14: Why Churches Matter
WHY CHURCHES MATTER
Advocating for Church in a Post-Christian Culture
Over the course of this book we’ve looked at the unchurched from a number of angles, considering their lifestyles, beliefs, values, and faith practices. We have considered how best to connect with the churchless and bring them into the fold. Yet in the end, we have to answer a key question: Why should people go to church?
A majority of Americans no longer believe Christianity is the default faith of the nation, and a rapidly expanding segment of the population is questioning the purpose and value of both churches and church engagement. Reacting to teaching that equates one’s absence from Sunday morning services with sin, and to leaders who see in the loss of membership a sign of flagging commitment, many Americans are flaunting their individuality and self-determination. Millions of citizens are exercising their freedom of choice and disassociating from institutions and traditions of all kinds —not only religious assemblies. Formerly respected institutions such as marriage, banks, courts, unions, and schools are greeted with skepticism. It’s a tough era for any organization that relies on people’s trust to remain effective.
Painful as it may be to consider, the doubters raise legitimate questions that deserve thoughtful answers. In a society where personal choice and independence are among the most esteemed values, why would someone participate in communal church life? Why should anyone devote precious time, energy, money, and loyalty to a Christian church?
If we hope to stem the swelling tide of churchless adults, we must make a compelling case for the value of church life. If nothing else, having good reasons to participate in the congregational adventure can remind us why we stay committed to our faith community.
The Value of Church
Christian churches come in a dazzling array of sizes, locations, beliefs, organizational structures, and missions. With about 320,000 Protestant churches, more than 18,000 Catholic parishes, and more than 50,000 house churches open for business in the United States, church options abound. And while these worshiping communities are diverse, they hold several elements in common.
This book would be incomplete if we did not also provide a data-driven argument for the importance of church engagement. After thirty-plus years of studying the relationship between beliefs and behaviors, we have identified a correlation between church engagement and a number of desirable life outcomes.
Comparing the life experiences of the unchurched with those of the actively churched reveals that churchgoers are less likely to be stressed out and to feel lonely. They are more likely to say they are happy, are making a positive difference in the world, have deep connections with their friends, and are fulfilling their calling in life. (See the next table.)
Barna Group is not the only research organization to identify these trends. In a massive study of more than 300,000 Americans’ emotional well-being, in which at least 1,000 US adults were surveyed each day about the positive and negative emotions they experienced, Gallup discovered that regular churchgoers experience more positive and fewer negative emotions than those who do not regularly attend religious services.[20] These stats track with the overall findings of Gallup’s research in this area, which confirms that religious Americans enjoy greater all-around well-being than those who are not religious.[21]
Church engagement is not a cure-all, but the data indicate that churchgoers are more likely to experience some of the life outcomes desired by churchless and churched alike.
The Actively Churched Are More Likely to Experience Positive Life Outcomes
Life outcome experienced
Actively churched
Unchurched
Am making a positive difference in the worlda
86%
67%
Happyb
85
80
Have deep, soul connections with my friendsc
82
69
Believe I am fulfilling my calling in lifed
81
64
Stressed outb
32
37
Lonelyb
15
22
Source: Barna Group, Ventura, CA; aOmniPoll 1-08, January 2008, 451 actively churched, 277 unchurched; bOmniPoll 1-13, January 2013, 460 actively churched, 582 unchurched; cOmniPoll 3-08, August 2008, 482 actively churched, 305 unchurched; dOmniPolls S-08/2-08, May–July 2008, 818 actively churched, 632 unchurched
The Deepest Value
The highest value of being part of a faith community is not the personal benefits we may receive. We can understand the value of church engagement more deeply, as well.
God created us for communion with him and with one another. The biblical account of creation invites us to glimpse his purposes in creating people in his image; in Eden, we see humans in perfect relationship with God and at peace with each other (see Genesis 1–2). According to Genesis 2:18, “It is not good for the man” —or anyone else! —“to be alone.”
Through the unfolding time line of Scripture, we see God in relationship with a people —a group of people called together for his purpose. In most of the New Testament letters, written to the earliest generations of Jesus-followers struggling to understand their calling as God’s people, the “you” to whom Paul, James, and Peter write is not singular; it is plural.
For better or worse —and seasons of both exist even in the best churches —Christians are called into community to be God’s people. Jesus said the Greatest Commandment is actually two commandments: to love God and to love others (see Matthew 22:36-40; Luke 10:27; Mark 12:30-31). It’s not obedience if we agree only to Part A.
Our highest calling is love for God and for others. Participating in the life of a local church —in whatever form —requires us to practice the fine art of loving. Church enables us to regularly and creatively express our love to God in worship. And it gives us endless opportunities to love others, warts and all, and to be loved by others . . . warts and all.
This is the deepest value of church.
Two Hurdles to Church Engagement
Some churchless people already recognize the value of church but can’t clear the two main hurdles between them and deep engagement: (1) the sense that God is missing from church, and (2) the suspicion that Christians are missing the point.
Who Are We Here For?
Churches should be places where we experience God’s presence in the company of his people. Sadly, however, a surprisingly large number of unchurched people tell us that, despite all the stellar programming they’ve experienced in church, the one thing they are seeking is a powerful, undeniable encounter with the living God —and they haven’t found it yet. Of course, a person’s spiritual readiness and attunement to God’s Spirit are part of what makes him or her able to sense his presence. But many people who overcome the internal and external obstacles to visiting a church service do so exactly because they are spiritually ready and seeking to tune in to the Spirit. Sadly, some leave disappointed.
Despite all the opinions churchless (and churched) people offer about musical styles, architecture, sound systems, creativity, intellectualism, and the menu of programs provided by churches, none of these is the main attraction. These elements are nice sideshows, but people don’t come to church for the carnival rides. They come to meet God. People complain about the uncomfortable seats and stale popcorn when center stage is empty of the main event.
Most Americans have plenty of other opportunities to gather with people they don’t know for conversation, music, education, and personal enrichment. But a local body of believers is the only place they can meet God together with his people. What a privilege to facilitate encounters with God week after week! When it’s humble and sincere, it never gets old.
God never tires of being present with his people, so why would we settle for anything less than his presence? Yet it seems many churches do just that. Even churched people tell us they wonder where God is in their church experience. Our studies consistently show a large majority of people leave their church’s service without feeling as though they have connected with God. If those who regularly attend depart with such disappointment and confusion, what must it be like for those who are new to the church adventure?
Every church is different, but here are some common elements that leave people feeling empty:
One of the simplest ways we can gauge our success at offering a true God-present experience is to ask one question: Do we encounter God? Do we plan the music, teaching, social hour, and everything else with the goal of connecting with him and his people? Or do those peripherals somehow take on a life of their own, crowding out the very Person they are meant to honor? If we can’t honestly say that we, in community with God’s people, meet with him at the services or events we plan, then we need to reexamine what is getting our attention. If God isn’t, we’re doing it wrong.
Who Are We Becoming?
As we described in previous chapters, the reputation of Christ’s followers is not always spotless. More than four out of five non-Christian young adults (84 percent) say they personally know a Christian; but just 15 percent say that the lifestyles of the Christians they know are noticeably more positive than the norm.[22] When it comes to attracting people who wonder what difference faith in Christ might make in their lives, this disparity between faith and actions does Christians no favors. It lends credence to the notion that, whatever important things we claim to be doing in church, all our busyness and self-important activity amount to an adventure in missing the point.
In a recent study conducted in partnership with John Burke, author of Mud and the Masterpiece, Barna Group looked at whether Christians in America more closely resemble Jesus or the Pharisees.[23] Based on Scripture, we identified twenty specific actions and attitudes that might characterize a person as either Christlike or pharisaical, and asked Christians to respond with their preferences. For example, Christlike attitudes included, I see God-given value in every person, regardless of their past or present condition and I feel compassion for people who are not following God and doing immoral things. Pharisaical attitudes included, I believe we should stand against those who are opposed to Christian values and People who follow God’s rules are better than those who do not. Taking our cues from the words and actions of Jesus, Christlike attitudes and actions were focused on loving others, while pharisaical attitudes and actions were more often focused on following rules.
The unfortunate reality is that most people who attend Christian churches land on the pharisaical end of the continuum. In fact, as the following pie chart shows, 51 percent of self-identified Christians are primarily pharisaical in both attitude and action; 14 percent are mostly pharisaical in attitude but more Christlike in behavior; and 21 percent are more Christlike in attitude but mostly pharisaical in their actions. The remaining one out of every seven (14 percent) tends to be more Christlike in both attitude and action.[24]
Are Self-Described Christians More Like Jesus or the Pharisees?
Source: Barna Group and John Burke, 2013; N=718 self-described Christians
{Insert pie chart “Are Self-Described Christians More Like Jesus or the Pharisees?}
Evangelical Christians, a small subset of the Christian population and the segment that is typically most immersed in church life, in bringing faith into the marketplace and in studying the Bible, emerged as the subgroup most likely to be Christlike. Yet even among evangelicals, less than one-quarter were classified as predominantly Christlike. Evangelicals, it turns out, tend to be more Christlike in activity than in attitude. In other words, they may well do the right things, but they often do them for the wrong reasons.
The other population segments we studied fared even worse. Among the people groups who struggle most with such spiritual confusion —some would eagerly call it hypocrisy —are people in their mid-sixties and older, Hispanics, and men.[25]
Does all of this remind you of Jesus’ command to clean up our own act before we criticize others, to remove the two-by-four blocking our own vision before checking others’ eyes for specks of dust? (See Matthew 7:1-5.) As the Coldplay lyric asks, “Am I a part of the cure? Or am I part of the disease?”[26] Imagine the impact more Christlike attitudes and actions —focusing more on loving others than on behavioral rules —would have on our attempts to draw the unchurched into relationship with Christ and healthy connection with a church community.
Strategy without Manipulation
We must not lose sight of the fact that appealing to the unchurched is a spiritual quest, not a business transaction or bottom-line proposition. But it is also important to be strategic in thought and action when it comes to how we share our faith with others. We have limited resources —time, money, relationships, opportunities —and an eternal purpose. How can we maximize our resources in cooperation with God to transform lives?
One strategic consideration is identifying how the Good News of Christ intersects with different people’s priorities and phases of life. This is not to say that the gospel changes, but that different aspects of the Good News sound like good news to different people. For instance, a public defender or prisoner advocate might be very concerned about a corrupt justice system. A significant aspect of the gospel is that God is just, and his justice breaks into our world wherever Christ’s followers live under his reign. To anyone who is seeking justice, that’s good news.
Thirty years ago the most effective form of evangelism was widely believed to be a straight-out, in-your-face, confront-the-sinner declaration of salvation available through Christ. A decade or two ago, evangelism shifted to a focus on personal relationships, cultivated with eternity in mind. We believe we’re undergoing another shift today, wherein doing good in the world is a powerful apologetic to those who are seeking God. Evangelism can happen in the marketplace, where Christian leaders run businesses with a biblical view of people, not taking advantage of them but aspiring to help them flourish. Evangelism can happen in the social sector, where we can show how much Jesus cares about “the least of these.”
The churchless want to know what churched people are for, not just what we are against. Saying we are “for the cause of Christ” may make perfect sense to church insiders, but to unchurched ears it is vague at best and aggressive at worst. Could we be both more specific and more winsome? Let’s find ways to describe the Good News in terms others can relate to —just as Jesus did in his preaching ministry.
Beyond figuring out how to communicate the heart of the gospel in fresh and relevant ways in an increasingly post-Christian culture, we should also consider how best to communicate with particular churchless people. “The unchurched” is a convenient way to think and talk about the population segment that is unconnected to a faith community —but that segment is made up of unique individuals with their own stories. The best outreach strategies in the world will fail if we are unable to see each churchless person we encounter as a singular, infinitely valuable bearer of God’s image.
Whom should you pursue? That question can be answered only after your church has done the hard work of getting to know who the unchurched are in your community. Your approach will vary depending on whether you have a substantial born-again churchless segment in your neighborhood or more people who are purely unchurched —that is, those with no background of church involvement. Your goal in both cases is to connect with the unchurched around you, but the way you approach them will differ.
In every case, our strategic decisions and tactical initiatives must be motivated by love.
Most churchless people aren’t looking for a church. They’re seeking an encounter with God. And even if they’re not seeking him directly, the vast majority are seeking to experience the essence of who he is: love. According to the apostle John, God is love (1 John 4:8) —and, what’s more, those who follow Christ should be known by their love (see John 13:35). In our experience, as believers practice loving attitudes and behavior toward others inside and outside their faith community, unchurched friends and family don’t have to be talked into church participation. They seek it out, drawn by the promise of love.
Here at the end of our in-depth look at the unchurched in the United States, we offer five ways you can reflect Jesus’ love to the churchless. We’re not providing a formula for taking action. Rather, these are our humble suggestions for taking the head knowledge offered in this book and turning it into loving action toward unchurched people.
Sharing Jesus
A majority of born-again Christians (54 percent) say they have shared their faith in Christ with a non-Christian in the last year. But if so many millions of Christians are having evangelistic conversations, why does there seem to be so little impact? It may be we’ve become more complacent than we realize about proclaiming the Good News because there are so many other ways people are exposed to gospel-related content in our media-saturated culture: books, radio, television, billboards, events, Facebook posts that urge you to “Like” if you love Jesus, and on and on. Have we outsourced the role of being Jesus’ spokespeople? In our effort to match culture’s progress note for note, is it possible we’ve lost something of the original tune?
Maybe we’ve lost our urgency because we forget to see people as individuals whom God loves. He loves us so much he became one of us.
The data contain some good news. Our recent research shows that Mosaic born-again Christians are more involved in sharing their faith with non-Christians than believers in older generations.[27] As a generation, Mosaics are more lost —that is, they are less likely to be born again than are older generations (even when preceding generations were young adults as Mosaics are now). But there is a countertrend of young Christians for whom sharing the truth of Jesus has become a necessity in the face of generational apathy. This impulse toward evangelism does not define a majority of Mosaics, but there are a sufficient number of them to make a profound difference. In a dark cultural sea of moral and spiritual uncertainty, their conviction is a steady light.
As the younger generation shows us, the first step to reengaging the unchurched is reigniting our hearts for the lost.
Selfless Serving
Instead of serving, we want to be served. This is the basic orientation of our sin nature.
Seeking the unchurched can sometimes serve ourselves rather than the churchless —it all depends on our motivation. Serving the unchurched is either humble obedience to the Great Commandment and the Great Commission, or irrefutable proof that we’re super-spiritual Jesus-followers who can expect dozens of jewels in our heavenly crowns.
Pride makes a mockery of loving words and actions.
In our conversations with churchless people about Jesus or the Bible, for example, it might be tempting to focus on the elegance of our arguments rather than on the heart of the hearer. This is self-serving, not serving. Colossians 4:5-6 reminds us to let our conversations with outsiders be gracious and effective so that we might have the right word for everyone.
Does your kindness have strings attached? Are you hoping your churchless neighbor, coworker, or friend will come to church so your churched friends will be impressed? It comes down to whether you are more concerned with your reputation or Jesus’ reputation. The Lord tells us that the pure in heart are blessed, for they shall see God (Matthew 5:8). Is your heart pure in your relationships with the unchurched?
“If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:3, emphasis added). We must check and recheck our motives for reaching out to the churchless. Our efforts to serve them must be driven by love . . . and nothing else.
This means, for instance, that we have to be okay with the fact that some people —probably most unchurched people, in fact —will not respond in the way we hope. We must have the “longsuffering” that comes with loving others, trusting God to grow the seeds we plant (see Mark 4:1-20).
This is the paradox: an agendaless agenda. Of course we hope to see the unchurched committed to God and his people, but we can’t control the outcomes of our efforts. Paul wrote that he “planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow” (1 Corinthians 3:6). When Paul planted the seed of the gospel among the Corinthians, he could not see what God would eventually make of it.
In the first chapter of this book, we quoted German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who said, “The church is the church only when it exists for others.” What we didn’t point out in that opening chapter is the context of Bonhoeffer’s remark: the imperative for the German church to stand up for Jews being persecuted and murdered by the Nazis. Of course there was a chance that some Jews might become Christ-followers because of German Christians’ commitment to stand with them against a genocidal government. But that wasn’t why Bonhoeffer joined the resistance, risking (and losing) his life. He did it because he knew God’s people are called to serve others, without regard for ourselves —or for whether the people we serve respond in the way we hope.
How can you and your faith community serve the unchurched, motivated by nothing but love? The goal is to serve the churchless, not because it proves our spiritual self-worth, but because it’s the Jesus thing to do.
In his book Maximum Faith, George offers this diagnosis of most churchgoers:
We read about the promises of God, but don’t experience their fulfillment. We participate in the institutionalized church, but find it less meaningful and satisfying than expected. We read the Bible, but generally lack a true understanding of the text, miss its richness, and misinterpret its counsel. We vacillate between the letter and the spirit of the Law, and receive the hope of neither. We take solace in being religious but overlook the value of true spirituality.[28]
Could it be that the life of faith we offer to the churchless is too small? George goes on to show, through data, interviews, and biblical wisdom, that suffering and brokenness are necessary catalysts of spiritual transformation —but sadly, many of our churches are too safe, too nice, to make the most of struggle. At the very moment we are ready to genuinely grow —when our spiritual equilibrium is upset —a lot of churches try to reset our equilibrium back to “normal.” In other words, George argues, churches’ best intentions too often subvert people’s rare opportunities for real progress on their spiritual journey.
What does this mean for the churchless? When we remember the majority of the unchurched are actually de-churched, we must admit the possibility that our churches are somehow enabling many people to stall out on their journey toward deep, transformative faith. If this is true, loving the churchless means confessing where we have failed to be communities that foster honesty and vulnerability. We must confess that we are sometimes complicit in the stalled spiritual journeys of the unchurched, and commit to becoming more effective as communities of transformation. We must ask ourselves if our church is a place that allows broken people to heal fully and then reorient their momentum toward God, without sliding back into spiritual inertia. Consider how we can become a church that doesn’t avert our eyes from grief, disappointment, or doubt. Loving the churchless means suffering with them —which is the original meaning of the word compassion —and trusting God to use seasons of darkness to bring new life.
Discerning Culture
The fourth way we can love the churchless is by being effective interpreters of culture. A spiritual way to say this is discernment.
The Bible tells us that some things never change. For example, God does not change (Psalm 55:19). Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8). There is nothing new under the sun (Ecclesiastes 1:9). Yet we have too often encountered Christians who rely on these “true truths” so strongly they refuse to account for other truths that are a part of our reality.
God “changes times and seasons; he deposes kings and raises up others. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the discerning” (Daniel 2:21). Our God is also a God of change, and he wants us to be wise about what’s happening here and now.
The prophet Daniel was a tremendous student of Babylonian science, art, and law who used his cultural discernment to incredible effect, eventually becoming, essentially, the secretary of state of the pagan society that had taken God’s people into captivity. Or look at 1 Chronicles 12:32, where the tribe of Issachar is described as people who “understood the times” and who “knew what Israel should do.”
What does discernment look like for us? We can bring to people a godly interpretation of “the times.” For example, in our current research on the Bible we find that many people —especially Mosaics —want to know how the Bible applies to issues they face, such as parenting, finances, family conflict, sexuality, dating and relationships, and technology.[29] It’s true that following Jesus isn’t about gaining life improvement skills. But many people, throughout the ages, have desperately turned to Jesus for help with a present, felt need in their lives —only to discover the help he offers is beyond what they could have imagined.
When the churchless turn to our community of faith for help in their everyday lives, do they find wisdom? Do we offer a biblical worldview of the world we actually live in?
Praying for Hope
Finally, prayer is a powerful way to love the unchurched. Pray for your heart to be open and responsive. Pray for your church to become soil where people can grow. Pray for the unchurched who live on your street and work in your building and shop in your corner store and coach your kid’s soccer team.
For three decades Barna Group has studied the impact and characteristics of effective churches. One of the most consistent patterns we have observed is a commitment to prayer —by the senior pastor, the leadership team and staff, the lay leaders, and, of course, the people in the pews. When we compare thriving churches with those that are struggling, we see that a top-to-bottom commitment to prayer so often makes the difference.
Prayer is the thread that weaves together the other four approaches to the churchless. Regular communion through prayer connects us to Jesus’ heart for those who are far from him. It strips our motives for service of selfishness and ego. It ignites compassion and sustains through suffering, transforming us by God’s presence with us. And it invites the Spirit to give us a God-sized view of our cultural reality.
It is our prayer that this book is knowledge that you and your church, led by the Spirit, will turn into wisdom for your mission.
I pray for you constantly, asking God, the glorious Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, to give you spiritual wisdom and insight so that you might grow in your knowledge of God. I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light so that you can understand the confident hope he has given to those he called —his holy people who are his rich and glorious inheritance. I also pray that you will understand the incredible greatness of God’s power for us who believe him. This is the same mighty power that raised Christ from the dead. (Ephesians 1:16-20, NLT)