come forward and be saved.

I don’t have national statistics for the US, but in my area which could realistically be labeled Bible Belt it would be a rare weekend for more than 25% of the people to go somewhere to worship.

Worship is tied to church membership in most minds and many GenX and Millennials shy away from all the negative images of church membership. In many ways I don’t blame them. I’ve lived the good and the bad. Sort of like an old child’s story, “When it’s good it’s very, very good; and when it’s bad it’s horrid.”

Psalm 95 refers to worship as joyful. Something that should warm our hearts as we acknowledge the existence of the creator God.

The psalm also warns us to beware of a hardened heart.

That brings me around to the core of the Gospel–it’s about the status of our hearts.