Occupy The Church — Why We’re On A Crash Course Toward Change

November 10, 2011 in christianity, leadership, occupy the church, opinion, prophetic with 0 Comments

There’s something interesting about Occupy Wall Street to me, as I look at the parallels in the church world. I’ve heard for many years about “revolution” coming but I’ve not seen it. In some circles it has fast become an overused word, which I’m hesitant to use. I’m finding more and more people tired of institutionalized religion. The same way something “broke” and the scales tipped and have led to this now global protest, I have been sensing a frustration and “something-must-break” attitude in my spirit and in the general discontent of many of my friends and peers across denominational lines, as well as in older mentors and leaders in my life. There are a few ingredients that, put together, are like a lit match and a can of gasoline;

1) The Pastoral Performance Treadmill will break down eventually

I know many pastors and some individuals think and believe if you’re in full time ministry, you give up any secular work–you’re doing one or the other, not both. However, that’s not true at all. So that brings us to the insidious religious spirit-inspired problem that faces many a pastor caught up in the current way ‘church’ as we know it has perpetuated: if a pastor has a church building that needs paying off, or needs to feed his family, or pay off student loans from seminary or whatever else have you, it’s possible to fall in this rut in order to get people to walk in your door. You wind up succumbing to the need to perform.

For example, if he and his staff–if he has one–need a minimum amount of money in order to pay the bills, what often inevitably happens results in the need for a minimum amount of people in attendance consistently tithing and giving generously. Then, one is faced with the temptation–or very real need–to somehow obtain those followers or church members.

What does one do to obtain those? Well, it’s a lot easier to catch flies with honey than it is using vinegar, so the Gospel message that’s preached inevitably becomes pragmatic and palatable. A God on a cross who wants you to forsake every thing so you can be owned by Him? That doesn’t attract masses nearly as much as “you can live however you want and have Jesus as the cherry on the pie”.

2) The malaise of this generation towards hypocritical leadership and empty promises

This current generation, commonly nick-named “the millennials” or generation Y, are now significant in size and number, just barely eclipsing the baby boomer generation according to some reports and studies. This is no small matter, for in the next 20-30 years or probably even sooner, a lot of things are going to shift to the new largest segment of Western society–these millennials who are usually in effect the offspring of the boomers and the hippy generation of the 60s and 70s.

Generation Y is also a significantly unchurched generation, with only one out of twenty considering themselves to be specifically born again Christians–the number is obviously higher if you count those who consider themselves spiritual in a more vague and broad definition of the terms. Since millennials are the descendants of those who revolted in the late 60s, many times we’re the children—spiritually through pastoring, or directly, through parenting–of those who got converted in the Jesus People movement of that time and the early 1970s.

For what it’s worth, I’ve read elsewhere that OWS is what a post-modern protest looks like, and we’ll see more like it in the years to come. What the result will turn out to be remains to be seen, but I think change is inevitable, and I think a parallel exists in the church world right now as well.

3) Nature Abhors a Vacuum

When you’re starving, you’ll eat anything. In a land of famine for good theology, and proper Bible teaching, due to reason number one, people swallow whatever junk comes along if they’re desperate and hungry for something. That being said, in the Body of Christ, in the dearth resulting from the frustrations many have had from “institutionalized” Christianity, abusive spiritual authority, and hypocrisy throughout the previous decades to date, there have emerged many cult-like, heretic and fringe teachings—some scoffing at any forms of accountability, structure, or authority hierarchy. Some guys have emerged as being non-religious but deeply “spiritual” or “mystical”, which in theory doesn’t pose a problem for me personally. But I’d dare to say a lot of stuff out there is for the itching ears. Personality cults have developed, and it’s fed into the first reason I stated regarding what is then used as a measure of success.

4) Personality Cults & Bad Teachings

In such an atmosphere that the most popular or ‘out there’ teachers emerge at the top of the increasingly shrinking dog pile, sometimes correct theology or Biblical doctrine gets tossed to the wayside. I have a friend in Internet marketing who lamented to me one of the challenges he faces in his membership site, is that as an entrepreneur teaching others how to be successful, he constantly needs to demonstrate success himself, or else his members will not see the benefit of sticking around for a membership fee. As a result, he told me this helps keep him accountable to be practicing what he’s teaching and learning new things so as to continue standing on the leading edge so people will continue to pay to follow him. But he’s got to provide something worth paying to be taught.

Sadly, this is where I think a lot of paying church ministries take their cue–they come up with some new anointing you need, some new revelation that if you buy their book you’ll learn. It’s a gerbil wheel that once leaders get on it they seldom get off. After a while, you may not even realize you’re being sold a bill of goods but with no substance. Many ‘out there’ preachers with their revelations and miracles, tend to slip into this trap where they now have to keep outdoing themselves because what worked yesterday isn’t filling the large auditoriums anymore.

Various streams of Christianity have a similar pitfall as this, but I’m talking about the more charismatic and Pentecostal streams on this point. A culture of expectations has developed over time, and now certain leaders and personality cults slip into the need for “deeper revelations” that somehow heretofore had not been revealed from the Father’s heart, and many of the sheep allow themselves to be fleeced because it’s also part of the culture we’ve developed and grown accustomed to. There’s always a ‘new thing’ the Lord is doing! And people like me, and those of my generation who are tired of hearing these shenanigans, want to go after God, but are tired of it in much of Westernized “Christianity”. Most people leaving “the church” aren’t doing it because they’ve abandoned their faith, but they’re leaving in order to protect it.

By no means do these points represent ALL my thoughts or every reason, but should sow some thought seed out there for others of you to run with and give serious thought to some of these matters and the signs of the times.

Questions to Ponder:

How does what we’re doing and have been doing result in DISCIPLES being made and not just pew warmers to pay our salaries?

If only 1/20 millennials consider themselves Christians, how will the old/current model of “church growth curve” continue without

compromising the Gospel in order to cast a wider net and get more people under our umbrellas? or
discontinuing the system we’re in, and crashing the whole thing altogether, and rebuilding on a Biblical foundation?

Forget a stock market crash or a credit bubble, either most of the “church” as we know it will implode on itself in the years to come (or sooner,) or we will see some kind of revolution and the real church of Christ emerge from the rubble.

Occupy the Church!