The modern Church is badly broken.
It’s not broken simply because it is filled with flawed, failing human beings. That is certainly true but this has always been the case, and yet the Church has not always been as dysfunctional and neutered of influence and culturally ineffective as it is now.
One of the reasons the modern Christian Church is becoming obsolete and irrelevant to so many people (and why they are opting out in exponentially increasing numbers) is that for decades it’s been built backwards—and they’re all realizing it.
Having been a pastor in the local church for 18 years I’ve seen thousands of new church start-ups or “church plants” spring up along the way, and far too many of them are variations on the same faulty theme.
The template and sequence for birthing these Christian faith communities is shockingly similar:
1) Start with a Main Person ( sadly, usually a guy) who will drive the whole thing. That person’s charisma and speaking ability are nonnegotiables, because they will be the focal point, the visionary, and the face of the church. They will get the butts in the seats (or pews) on Sundays.
2) Put a Ministry Team around the Main Guy as support staff. This will be a group of talented, passionate people who will serve the needs of the Main Guy and the Main Guy’s vision.
3) Find a building and choose service times and get a band together. This building and these worship gatherings featuring this band, will be the unquestionable hub of the new community; around which everything else revolves and toward which the lion’s share of the community’s personnel, budget, and energy will be marshalled. It is unequivocally the Main Event featuring the Main Guy.
4) Attach ancillary, aged-based ministries around these worship gatherings (childcare, children’s ministry, student ministry, adult classes). These again, are spokes from the central worship service hub and they usually come only as necessary bi-products of it.
5) Create small or community groups, designed to build relationships and help people develop intimate, meaningful community, which will be increasingly challenging as the church grows numerically.
6) Create service ministries or events and mission programs to help people learn the value and virtues of caring for others.
And though admittedly somewhat simplified and certainly generalized, this is still largely what we run with and call “church”, with the top of the list receiving by far the most attention.
In building most of our modern churches this way, we’ve made the wrong things the main things from the jump: a personality and a production.
We create our communities from the very first moments, to be about the majority of our people watching a small group of “professional Christians” for an hour of faith-based stage entertainment. Participation in that is what is promoted most prominently. In the process we’ve left the richest, most life-giving aspects of intimate relationships and mutual community and collaborative acts of service as optional afterthoughts.
And when this backward system does produce growth and a local church wants to do more of what it does, it simply chooses a new location and begins the process of franchising out the whole thing there; replicating the inherent flaws of the original: Pick another Main Guy (or have the first one beamed in via satellite). Get another building and another band, and repeat the process.
We’ve in essence, Starbucked the Church out because that’s the easiest path. Forget that the new local community the church might be setting up shop in might not be at all similar in demographics or income level or cultural flavor to the original. Never mind that there are likely already many really plugged-in, invested, faithful people there on the ground who we might come alongside. Forget that the community itself is filled with tons of people who have stories, perspective, gifts, and wisdom of their own and could probably build a pretty kick-butt faith community with a little help and some capital investment.
That’s not how the backwards church works. We prefer a religious gentrification program that we know how to perpetuate; one that brings Jesus packaged for mass consumption and ease of production and runs both top-down and Sunday service-out.
If Christian faith communities are going to find a place in these changing days, if they’re going to remain useful to people and better reflect where they started, we’re going to have to start building them backwards.
It’s fine, and often quite necessary for a local church to spring from the vision of a person or small group of people, but in those earliest of moments it needs to intentionally rebel against crafting a cult of personality or making the show the center. Otherwise we are conditioning people that spirituality is about going somewhere and consuming something—and some lesser, elective amenities that they can take or leave.
I would love to see faith communities truly begin with community; to see them craft ways and spaces for people to come together to break bread and share stories organically first, and to let that be the hub of what a church does and becomes over time: The people dictate the system. The pastor and staff then take on the role of serving and encouraging the community to live out what is rising up in their midst. That’s less sexy a role, but perhaps a healthier one for everyone involved.
In this way, a local church begins reflecting the hearts and desires of those gathered. It then allows everything it does to be informed by the community; what ministries it creates, what physical structures it invests in, how its spends its resources, and whether or not a corporate worship service is desirable—and if so, what that looks like.
The Church that so many people are walking away from or saying no to isn’t necessarily evil or willfully sinful, it’s just all turned around.
It’s become more a business model for building a successful faith-based franchise, than the foundation of an unpredictable, mold-breaking, Spirit-led community; one that should and can define itself as it grows.
This is The Church I dream we begin building together.
