A Crisis of Character
You can’t throw a rock in America without hitting a church. Sometimes there are two or three on every corner; Catholic, Baptist, Presbyterian, Episcopal, Lutheran, Pentecostal, Methodist…the list goes on.
So, why start another one? However we try to dress it up – by calling it a community, a group, or a network – the fact is, what we’re doing here at underground_vineyard is starting another church. So, why not just remain within one of the many existing congregations?
This week, I’ll address that question in a series of posts. As a Christian, and a one-time professional minister for 15 years, I am sensitive to criticizing the Church. I deeply love love the “bride” of Christ. However, it is precisely because I love her so much that I can’t ignore her very serious problems, and I’m convinced there are problems that can only be addressed by deconstructing much of what we call “church.”
A Crisis of Character
We are supposed to be God’s image, or eikon, resembling and representing Him by containing His spirit. That means we should be people of conspicuously good character.
Unfortunately, it seems there exists within the modern Western church very little Godly character. Indeed, lack of authentic resemblance to Jesus among western Christians has now become a cliche.
Ronald Sider summarizes much of the evidence on American Christian character in his book, The Scandal Of The Evangelical Conscience: Why Are Christians Living Just Like The Rest Of The World? According to the data, American, Evangelical, Born-Again Christians are essentially no different (and sometimes worse) than non-Christians morally. Sider says,
“Scandalous behavior is rapidly destroying American Christianity. By their daily activity, most “Christians” regularly commit treason. With their mouths they claim that Jesus is Lord, but with their actions they demonstrate allegiance to money, sex, and self-fulfillment” (Sider 2005: 8).
Not surprisingly, this has dramatically shaped the perception of Christianity among America’s emerging generations. George Barna’s book, UnChristian, reveals that most Americans from Gen X’ers on down hold a highly unfavorable view of Christianity. According to Barna:
- Only 16% of non-Christians aged 16 to 29 years possess a “good impression” of Christianity. And,
- 23% percent of younger non-Christians report that, “Christianity in today’s society no longer looks like Jesus” (Barna 2007: 52).
In other words, our lack of character has made us largely irrelevant in the eyes of non-Christians who are apparently evaluating us against the standard of Christ himself…which makes sense. We are, after all, called “Christians,” a name which literally means “little Christs.” Everybody, it seems, understands that we are supposed to look like the person we identify with…everyone, that is, but us.
The result has been the rapid decline of the Church in Western nations. By all accounts attendance at weekend church services is on a steady free fall, neither growing with emerging generations of young adults nor keeping pace with the rate of population growth. It has been projected that by 2050 the percentage of the U.S. population attending church will be almost half of what it was in 1990.
Fuller Theological Seminary professors Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger summarized this growing crisis in their 2005 book, Emerging Churches, saying,
“If the church does not embody its message and life within postmodern culture, it will become increasingly marginalized. Consequently, the church will continue to dwindle in numbers throughout the western world” (Gibbs & Bolger:2005:8).
We need to start new churches because frankly the outlook for existing churches is bleak – and since the fundamental problem is character, the solution cannot come from within existing structures.
