Transforming Church

What is beginning to captivate public opinion is a negative 60/40 evaluation of Christianity. Forty percent of our negative image is directly impacted by the activism of the conservative church. The other, or first 60% of the negative image, is the portion for which we all share in taking credit. I am sure many Christians do not see this first part of our image as negative, maybe not even the second, but no one can argue it doesn’t compromise the purpose (mission) Christ has given us. Also it erodes any effective chance to share Christ with younger generations. The Church today is becoming ever older, greyer and declining.

What people think about Christians influences how they respond to us. Many people make a conscious choice to reject the message of Christianity, or to avoid churches, because of their perceived views about the faith. We are at a turning point for Christianity in America. If we don’t wake up to these realities and respond in appropriate, godly ways, we risk being increasingly marginalized and losing even further credibility with millions of people.

Today’s younger generations, outsiders and Christians alike, are once again motivated by wealth and personal fame, but they want a life that will make a difference. Their perception of present-day Christianity is that it isn’t any help, that it is superficial, antagonistic, depressing. This is how they read the Christian life and God knows we are not doing much to show them wrong. It is Christians themselves who are missing the significance of their lives, and therefore give wrong impressions.

Christians have a hypocritical image in America today. If our thinking were correct we should not have deserved it, but truth is, it is not and so we have. To call it like it is, our lives do not match our beliefs, but it is our beliefs that are off track and not our lives that need to be something they cannot. Our beliefs are jumbled, unrealistic assumptions made about ourselves. The result is we earn the adjective “hypocritical” when our lifestyles and perspectives turn out to be no different than anyone else.

Even if we have not claimed to be different, chances are we still announce that we “strive” to be different. The failure judges us. It is not some new sin to be just as human as those who are not Christian, but outsiders, and often even ourselves, judge us by a different standard. The only area where Christians are distinctive is in the area of religious activities and commitments, but since when we leave the church building on the corner we are not distinctive, our hypocritical branding becomes even more indelible.

Those who claim to be born-again Christians openly claim identity with certain attitudes and behaviors. Survey after survey shows that they and all other Christians fail to evidence transformed lives. The Barna study showed only a handful of areas where Christians evidence a slight divergence in behavior. With lots of effort it seems we are able to reduce the use of profanity in public, purchase fewer lottery tickets, but in some other areas like recycling, we don’t even match the average. It’s easy to see none of these identified areas are “biggies” when it comes to judging someone to be moral.

Thinking wrapped up with being a church member has helped identify lifestyle as the highest priority used to identify who is a Christian. Sadly this has become the way the vast majority of Christians identify themselves. Most Christians say the priorities they pursue in terms of their personal faith are being good, doing the right thing and not sinning. As long as that continues to identify a Christian, I don’t think there is anything we can do about our hypocritical image. The bulk of these distortions are to be blamed on membership thinking that preempts any understanding about what it means to be disciples.

While Jesus has called us to be different people, He did not call us to acquire or achieve sainthood, to live this lifestyle as the way to save ourselves or even change ourselves. Being in Christ is Christ being in us, working through us as His disciple. That is not the same as working alongside Christ as a member. Surrendering oneself to Christ opens the door for Him to transform us, disciple talk, not member talk.

Nevertheless, while we struggle to be good members and continue not to have a clue what it means to be disciples, we will be seen by both ourselves and others as selling the idea that “being good” is the primary way we define what it means to be a Christian. By not understanding what it means to be disciples, we end up listing the truly important things like the passions of a Christ-follower and the discernment of spiritual gifts bestowed on us by the Holy Spirit far down on the list of priorities. Further evidence of the complete breakdown, Christians will always list lifestyle instead of discipleship. Even those willing to acknowledge discipleship generally identify it as a “part” of lifestyle.

Dig deeper! Do we even understand how Jesus is our Savior? Most Americans believe you can earn a place in heaven if you do enough good things for others or if you are a decent person. The Barna study showed that one-third of all Christians who believe they are personally being saved by faith, think of salvation as a multiple-choice test with many possibilities. The study did not reveal how many believe they are personally being saved by “their” faith or that their own faith and/or choice has to still validate what Jesus did before it can be personalized. Yes, for all of the above distortions, blame member thinking.

Findings of another major study, the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life’s U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, released data this year that was reported in USAToday on June 24, 2008. They found that 70% of all major Christian and non-Christian religious groups (except Mormons) say “many religions can lead to eternal life.” It makes one wonder what “all the major Christian religious groups” understand Jesus means when He says, “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me” John 14:6. Researcher John Green says, “Americans are deeply suspicious of institutional religion ... (Some see religion) as about money, rules and power. That’s not a positive connotation for everyone.”

I contend that if discipleship instead of church membership had been the foundation of our relationship to God all along, we would not be having this conversation. Discipleship becomes the key to the right perspective in our relationship to Christ, and the key to dealing with the damage that has been done to the Christian image by the 60/40 impact of hypocrisy. Face it, membership has messed us up.