Your Church Can Grow

When it comes to passionately embracing our calling as Christians, indifference is the devil’s tool. Whether we call it apathy, lack of interest, or boredom, ‘indifference’ saps energy and sucks life out of the mission of the church. And yet, when asked to identify the root causes of a passionless spirituality, church members have given responses that point to indifference.

It is as if there is an ecclesiastical take on the popular book and movie, He’s just not that into you. In the case of the church, it would be, “We’re just not that into Him.” Why should we get excited about church when church is just one item clamoring for attention in our lives? There are a myriad of demands on our lives that at any given time trump church: the kids’ soccer game, for instance, or staying up the night before and just wanting to sleep in on a Sunday morning.

Something else more troubling gnaws at our insides: the dissonance between belief and action. I’m not talking about sin. I am readily aware that the community of faith called church has always been an amalgam of saints and sinners and whether inside or outside of its purview, sin abounds. I have been and continue to be one who falls short of the glory of God. I refer to a deeper discord where our everyday actions are indistinguishable from those who do not profess faith. We are not out there enough getting our hands and feet dirty dealing with the pain of our communities. We are not out there loving the marginalized or touching the lepers or dining with the ones least likely to get an invitation to our next party.

And what is particularly troublesome: the inability to be honest enough with ourselves and with our brothers and sisters in the faith to engage in serious conversation about it.

To not discuss matters of passion around the faith we profess is to fall into the devil’s hands, it is to allow indifference to win. And, it is killing the church as we know it. Younger people looking from the outside in at the inauthenticity of passionless spirituality move on to the other side of the street. We’re dismissed. No amount of programs or marketing will overcome the chasm we have built.

Jesus said, “Anyone who comes to me I will never drive away” (John 6:37b NRSV). Jesus will sustain us even in the moments when energies wane. All we need do is come to him in our brokenness and vulnerability. Can we begin such a conversation with him and with our brothers and sisters to address the issue of passionless spirituality?

Yesterday I drove by the address where I had grown up in northern New Jersey. I say “address” because the house where I had lived was torn down a week ago. My father bought our house in 1955 for $36,000. Builders plan to sell the new house that will go up on the property for 3.4 million. When I heard that our old house was being torn down, I was sad. So many memories: playing “3 flys 6 grounders” on the big front lawn, family gatherings in the dining room, sleeping out in the screened-in porch. What I realize is that the home that fit 1950’s needs more than perfectly no longer fits the desires of the 21st century. I wondered why 5 bedrooms, 3 1/2 baths would not be enough. The proposed new home will have 6 bedrooms plus a library and a study, a wine cellar, a deck, and of course, be air conditioned–no need to sleep in the screened-in porch to cool off in the summer.

I drove by the now empty lot and felt a pang of pain for a lost day and a neighborhood that is quickly changing from mid-scale to upscale. There is so much change going on in our world. Newspapers are going out of business. The Post Office is contemplating closing some 7,000 branches as more and more people send their correspondence electronically. Record stores are a relic of the past. The list could go on and on. I think someday historians will look back on our day and write about the cataclysmic changes that occurred in a relatively short period of time.

Churches are part of the changing landscape of our day. I am reminded that the meaning of ‘church’ is not a building, but people. While the essence of the Gospel doesn’t change, the setting for church is changing rapidly. It is painful for those of us who feel quite comfortable in a house of worship in the style of the 1950’s to realize that the 21st century is calling for something quite different. Yet, if we do not change, if we do not figure out how to adapt ourselves, one day we will drive by the address of our home church and either see an empty lot or an entirely different kind of building.