Chapter 5: Church Hating

Maybe the church-hating trend is the most serious of them all. Churchless Christianity certainly separates preaching from fellowship. Today, Christians “don’t go to church to get holy.” Instead, they “go to the mountains.”[1]

We try to make it on our own. We practice spiritual privatization, do-it-yourself Christianity. There is today a false doctrine of private spirituality at work that downplays anything corporate or communal. It is a powerful and prevailing secular doctrine that makes it difficult for us to believe the Bible’s teaching. Privatization makes religion all about me—and not about us. This thinking is secular at best and at its worst can produce a spurious pagan spirituality.[2]

And yet, those who practice private Christianity find the most positive ways to describe their churchless experience. Dwight Friessen lists some typical arguments:

·      “Since I quit ‘going to church,’ I have more time with my family, and I love it.”

·      “Now that I don’t have committee meetings, I’m getting to know my neighbors. And it feels like they actually want to know me.”

·      “Today, when I hear of a financial need or I see a friend who needs help, I give; I don’t need to wait for a ‘church response.’ I am the response.”

·      “Since I ‘dropped out’ of Sunday school and midweek programs, our family has started to volunteer one Saturday each month at a neighborhood food bank. We’re making a real difference, and I think Christ is pleased.”

·      “My husband and I go for walks on Sunday mornings. We talk and pray. And we’re no longer content with Christian clichés; instead we wrestle with God—together.”[3]

At first blush, the unsuspecting Christian could be drawn into these arguments and see them as positives. But are they?

Did you notice how many “I”s are in those lines? It is all about “me” and what “I” want. There’s no thought for other members of the body of Christ—no responsibility toward spiritually gifted individuals whom God has placed into the body to minister to one-another (1 Cor 12:12–27). These are selfish expressions disguised in deceiving postmodern rhetoric. In Keith Drury’s book, There Is No I in Church, he summarizes:

The privatization of faith may be more than just a philosophical problem; it may have a sin problem at its root. Our fallen nature drives us to become the master of our own lives rather than submitting ourselves to Christ and the church. Our love of private religion may simply be a lordship issue. We hate submission. We want to be spiritually self-sufficient.[4]

Entire families, who previously served faithfully, walk away from their local church because they do not agree with a church decision. Other individuals claim to be so offended by someone in the church that they leave never to return. In one case, the father of a departing family stated that he was now the pastor/elder of his new church that he conducted in his own home with just his wife and eight children in attendance.

What’s driving these kinds of decisions? How is it so easy for a family to leave the church they once loved, often over relatively small issues? Why is it that Christians minimize the need for Christian fellowship without considering the consequences?

Of course, some so-called “churches” should be avoided—the ones that don’t preach the gospel—the ones that teach damning heresy—the ones that are led by lying hypocrites. But that isn’t what I am referring to here. I am talking about Christians who do have a gospel-preaching church in their town, but who cannot find it within themselves to choose to love the people in that congregation. They are looking for the perfect church and haven’t yet acknowledged that they’re not so perfect themselves.

In their book, Why We Love the Church, Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck write: “These days, spirituality is hot; religion is not. Community is hip, but the church is lame. Both inside the church and out, organized religion is seen as oppressive, irrelevant, and a waste of time. Outsiders like Jesus but not the church. Insiders have been told they can do just fine with God apart from the church.”[5]

This kind of thinking is spurred on by author George Barna who encourages a revolution in the way we think about the church. He believes the organized church is not a necessary part of the believer’s experience. He writes, “There is no verse in Scripture that links the concepts of worshiping God and a ‘church meeting.’ The Bible does not tell us that worship must happen in a church sanctuary and therefore we must be actively associated with a local church.”[6] This kind of teaching is changing the way people think of the church today.

The Jesus character in The Shack explains that he doesn’t like religion and he doesn’t create institutions. Via the narrative of that runaway best seller, William Young claims that the church we see is only a man-made system.[7] Sadly, these anti-church sentiments encourage people to stay away from the body of Christ.

The Bible explains that people will avoid church when they are offended by the authoritative preaching of God’s Word (2 Tim 4:4). Explaining the implications of Scripture makes sinners feel uncomfortable. It’s what confronts their lifestyle choices. And the popular Emergent thinking of today’s postmodern ‘church’ is helping them to justify their selfish actions.

In his book entitled Preaching Re-Imagined, Doug Pagitt decries preaching and replaces it with “progressional dialogue.”[8] Emergent leaders have undermined the church that God Himself established and replaced preaching, public worship, accountability, responsibility, and genuine fellowship with couch conversations over lattes at Starbucks.

Those who walk away from the church are honest enough to explain: “I love Christ, but I cannot stand the church.” But to these, Keith Drury replies, “Sorry. You can’t behead Christ by taking the head without the body.”[9]

Now for those who have left the church and lived without preaching and fellowship for some time, often there can be a yearning for the very thing they have turned their back on. Sometimes, church-deserters want to find ways to satisfy their appetite for the nourishment they know they need, but cannot muster the humility required to return to the church—the source of that spiritual supply. So they turn to other options. Today, individualistic, me-centered people can get their live church fix from a distance at the click of a mouse. Once again, preaching and fellowship are being estranged.

Where do church-daters and church-haters turn for their church experience?  Some of them turn to streaming churches.  I’ll describe the streaming-church phenomenon next week. . .

---

[1] Keith W. Drury, There Is No I in Church: Moving Beyond Individual Spirituality to Experience God’s Power in the Church (Indianapolis, IN: Wesleyan Publishing House, 2006), 20.

[2] Ibid., 19.

[3] Dwight J. Friesen, Thy Kingdom Connected: What the Church Can Learn from Facebook, the Internet, and Other Networks (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2009), 17.

[4] Keith Drury, There Is No I in Church, 21.

[5] Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck, Why We Love the Church: In Praise of Institutions and Organized Religion (Chicago, Moody Publishers, 2009), 13.

[6] George Barna, Revolution (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2005), 114.

[7] William P. Young, The Shack: A Novel (Newbury Park, CA: Windblown Media, 2007), 178–79.

[8] Doug Pagitt, Preaching Re-Imagined: The Role of the Sermon in Communities of Faith (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing, 2005), 18–24.

[9] Keith Drury, There Is No I in Church, 31.