Please bear with me. This could get a little lengthy.
I have spent all but a few months of my life in the church. Between birth and graduation my family attended 3 churches for various lengths of time. In college, I worked or interned at several churches and since then I have served full-time at 4 churches. I am speaking from experience when I tell you….I’m afraid.
Somewhere I think we missed something. In the 70’s and 80’s(and perhaps back to the 60’s) there seemed to be a need for better ministry to teens. Youth ministry was born(and is it a coincidence that in the same time places like Domino’s, Little Caesar’s, and Papa John’s have taken off?) and churches started hiring full-time youth pastors. Lock-in, short term mission trips, targeted curriculum, and the like soon followed and in the 90’s to 00’s youth ministry flourished. Youth centers popped up across the country, youth rooms became the norm, and old couches were given new life. After 30 plus years of this amazing phenomenon, statistics tell us that 80% of teens leave the church after age 18. Guess what? We need a youth adult program…and college ministries took off! How is it that billions of dollars and millions or hours were invested in youth ministry and we only got a 20% success rate?!
It wasn’t a total failure. There were countless lives changed and this world will never be the same because of many of them. As I type this, students that I invested in are at various places on the globe serving the Lord in many ways. They are teachers, doctors, missionaries, Bible translators, dentists, and pastors. But I think about the ones that got away. I am haunted by the fact that for every disciple we made there 15 who walked away. What happened? I’m glad you asked.
Let’s go back to those churches in the 60’s, 70s, and 80’s where the teens weren’t being reached. They weren’t being…discipled. So, the solution was to hire a professional to do it. They’ve got a degree in ministry, maybe our kids will listen to them. Sadly, many parents weren’t really concerned with whether or not their children were discipled, but whether or not there was something for them to do. Therefore, they hired someone to solve that problem or found a willing volunteer to get the job done.
This is not intended to be an indictment against youth or young adult ministry. Not in the least. We’re not even close to the real problem yet.
Somewhere in the American church something terrible happened. We stopped making disciples and started making Pharisees. It’s the only way possible that in 2013 a church would be more committed to send money to African missionaries than to allowing their African-American neighbors to attend church with them. They prided themselves on the amount of money they sent until their pastor told them that unless they made everyone welcome at church he would stop sending money overseas.
Being a disciple became a checklist(which varied from denomination to denomination):
Do you drink?
Do you smoke?
Do you attend church every times the doors are open?
Do you attend Sunday School?
Do you tithe?
Do you wear your hair up?
Do you listen to the devil’s music?
Do you attend the picture show?
Do you drink Coca-Cola?(hey, don’t laugh, I’ve read this!)
Being a member of a church meant adhering to the standards set by the church. All of these standards were external. You can’t measure “love your neighbor”, but you can count perfect attendance and give out medals for that. If you were a member, what you did outside the church walls was just fine as long as you could keep it quiet. If you weren’t a member, a “sinner”, then look out for rocks when you got in trouble. People became more concerned with being clean on the outside then the inside. Jesus never spoke highly of people like that.
Being a disciple meant less about following Jesus and more about following the rules. No heart change required just behavior modification. Children saw through this phoniness and left the church in droves. Many churches started shrinking and all of the power players and church bosses became even more entrenched in the fabric of church society. They didn’t want to lose what they had and tradition became an idol for many. Change was needed, and that’s where things got messy.
New pastors were called to churches to stop the slide and bring the children back. Any mention of change was met with disdain and the misdiagnosis of the death of the American church began. It was clear to see that change was needed, but what? Many churches decided to change the music and worship wars broke out from sea to shining sea. Some changed programming and strategy. Some changed leadership structure. Some didn’t change anything. In denomination after denomination and town after town, pastors and lay people found themselves casualties of church wars and vowed never to return. Of course some just switched churches until the next split or fight and then started the church hunt all over again. One thing never changed though…the people. Church bosses and power players held things with a tighter grip than ever. Why didn’t things change? Many would say it was the wrong place, the wrong time, the wrong pastor, the wrong leaders, the wrong etc.
Others saw what was going on and decided to plant churches. There would be no traditions to deal with, church bosses to fight, and no doubt who was in charge. These churches were led by new brand of leader. Churches across the nation have grown by the thousands offering multiple weekend services, world-class children’s facilities, Grammy winning worship, and cutting edge technology. 1,000 seat auditoriums are springing up everywhere with video preaching making multi-site ministry affordable and effective. We are too soon in this movement to know many statistics regarding retention after high school graduation. Just as alarming as the 20% success rate to me are statistics like this: what does it mean when 500 people get saved in a year, but only 100 of them follow through with baptism? Or that only 10-20% of the church is involved in any type of discipleship outside of worship services? Or that people who attend 1 out of 6 Sundays consider themselves fully devoted members? We celebrate how many people we have on our greeter team, but not how many people were actually discipled step by step, life on life, person to person. Why? Because we’ve hired someone to do that. The new checklist is:
Do you come to church?
Do you invite your friends to church?
Do you serve at the church?
Clemson had 83,428 fans at their game against Florida State this year. What a great crowd! But they lost the game 51-14. I fear the same is happening to us.
As much as things have changed, I fear that the fundamentals have not and that is that we are making more Pharisees than disciples. We have created a generation that worships a worship style more than they worship Jesus. If persecution like the book of Acts hit, I’m afraid the people would scatter, but the gospel would not spread. They are much younger now, but the new church bosses are just as set in their ways as their parents and grandparents before them.
Here is the sad fact. From 1900 to today, many of our church leaders have not been Christians. It’s that simple. I cannot explain away how a saved person could cuss a pastor’s wife out during a deacon’s meeting or how 10 other “saved” deacons could just sit by and watch it happen. They were clean on the outside, but not on the inside. Jesus never lowered his standard for being a disciple, but if someone could write a check to replace the church steeple… If someone knew the entire Bible, but wouldn’t even sit on the same side of the church as their brother would you consider them a disciple or a Pharisee?
I think God wants to use the rural church, urban church, multi-site church, mega church, underground church, village church, house church, and small church to make disciples. I don’t think anything else matters. I don’t think we’ll be judged on our music styles, our carpet color, the size of our youth room, the layout of our foyers, or whether or not we had pews or chairs. I don’t think Jesus will ask,”how many people checked a box acknowledging their salvation” or “were your parking team ratios adequate?” I don’t think he cares whether or not you put real or fake flowers on the communion table or if you don’t put anything at all on them. How many people denied themselves, carried their cross, and followed Jesus? We not only have to teach people how and why to do that, but we are commanded to teach them how to teach others how to do that. If the whole 6 degrees of separation is true then if every Christian on the planet discipled 6 people then the whole planet would be discipled.
Please hear my heart: I love the church. I love the mega church with the parking team that greets you with an umbrella in the rain and has a small choir singing Christmas Carols as you enter the building. I love churches that have flashing lights and churches that don’t even have lights. I can worship just as easily with a piano, organ, and hymnal as I can with a DVD track or full band. I can sit in a lecture type Sunday School class as easily as I watch a Francis Chan video and discuss it with my friends. I love it all. I love it when the music is so loud my heart skips a beat and the moments of silence when all you can hear is your heartbeat. I love expository preaching and topical preaching. I love preachers who scream and preachers who don’t raise their voice. I love people who raise their hands and shout amen and those who don’t sing very loud with head bowed reverently. There’s room for all of us. All sizes and strategies. Locations and demographics. I just want to make disciples. Because I have 3 kids. And I want them to love Jesus, and the church, even more than I do.