{"id":651767,"date":"2013-12-16T19:23:43","date_gmt":"2013-12-16T19:23:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/andygill\/?p=651767"},"modified":"2013-12-16T19:23:43","modified_gmt":"2013-12-16T19:23:43","slug":"how-to-save-the-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/andygill\/how-to-save-the-church\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Save the Church"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

My entire life Christianity felt wrong <\/i>to me. I was too young to pin point what exactly it was that made it feel so, not right.<\/i><\/p>\n

It\u2019s not only that Christiainity seemed to go against my human nature in a repressive manner. It was that Christianity simply did not sound like it was good news to me, or anyone else for that matter.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t feel like \u201cfreedom,\u201d rather it felt more like enslavement.<\/p>\n

Everything I did as a Christian, was for my salvation<\/strong>, it had very little to do with Jesus<\/strong>.\u00a0It was all about heaven<\/i>, and had very little to do with Jesus. To put it more plainly, it was all about us <\/i><\/b>and had little\u00a0<\/i><\/b>to do with Jesus<\/i><\/b>.<\/p>\n

It was because we mistook love as control, and convoluted it with fear, guilt, and shame. So our relationships with Christ were not <\/b>filled with light, but rather darkness.<\/p>\n

Bringing it back around, this is why my entire life Christianity felt wrong. It was because the church was pointing towards darkness and calling it light, they were pointing towards death and calling it life. They were pointing towards an impostor faith and calling it Christianity.<\/p>\n

I speak in these generalities because of the research showing that the predominant Christian has experienced something similar.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is not so much that U.S. Christianity is being secularized. Rather, more subtly, Christianity is either degenerating into a pathetic version of itself or, more significantly, Christianity is actively being colonized and displaced by quite different religious faith.\u201d \u2013 Melinda Denton<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Most of us know the statistics. David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons pointed out we have a little bit of an image crisis, George Barna showed us what we\u2019re doing programmatically isn\u2019t working<\/a>, it\u2019s hurting, while the National Study of Youth and Religion has shown youth pastor\u2019s that their ministry\u2019s have been a 50 year failed experiment<\/a> (I could keep going but you get the point, hopefully).<\/p>\n

What kills me most are the pastor\u2019s who attend conferences, buy books, sign up for online \u201cwebinars,\u201d and are all asking and wondering desperately <\/i>how they can save <\/i>the American Church, when the answer is right in front of them in the form of a simple question\u2026<\/p>\n

What if we just did what Jesus was telling us to do?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

What if we actually discipled people?<\/p>\n

What if we literally acknowledged the poor, the widowed, and the orphaned?<\/p>\n

Now follow me here with this last one, if you\u2019re a church leader this might sound too radical for you, but just follow me\u2026<\/p>\n

What if\u2026<\/p>\n

What if, you cultivated a community of believers that lived their lives as if their life\u00a0was not <\/i>about them!\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

What a\u00a0novel idea!\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

The only catch is, you\u2019ll have to also <\/b>live a life that\u2019s not about you. I hate to say it, but I\u2019m gonna say it anyways\u2026 the poll\u2019s are out (I mean literally massive research campaigns have been done, both Christian and secular, including the one\u2019s listed above) and they\u2019re all showing, you\u2019re the problem.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

The pastor. The church leadership.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

You are\u00a0killing\u00a0<\/i>your own church (I wrote here as to why that\u2019s really not a bad thing, well for you it is, but for the rest of us it\u2019s not<\/a>).<\/p>\n

I will admit these pastors, mean well. Their intention is not<\/strong><\/em> to sink the ship\u2026 Brandon Robertson<\/a> put it quite well on his blog \u201crevangelical<\/a>\u201d saying,<\/p>\n

\u201cThe problem is that the lay people in the pews (or theatre seats) are no longer living in a bubble. Gone are the days of \u201cPastor said it, I believe it, that settles it!\u201d The new Evangelicals are\u00a0far\u00a0<\/em>more informed,\u00a0far\u00a0<\/em>more connected, and are\u00a0far\u00a0<\/em>more skeptical when it comes to dogmatic teaching that seems to undermine the person, work, and message of Jesus.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

American\u2019s at large, are not buying this theological malpractice that is resulting in an impostor faith. It sometimes feel\u2019s like everyone but<\/em> the local pastor has read the bible, and is well informed on the life of Christ, and what it means to live like Him.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think this is why a new poll released in November<\/a> is showing a over a 20% increase of Americans favoring the Pope (57%), since July, 2013 where it was at 35%.* It\u2019s because he\u2019s presenting a good news. He\u2019s living out the gospel. He\u2019s not implementing pumped up programs, that seem \u201ccool\u201d and \u201cattractive,\u201d he\u2019s emulating the life of CHRIST<\/b>.<\/p>\n

People, we want meaning, purpose, and depth. We want a faith and person worth dying for. We want JESUS.\u00a0<\/strong>Cool and attractive are shallow, yes they will get people in<\/strong> the door, but they won\u2019t keep <\/i>people from walking out<\/strong> the door. You want to save your church? Choose which Jesus<\/a> you\u2019re going to model your life after:<\/p>\n

The biblical Jesus or the Americanized version of Jesus.<\/strong><\/p>\n

[*In my first draft of this post i stated,\u00a0\u201cthe Catholic church has grown by 20% since Francis stepped in and became pope\u2026\u201d After double checking this statistic, it was misquoted to me, and I\u2019ve changed it to the correct statistic, linking to the poll given by the WSJ]<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My entire life Christianity felt wrong to me. I was too young to pin point what exactly it was that made it feel so, not right. It\u2019s not only that Christiainity seemed to go against my human nature in a repressive manner. It was that Christianity simply did not sound like it was good news […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2493,"featured_media":651770,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,19,24],"tags":[25,224,225,227,229],"class_list":["post-651767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-christian","category-church","category-youth-ministry","tag-andy-gill","tag-brandan-robertson","tag-how-to-save-the-church","tag-melinda-denton","tag-pope-francis"],"yoast_head":"\nHow to Save the Church<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"My entire life Christianity felt wrong to me. 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