Jared C. Wilson's Blog, page 19
May 31, 2017
What Can We Learn from the Fall of Mars Hill Church?
On the latest episode of the For The Church Podcast, I talk with Miles Rohde, lead pastor of Redemption Spokane, which began as the Mars Hill Spokane campus prior to the fall of that ministry empire. We talk about some of the Mars Hill fault-lines, including:
– pastoral plurality without true parity
– workaholism
– lust for bigness
– spirit of competition
– problems with celebrity pastors
– difficulties with video venues
. . . and also what good might’ve come from the fall of this influential ministry movement and what the average church leader can learn from the collapse today.
Check out Episode 6 for this great conversation.
Previous episodes:
Episode 1 featuring Matt Chandler on mission, sermon prep, and multi-site ministry.
Episode 2 featuring Matt Boswell on songwriting, why hymns matter, and more.
Episode 3 featuring Jared Wilson on avoiding ministry burnout.
Episode 4 featuring Jonathan Leeman on church discipline and meaningful membership.
Episode 5 featuring Owen Strachan on Rod Dreher’s The Benedict Option.
May 26, 2017
10 Surprising Realities of Mission in New England
Although I moved in early 2015 to the Midwest, I left a big piece of my heart back in New England, the least-churched region of the nation, which, interestingly enough for a guy born and raised in the Bible Belt of the South, was the first place I really felt “at home.” I still hear regularly from folks interested in the future of church planting, revitalization, and gospel ministry in the New England states. Some have history with the region, some don’t. (I did not when I moved up to Vermont a little more than six years ago.) The following ten items are meant to help those praying and planning adjust their expectations in one respect or another.
Of course, some of these “realities” will seem as they if they go without saying to many, and none will be any surprise to native or long-time New Englanders. But I do think being advised against any ill-conceived preconception could be helpful to many. So, in no particular order:
1. There Is Really No One New England Culture
A lot of us are talking about “New England culture” in broad-brush terms--and I’m going to do some of that in this very post--but while there are some traits that tend to characterize the people of the region generally, there is really no one specifically definable “New England culture.” Coming from the South, I have a pet peeve when people talk about a “Southern accent.” There’s no such thing as a “Southern accent.” Do you mean a Georgian accent? Tennessean? East Texas? And so on. In the same way, the six states of New England host distinct state cultures and even distinct subcultures within states. There are urban New Englanders (think Boston, Massachusetts, or Portland, Maine) and there are rural New Englanders. Mainers and Vermonters are a lot alike, but there are also some significant differences.
Even within the state I lived, the culture of my church town--rural population of 700--is much different from the culture of metro Burlington up north--more urban, roughly 200,000. So it behooves missioners to New England to learn about specific areas of ministry, distinct regions, and prepare not for “New England” but for whatever specific area they may be moving to.
2. New Englanders Are Not Rude
Okay, well, some are. But no more than they are in the South or the Rust Belt or Pacific Northwest or whatever. When I was preparing to move to Vermont, I met with someone in Tennessee who was going to prepare me for life in the great Northeast. “The people up there are rude,” he said. “But they’re honest.” Well, the last part was true. I have found the first part vastly overstated. What many mistake for rudeness is usually simply quietness, introversion, or privacy. New Englanders--and here I’m broad-brushing, because I have to--are not an effusive people. They are not an extroverted culture like, for instance, “Southerners.” But they are not rude. They may be “hard” in many ways. But they are typically hard-working, own-business-minding, live-and-let-live people. And they are straight-shooters and (typically) suspicious of outsiders. But they are friendly in conversation, especially when out and about in rural areas, and willing to help anybody any time for any reason. The phrase you might best use to characterize the typical New Englander is summed up in that handy colloquialism “salt of the earth.”
3. New Englanders May Be Godless, But They Aren’t Unhappy or ‘Immoral’
This is a mistake evangelicals make in thinking through evangelism in almost every place, not just the Northeast. We assume that lost people feel lost. That they walk around with a God-shaped hole, sensing something missing, dealing with a vague sense of unfulfillment that the gospel is the answer for. But while this is sometimes true, it isn’t mostly true--not in my experience, anyway--and it is certainly not true in the Northeast where you’d most expect it to be the case.
If New England is the least religious, least churched region in the nation, you’d expect it to be the least happy, wouldn’t you? Well, you can rethink your assumptions. New England states regularly rank near the top of “happiest states” surveys, as well as in “healthiest states” surveys. There are a lot of miserable lost people here, sure, but in general, people without Christ are doing pretty well for themselves and don’t sense anything missing in their lives. And most of them are good--as I said, “salt of the earth”--people. The “Godless heathens” in my neck of the woods were kind and polite and pleasant, and they homeschooled their kids and didn’t let them watch television, and they pursued justification by recycling and solar energy, and they looked after their neighbors, and so on. If you’re thinking Christian mission is essentially about behavior modification, you need to think differently.
4. New Englanders Are Not Averse to Spiritual Conversations
There are many throughout New England who are hostile to Christian theology or Christianity, mostly because they equate it with being non-intellectual or with right-wing politics. Just read some of the comments on New England online newspaper stories about churches or church planting. But one to one, relationally, New Englanders generally speaking are not hostile to having spiritual conversations. Many have a great affection for spirituality, even if they are not religious or churchgoers themselves. On a cultural level, you may feel hostility to the presence of churches or “Christians,” but relationally, you will likely discover that folks will be interested in knowing more about your theology. And of course you will invariably discover that most have never heard the gospel and assume the message of Christianity is “be good.”
5. New Englanders Are Not Turned Off By Tradition
Generally speaking, the natives and long-timers in the region do not have the same hang-ups about “traditional church” as many in the Bible Belt do. They may not be interested in attending your church, but it’s probably not because you’re in a traditional building with a steeple and what-not. In fact, they probably like that about your building. But their hangup about church has nothing to do with architecture. And should they ever actually darken your church door, you will probably find that many expect it to be somewhat traditional in atmosphere and music, and so on. Most will not care. Most don’t know any different.
Of course, this is another truism that may differ area to area. In more urban areas, a more modern atmosphere may make more sense. But in many other places, the locals have such an affection for the history of their place, they have an admiration and affection for the religious spaces, even if they don’t participate in them any more. A friend of mine planted a church in a rural area of Vermont a while back and hosted their worship gathering in a variety of spaces from town buildings to a local bar. When they finally moved into an abandoned church building, they saw more unbelievers show up. Why? Some said it was because they weren’t sure what the church was before. They thought maybe it was a cult. Somehow being in the church building let them know it was a church. New Englanders have hangups about religion, but your traditional church building probably isn’t one of them. Similarly, having a “rockin’ band” is less important here. In fact, having one may seem like trying too hard, appearing too produced, showing off. On that note:
6. New Englanders Like Authentic Authenticity
It’s weird to qualify it that way, but in many church strategies, authenticity is produced. It is seen as a “style.” Which of course makes it inauthentic. But real authenticity just is. New Englanders, generally speaking, see through production really easily. This does not mean they like cruddy stuff. It just means they value realness--in a worship service, for instance--more than a tightly scheduled, expertly conducted production. Showing up in town with what looks like a show will likely be a huge turn-off. These are some of the starkest differences between church ministry in the Northeast and church ministry in the Bible Belt. And again, there are places where this is more or less true, but New Englanders tend to value simplicity and authenticity.
7. New Englanders Are Already ‘Doing Community’
In many places, churches establish small group programs of some kind to facilitate community experience among Christians. In most of those places, the program is meant to actually create the desire for community that the program is meant to satisfy. This is why most churches struggle with small group programs. The program cannot create the desire; it is only meant to channel it. Kinda like the trellis and the vine. When I moved to Vermont I wondered about community group programming for our church, but I quickly realized I didn’t need a program to make the locals do “life on life” with each other. Because they were already doing that! They were already up in each other’s business on a nearly daily basis. Christians with Christians, Christians with non-Christians, and so on.
This is another truism that may be less or more true place to place in the region, but in rural areas and smaller towns especially, you will discover that the value of community already exists. The shaping of suburbia with its values of comfort, convenience, and control hasn’t taken place. (Of course, self-interest is still a problem, but it manifests itself differently.) So many church planters will need to understand that the value of community doesn’t need to be invented, but more spiritually shaped.
8. New Englanders Are Not Averse to Sermons
Again, we are speaking generally here. But from the urban areas where the personality may be more “intellectual” to the rural areas where the personality may be more “traditional,” if people do come to your church, they will not be automatically turned off by the sermon element. I know dialogue is in fashion in many missional movements, and the sermon is seen as an outdated mode of information relay, part of the bygone days of Christendom, but this is not a view to hold too tightly in planning for mission in New England. Now, people may be turned off by the content of your sermon; but they won’t often be turned off by the presence of a sermon itself. (And this is also setting aside bad preaching from good preaching. I’m speaking only about preaching as a mode of discourse.) You will likely find that many don’t mind the genre of sermon and in fact expect it.
And in plenty of areas, good preaching--compelling in content and excellent in delivery--will be fairly attractive to even outsiders who are invited or otherwise get wind of it, even though you will have been told by many that the “old way” of doing church doesn’t work any more.
9. Mission in New England Costs More and Takes Longer
It’s hard soil and an expensive one. This is an important point especially related to fundraising outside of New England for fundraising in New England. I attended a speaking appearance by Tim Keller in Nashville, Tennessee, a few years ago where the pastor host of the event was remembering being on the board that helped send Keller to Manhattan, lo, those years ago. He said one person spoke up in objection at one point, saying essentially, “I could plant ten churches in Birmingham, Alabama, for the cost of this one church in Manhattan,” to which this pastor said, “We don’t need ten more churches in Birmingham; we need one in Manhattan.”
Now, of course, Birmingham and every other town needs more gospel-centered churches, but his point was that mission should not be thought of in terms of “bang for your buck.” Manhattan isn’t in New England, but the financial realities are similar. My friend Stephen Um once said he reminds outsider funding soures that church planting in New England takes twice as long and costs twice as much. Those planning to bring gospel ministry for the long term, who plan to invest and put down roots--which is the only way to do mission here--need to prepare for this reality. You don’t just hang up a sign, send out a postcard, and throw a band on stage. You die.
10. Native Christians in New England May be More Hostile to Mission Than Unbelievers
This may be the hardest truism to handle. You come expecting brotherhood, unity, kingdom-mindedness. You have dreams of cooperation and collaboration. You expect hostility from the lost. But not from brothers and sisters in Christ. Again, this a huge generality and is not necessarily typical in every place in the region. But you may discover, church planter, that much of your opposition in ministry comes not from the lost locals--who may not be interested at all, or who may consider your endeavor a curiosity, but who otherwise don’t care what you do--but from (1) the false converts of Christless churches who oppose conservative evangelicalism, (2) the bigoted congregants of liberal/progressive churches who oppose conservatism, the “neo-Reformed,” charismaticism, or whatever your brand of evangelicalism may be, or who just oppose something new and seemingly attractive in their old and crusty environment, or--most sadly--(3) other evangelical churches who feel threatened by the newness of your ministry or its appearance of success. Some of your own brothers and sisters may begin to give you cold shoulders or spread gossip because of a sense of “turf” or a fear of losing congregants. This is a hard reality. So stay humble, stay faithful, stay lowly and meek, and of course--don’t recruit from other churches.
In addition, if you go to lead a work of revitalization in an existing church that is dying or plateaued, many are the tales of chewed-up-and-spit-out pastors to serve as warnings to come with a thick skin and a resolute spirit.
May 23, 2017
Imagine if Your Difficult Ministry Was Bookended by Revival
Yesterday, I was able to give the New England Study Tour students from Midwestern Seminary a tour of my former church in Middletown Springs, Vermont, and I told them a little about perhaps Middletown’s most storied pastor. You’ve never heard of him (more than likely), but the Rev. Henry Bigelow was the pastor of Middletown from 1805 to 1832. I am intrigued greatly by the man and encouraged by his ministry, described in a historical artifact I found in our church archives today. This is from “A Historical Discourse delivered at the Centennial Celebration of the Congregational Church in Middletown, Vt, June 22, 1881 by Rev. Osborne Myrick, Pastor of the Church”:
Though the youthful pastor began his ministry under great misgivings, there were soon evident tokens of the Holy Spirit’s presence in awakening sinners under the pointed, faithful preaching of the gospel.There were several seasons of deep religious interest, the most remarkable was in 1817, which extended to both churches, and pervaded the whole town, meetings being held in the schoolhouses. There were very few that were not the subjects of conviction or conversion . . . Large additions were made to both churches.
The spread of that revival is detailed by Joshua Taylor in his Accounts of Religious Revivals in Many Parts of the United States from 1815 to 1818.
The Rev. Myrick goes on to detail the conversion of a prominent lady in the town whose descendants were in the church during his tenure, which I’m sure was a delight to hear about by the family at the time. He then goes on to detail a devastating discouragement in the case of church discipline that divided the church and, in his words, “fell almost as a deathblow upon the church” and “almost bankrupted some of its members, and most of all, greatly discomfort[ed] the pastor, if not shorten[ed] his days.”
But just as the light of revival brightened Henry Bigelow’s first decade of ministry at Middletown, it brightened his last, as well. Myrick writes:
The revival of 1831 was near the close of Mr. Bigelow’s ministry, when he was greatly broken in health but mellowed in spirit. He died while gathering into the church the precious fruits of this revival . . . Mr. Bigelow died June 25, 1832, after preaching here a little over twentyseven years, or after 26 years and 9 months of his pastorate. His grave is here, the only one of any that have administered to this church . . .
But what was the man like?
Mr. Bigelow was well-read, and sound in theology and positive in matters of doctrine and discipline. His personal address in the pulpit was said to be commanding. He was endowed with great freedom and ability in prayer, and entered heartily into his subject, and was often affected to tears while preaching.
Can you imagine having your ministerial tenure bookended by revivals?
May 18, 2017
What Is Gospel-Shaped Worship?
Watch Matt Boswell, Shane Barnard, and me discuss the implications and applications of worship that is shaped by the gospel.
If you’re interested more in this subject, I have also authored a resource published by The Gospel Coalition in conjunction with The Good Book Company called Gospel Shaped Worship, designed for group and class study in your church or small group.
May 17, 2017
Is The Benedict Option Good for Christians?
On the latest episode of the For The Church Podcast, Dr. Owen Strachan and I discuss the relative merits of The Benedict Option as presented in Rod Dreher’s new book.
– Is Benedict a good option for evangelicals?
– Are the critics of Dreher and his “strategy for Christians in a post-Christian nation” on target with their concerns?
– What can we learn from this approach to navigating the increasingly irreligious and hostile-to-religion cultural environs of the United States?
– And what exactly would it look like if Satan took over a city? The answer may surprise you.
Strachan, Midwestern Seminary‘s Associate Professor of Christian Theology and Director of The Center for Public Theology, is one of our tribe’s leading voices on the intersection of the gospel and the culture, and I think you’ll find our discussion thoughtful and provocative. Check it out.
Previous episodes:
Episode 1 featuring Matt Chandler on mission, sermon prep, and multi-site ministry.
Episode 2 featuring Matt Boswell on songwriting, why hymns matter, and more.
Episode 3 featuring Jared Wilson on avoiding ministry burnout.
Episode 4 featuring Jonathan Leeman on church discipline and meaningful membership.
May 16, 2017
Why New England is the New American Missional Frontier
Tomorrow I will be joining Midwestern Seminary‘s Academic Provost Dr. Jason Duesing and Associate Professor of Christian Theology Dr. Owen Strachan in leading a group of students on a study tour of New England. I am really excited to return to my second home, a place where I spent 6 years in pastoral ministry in the least-churched state in the nation (Vermont), both to revisit some familiar sites and newly explore some historical landmarks. I am convinced that we need more gospel ministry in the Northeast, and in New England in particular; in fact, I believe the need is urgent for replanting, revitalizing, and the planting of new evangelical works. In terms of mission at home, I think the old grounds of New England are the new missional frontier.
I had never even visited New England before I began the interview process for the church in rural Vermont that I had the privilege of shepherding. As a native Texan who spent more than a decade in Tennessee, I have the blue blood of the Bible Belt coursing through my veins. But in 2008, as the pastor a young church plant in Nashville, God began to shift my attention from the older brothers of my homeland to the prodigals of (what I would consider) the wilderness.
And over the last several years I have been privileged to connect with others who are receiving a heart for the now least-reached portion of the United States, and I believe more and more are receiving the call, looking to “liberal,” “pagan,” “dead and dry” New England with missionary fervor. But the need is great and the workers are still few. As I keep an eye on the momentum of church planting initiatives in the U.S., I am grateful to see so many willing hearts and strong hands engaging neighbors with the gospel, but I am disheartened to see over and over again this needy post-Christian field constantly overlooked by so many would-be missional planters. Could the neglect of this emerging mission field not be from the lack of God’s call, but the lack of the called’s interest?
If you are a future church planter or have designs on joining a missional plant, here are some reasons I hope you will consider looking to and praying for a vision of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, or Vermont, the six states that comprise New England:
1. New England is the least churched area of the nation.
If there is an unreached people group in the United States, it is New Englanders. A 2009 Gallup poll placed the six states of New England in the top ten least religious states in the nation. While the Bible Belt is approaching a completely unchurched generation, New England is already there. There is no high attendance at Easter and Christmas, because nobody even has the nostalgia factor driving them to recapture childhood visits to church. There is no biblical literacy to speak of, of course. According to the Glenmary Research Center, via NETS Institute for Church Planting, those in New England who attend evangelical churches hovers between 1 and 3% of the population. There is a higher percentage of evangelical Christian churchgoers in Mormon Utah than in Rhode Island!
2. Many of New England’s evangelical churches are not gospel-wakened.
New Englanders have little desire for anything to do with Christianity or church but even those who have it have little opportunity to explore it. While the landscape of New England is dotted with little church buildings, some quaint and some beautiful, more and more of these buildings now house liberal, practically Unitarian congregations, if they house church gatherings at all. And where churches are evangelical, the evangel has not yet captured the hearts of many congregations. As the cultural environment became more worldly, conservative churches became more insular, opting to self-protect in their religious “bunkers” instead of engaging their communities in gospel mission. The need for gospel-centered missional churches throughout New England is dire. The good news is that a movement is afoot already, but it needs more workers.
3. New England is spiritually fertile.
While the soil in New England is superficially hard, beneath it run springs of spiritual openness. This isn’t always a good thing, of course, but there’s something about this area of the nation that is spiritually fertile. America’s two major cults — the Latter Day Saints and the Jehovah’s Witnesses — had their genesis in the Northeast United States, both in New York state. (Back in the day 200 year-old church in Vermont actually kicked out Joseph Smith’s secretary for heresy!) The New Age movement and pagan spiritualities are still popular in pockets throughout rural areas and college towns.
But there is a rich evangelical heritage in New England, of course. The Great Awakenings began here. George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, the Haystack Revival, the student missionary movement, etc. The heritage is rich. New England enjoys a great history of Reformational preaching and mission. Lemuel Haynes of Rutland, Vermont, a strong Calvinist parish minister, was the first black pastor of an all-white church in the United States.
But where gospel fires once burned now looks burnt over. The majority religion in New England is Catholicism, which seems so odd given the evangelical fervor of the Awakenings.
Many of us believe God can and will do something great again in New England. As in the days of Amos, we are praying that God will do what he promised to do for his dispersed children: “In that day I will raise up the booth of David that is fallen and repair its breaches, and raise up its ruins and rebuild it as in the days of old” (Amos 9:11).
Is God calling you to raise up the ruins of beautiful New England? The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.
May 5, 2017
I’m Giving Away “The Imperfect Disciple” on Audio
I’ve got 5 codes for a free download of my new book The Imperfect Disciple on audio, courtesy of ChristianAudio.com.
“How do I win one, Jared?” you’re saying aloud to your screen.
Well, we’re gonna get super-cheesy and self-involved here. I mean, it’s gotta cost you something. So here’s what you do:
Take a selfie with a copy of the book and post it on Instagram or Twitter using the hashtag #imperfectdisciplebook. (The hashtag is important! I won’t be able to log your entry if you don’t include it.) You don’t even have to own the book or buy it! Just pose with a copy at the bookstore or borrow a friend’s. Next week, I’ll select 5 winners at random and send you a code for your free download.
May 4, 2017
The Attractional Tipping Point—Part Two: Is Everything Going to Be Just Fine?
Yesterday I outlined some thoughts on the prospect of an institutional collapse of the attractional* church movement. The summarized reasons are as follows:
1. The younger generation is less interested in the attractional product.
2. The movement trains its congregants out of the need for itself.
3. Maturing believers outgrow the movement’s churches.
4. The movement is losing its core customer base due to wider cultural changes.
Properly nuanced, those major thoughts (and a few minor ones unmentioned) have informed my musings about the potential of an attractional tipping point. But it could be I have no idea what I’m talking about; thus today’s self-rejoinder.
Reasons Why the Attractional Church May Be Just Fine for Quite Some Time
A couple of years ago I was having lunch with a couple of ministry colleagues from Nashville. I outlined my working theory about the coming collapse of the attractional church. What is found in Part 1 is a basic summation of my argument. At the time, I even mentioned a particular leader in the attractional world as an example of a surface-level teacher setting himself up for failure. This fellow did fail, morally disqualifying himself from ministry and getting fired. And while his church suffers some obvious ramifications from that, this “fall from grace” didn’t seem to cause much self-reflection in the tribe where he carried a lot of weight. They just kept on keepin’ on, like it didn’t happen. Several high-profile falls have occurred in the last two years in the attractional world. Still they seem un-bothered.
My friends looked at me like I wasn’t on to something. Their responses, and a few from some others I’ve asked over the last few years, are synthesized below. Here are some reasons why we may not be close to an attractional tipping point at all:
1. Undiscipled Chickens Don’t Care Where They Roost
This week Jonathan Merritt posted his latest screed against evangelicalism’s audacious orthodoxy, calling evangelical would-be gatekeepers “cowardly” (his word) for calling out false teachers (my words) for their “different understanding of same-sex relationships” (his words). Tucked into that piece was this nifty passage:
And for those conservative Christians who believe Jen [Hatmaker] is an outlier, allow me to burst your bubble. Hatmaker is not alone in her views on same-sex relationships. Many evangelicals agree with her. No, I’m not referring to Matthew Vines or David Gushee or Julie Rogers or any other evangelical who is vocal about their affirming position. I’m talking about many who secretly agree with Hatmaker but are too afraid to say so.I have talked to dozens and dozens of evangelical leaders over the past few years who confidentially confess that they’ve changed their minds on these issues too. They include pastors of some of America’s largest evangelical churches, preachers with internationally broadcast television ministries, bestselling Christian authors, popular bloggers, and leaders of large faith-based organizations. They can’t afford to have their speaking schedules dry up or to lose their jobs, so they avoid the issue, or worse, they outright lie about what they actually believe.
Will the bubble burst? I would think so.
Back when I was talking to my Nashville friends, I brought this subject to the fore. We have all seen how the standard tack of those pushing for the normalization of same-sex marriage and the sanctification of homosexual behavior has changed from “It’s not going to affect you” to “You will be made to care.” At some point, I argued, all of these fence-sitting attractional leaders aren’t going to be allowed to remain silent. Someone will want to be hired, someone will want to be married, someone will ask an interview question, someone will want to teach or preach or lead a ministry. Attractional leaders by and large have built their platforms on not rocking the boat, and remaining as implicit as they can on all kinds of divisive issues. This has led of course to a notable silence on subjects where the Bible is loud.
If Merritt is right that there are “dozens and dozens” of these high-profile leaders who affirm what the Bible denies—and I have no reason to think he isn’t—but are too used to spending the money and the good will of their audience to admit it, how much longer can they (or their audience) bear the silence? I mean, setting aside for the moment the duplicity in coddling the folks who prefer to live as hypocrites while calling those who are up-front about their convictions “cowards,” there is embedded here a tenuous scaffolding of conviction. Aren’t things that aren’t firm destined to collapse?
I said to my friends, “Don’t you think once these guys begin to”—pardon the term —”out themselves as affirming of same-sex marriage” (for instance) “or in denial of biblical inspiration (or whatever), that their empires will fall?”
“Not necessarily,” my friends said. Why? Because most of the people who’ve been discipled under their ministries have not been taught the Bible thoroughly or convictionally. They’ve been un-discipled, in other words. They don’t know any different. They’ve grown up largely under what Christian Smith calls “moralistic therapeutic deism,” so unbiblical teaching wouldn’t necessarily register as unbiblical. In fact, it would probably sound very much in the spirit of moralistic therapeutic deism. I think this explains the appeal of the so-called “progressive Christian” movement to so many in my generation. We have grown up in the attractional world, getting bits and slices of self-oriented biblical teaching for decades. Then the intellectual and creative thought-leaders come around, and we can’t discern where they’re heterodox. It sounds like biblical maturity.
We were never properly grounded, so we are easily led astray. Further, we’ve been accustomed to siding with the crowd and discipled according to a Christianity that apes the culture, so when preachers and teachers come along who are marrying Christianity with the culture’s views on sexuality, the fingers feel good on our ears.
I suppose if one of the attractional megachurch guys came out tomorrow as fully affirming of same-sex marriage, there’d be some backlash, even among his admirers. Some folks would feel betrayed, bamboozled, and they would splinter off. But I bet there’d be an awful lot of support from within the tribe, both from major leaders who don’t really care about those things and also from his own congregants who don’t really know about them. This new teaching will be seen as the way of grace, while the traditional teaching will be seen as the stuff of legalism. The attractional church has not built its customer base on robust biblical teaching in the first place.
2. Traditions Die Hard, Especially in More Bible Belt-y Places
Even my theory that the Bible Belt is heading toward the ruins of post-Christendom falls under scrutiny. Some of the more recent statistical data have shown that churchgoing trends aren’t really all that dire, especially in places where they’ve traditionally been strong all along. I would have assumed that the Bible Belt would go the way of the Northeast and the Northwest, as older generations die out and younger generations less interested in the faith emerge. But traditions die hard.
I found this even to be true during my time in Vermont, the least religious state in the entire nation. There are folks who would never darken the door of my church building who nevertheless had a sentimental affection for the church building itself. Many a Southern church planter has come to New England—rural New England, in particular—assuming that what the “seekers” want is some hip new version of the faith in a modern aesthetic, only to discover it’s the customers down South who like new styles. Your building type or music style isn’t really what’s keeping New Englanders away from your church plant. It’s actually the message (usually). New Englanders generally don’t care too much about biblical Christianity, but they have no aversions generally to church architecture and traditions. These things are part of their cultural bedrock.
I suppose Bible Belt Christianity could be much the same. I do think it will get less and less gospel-explicit, becoming evangelical largely in name only (if that), but I would not be surprised if the gatherings continue unabated for quite some time, fully produced and wholesomely inspirational. It is hard to eradicate tradition from a culture, and the attractional church scene has become as much a part of the Bible Belt culture (not just in the South but in more regional “Bible Belts” around the nation) as the fundamentalist church scene was 50 years ago.
3. Americans Like Shows
You can find traces of the attractional influence all over the world, especially in the West, but in America it rules the day, because Americans are different. We like big, we like loud, and we like showy. We are an entertainment-addicted people, and so long as there is an appetite for spiritual things in us, we will prefer our spirituality mixed with spectacle. In my prognostication about the end of the attractional church, I have likely underestimated Americans’ love for productions. In fact, while I’ve wondered if the more concert-like churches become, the more likely they are to fall, the exact opposite may well be the case. The number of megachurches is in fact increasing. Not all megachurches are attractional in methodology, but most of them are.
This is where I could insert a lot of examination of the effect of media on American values and aptitude, quote Marshall McLuhan, and so on Instead, I’ll just say that we have become a nation of spectators, and all the indicators in the evangelical world are that the church has embraced—not challenged or subverted—the culture’s trajectory in these matters. Spectator Christianity is big business and probably will be for a long time.
4. Vague Spirituality Never Goes Out of Style
Take a look at the most consumed religious books, music, television programs, and sermon podcasts. Are they the most theologically sound and biblically robust? No. This tells us something. It tells us that the largest percentage of Christian consumers of spiritual content prefer the kinds of things the attractional church is known for—individualistic, inspirational, “Bible-based” teaching. This roach never dies. You turn the light on, it scurries. A culturally nuclear cataclysm, the likes of which we are seeing in the United States’ shifting moral values over the last few years, can’t even kill it. Bland, maudlin, syrupy vague spirituality we will always have with us. It will outlive us all.
No, the attractional church has a lot going for it, consumeristically and culturally speaking. The less clear and the less convictional it gets, in fact, the wider its apparent reach. As the world becomes less Christian, we may in fact see an increase in those “spiritual but not religious” respondents. This paradigm is well-suited for many of them. “Spiritual but not religious” is sort of the attractional model’s raison d’etre. In this mode, come whatever cultural shifts, it may not lose many people at all, nor cultural influence, at least in its immediate local context, but perhaps not even in the wider and increasingly more tribal—world of the religious marketplace (publishing, conferences, web, social media).
What it will cease to be is evangelical in any meaningful sense of the word. And collapse or not, a prophetic reformation and a spiritual revival are still sorely needed.
You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt should lose its taste, how can it be made salty? It’s no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.
— Matthew 5:13
So there you have it. Attractional Tipping Point? Yes? No? Maybe?
Tell me what you think in the comments.
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* Please see the first post for a short definition of what I mean by “attractional church.”
May 3, 2017
The Attractional Tipping Point—Part One: The Coming Collapse?
Is there a tipping point coming in the attractional church movement?
I don’t know. I used to think so. Now I’m inclined to think not. I ask just about everybody I meet who I think may have some insight into this question. Some say yes, some say no. I keep asking, because—again—I don’t know.
What follows will be the first of a two-part exploration of my primary thoughts on this question. In this installment, I want to outline some reasons why we may be seeing a systemic collapse of the attractional church movement before long. (Trigger warning: chickens.)
First, though, what do I mean by the attractional church?
Attractional Is a Paradigm, Not a Style Per Se
Some assume I simply mean contemporary or non-traditional or that I mean non-denominational or even megachurches. I don’t. There are traditional and non-traditional attractional churches, and denominational and non-denominational attractional churches, and small, normative, and mega-sized attractional churches. By attractional I mean a church that conducts its worship and ministry according to the desires and values of potential consumers, leading to a dominant ethos of pragmatism in the church.
Yes, the most common perception of the attractional church is the seeker-driven megachurch is the one where the pastor rides his Harley up to the stage on Easter Sunday after the “worship” band has played “Highway to Hell.” But there are plenty of smaller churches using pragmatic and consumeristic methodology—mainly to get bigger—and there are plenty of churches with traditional styles (music, clothing, buildings), both big and small, that employ the attractional model, because traditional is “what works” in their contexts. There are several distinguishing hallmarks of the attractional model, and if anyone is interested in exploring them more in detail, I recommend checking out my book The Prodigal Church.
Why the Attractional Church May Collapse (Relatively) Soon
So how is the attractional enterprise going? It would seem, from all their own indications, pretty well. Ten years ago, Willow Creek, the first majorly influential seeker church, released the results of their REVEAL survey, in which they had bravely and thoroughly sought to answer the question, “Is what we’re doing working?” Their aim: to turn irreligious people into fully devoted followers of Christ. “Make disciples,” in other words. Their conclusion, after REVEAL? It’s not working. Bill Hybels himself said, “We made a mistake.”
Of course, later he backtracked a bit, mainly because when you suggest to thousands of people that they’ve wasted their last decade on something they thought was The Answer, you tend to create some significant crises of identity. In short, back then, I thought this revelation would have sent shock waves through the attractional world. When the leading example admits the program isn’t doing what they thought it was doing, I would’ve assumed it would cause a top-down reassessment of convictions, values, methods, and so on. Instead, most churches simply put their fingers in their ears, put their heads down, and carried on. And why wouldn’t they? The auditoriums weren’t shrinking. What other evidence do you need that it’s working?
But can this swelling be sustained? For a long time, I’ve thought not. Here’s why:
1. The Younger Generation Is Too Old for the Games
We’ve been tracking this trend since the days of the emergent conversation. From Gen-Y on down, generally speaking, those interested in local expressions of Christianity community (what the rest of us call “church”) are less and less interested in programmatic, consumeristic approaches to spirituality like those found in attractional churches. This is somewhat counterintuitive, because the younger generations are also the ones most readily embracing technology and innovation, and the like. But when you merge these things with spirituality, their guards tend to go up. They can smell the insincerity in produced authenticity. And they are the quickest to find the pop-song covers, movie-clip illustrations, and cheeky sermon series titles incredibly cheesy.
A lot of us have seen the typical event-driven attractional programming as essentially the graduated manifestation of the youth group culture of the ’70s and ’80s. “Not your grandfather’s church!” the promotional mailers used to day. Except now it is our grandfather’s church. Lame. Us Gen-Xer’s tried to merge it with an older aesthetic, applying the attractional ethos to an historical pathos and we gave you—voila!—the emerging church, which of course emerged into thin air. The younger generations are much smarter than we are.
When you couple the general temperament of the Millennials and younger with their growing affection for vintage, retro, analog, organic, artisanal, what-have-you, you find a cultural aversion to packaged, programmatic Christianity. As this movement and its pastors get older—how many times can we do the “God at the Movies” thing, by the way, and still call ourselves innovative?—they may be aging themselves out of the increasingly necessary customer base.
2. The Undiscipled Chickens Are Going Home to Roost
This has been a leading theory of mine for some time. The less gospel the attractional church offers, the less convictionally biblical it becomes, the less compelling it will be both to prospective irreligious consumers and to current religious customers. (More on that latter point below.) But the former problem would be a parallel trend to what is happening in the mainline churches. In other words, these churches may be full of people now, but over time, as they are more fully “discipled” in the vein of therapeutic moralism—a kind of Bible-lite inspirational self-help—the less need they have for the church itself. I mean, if I’m okay, and you’re okay, why do I need to go to church? I can get inspirational pick-me-ups at home. Rob Bell is even on Oprah now, and you can all the major attractional guys on your phone. Might as well sleep in Sundays.
The attractional church has spent decades discipling its customers toward a more self-involved, individualized faith. They should not be surprised when this self-involved individualism gets fully embraced and people “peace out” showing up to church on the weekend.
Similarly, the rate of biblical illiteracy has increased incredibly among evangelicals. You cannot convince me that the way the Bible has been preached and taught in this dominant form of evangelicalism over the last 30 years has nothing to do with this trend. We have major church leaders on major stages of influence undermining the sufficiency and potency of Scripture. The pulpit coffee tables in these churches are places from which congregants can get spritzed with a few Bible verses. Consequently, evangelicalism faces the problem of widespread ignorance about what the Bible teaches on almost every biblical subject of import to our cultural moment today, everything from the nature of the church itself to authority and governance, from the basic understanding of the gospel to the traditional church teaching on sexuality. In short, evangelicalism has inadvertently discipled people away from evangelicalism.
3. The Discipled Chickens Are Finding Other Coops
Much hand-wringing has been conducted over the young adult dropout rate. I don’t really wish to add to that, but it’s still a problem, especially in churches that don’t effectively disciple their congregations. What typically happens in these churches is that the back door is as wide open as the front, and even if the church has been successful in bringing in and winning converts—though much of the emerging data on the movement is that they are most successful not in converting the unsaved but attracting the already-saved from other churches—these converts hit a discipleship ceiling. Some of the leaders even say as much. “This church is not for you,” they will say to the Christians in their congregations, which has to be kind of jarring if you happened to get saved in that church.
The turnover rate in attractional churches is pretty high, especially in the “contemporary”-styled versions, at some estimations averaging about seven years before folks move on. I stuck it out about ten years myself, mainly because I thought I could be a positive influence for change. (I discovered it doesn’t really work that way.) In any event, as true believers mature, they get tired of feeling spiritually plateaued in the attractional church and move on. And when your primary base are largely new or otherwise immature believers, it gets harder and harder to sustain forward movement.
4. The Ideal Attractional Consumer Is Becoming Less Religious
This is a larger cultural point. As America becomes less religious, the number of people even interested in any kind of Christianity is decreasing. This is especially true of the attractional church’s ideal target—middle- to upper-middle-class white suburbanites. Even in the Bible Belt, as cultural Christianity dribbles away, so too does the potential customer base for this region’s attractional churches. You would think that as irreligious people become even more irreligious, the churches aimed at reaching irreligious people by appealing to their “felt needs” will continue becoming more and more irreligious themselves, which historically and statistically we see is a recipe for decline.
In fact, the churches most growing in the least religious regions of our nation are the more traditionally evangelical congregations. Is there any reason to think the Bible Belt won’t eventually resemble the post-Christian mission fields of the Northeast/New England and the Pacific Northwest?
Well, maybe there are.
Tomorrow I’ll post Part 2, in which I hedge my bets on this theoretical collapse and offer some “not so fast” reasons why the attractional church may be just fine for the foreseeable future.
Church Discipline and How Jonathan Leeman is Really a Nice Guy
– “Church discipline seems strange to us because it doesn’t fit our conceptions of love.”
– “Churches seem to have lost track of what the Bible says about organizing our lives together.”
New episode of the For The Church Podcast dropped this morning, in which I talk with my friend Jonathan Leeman about his wheelhouse (church discipline) and how church discipline became known as his wheelhouse. Check it out.
Previous episodes:
Episode 1 featuring Matt Chandler on mission, sermon prep, and multi-site ministry.
Episode 2 featuring Matt Boswell on songwriting, why hymns matter, and more.
Episode 3 featuring Jared Wilson on avoiding ministry burnout.
