Author: Believers Church

January 23, 2024 Believers Church

Has a culture of convenience and consumerism changed the way we preach the Gospel?

(Tyler Edwards, Relevant Magazine, November 24, 2017)

What if I told you that Jesus didn’t want us to win converts? What if I said that in all of Scripture we are never told to convert anyone? What if I proposed that people accepting Jesus into their life does not fulfill our mission?

We may share the Gospel, but it’s not always the same Gospel Jesus shared. Our version can be a little softer. It can be easier. The message, too often, has been watered down. Many of us don’t want to be called radicals. Many of us take the message of Jesus, and we omit some of the more intense parts because they might scare people away.

An Inconvenient Truth

Out of our desire to win converts we’ve often tried to make Jesus more convenient. That’s what our culture is all about. So watering down the Gospel to reflect the culture can be an easy trap to fall into.

We often make following Jesus comfortable and easy, reducing the expectations: You don’t have to do anything different. Just believe.

Carrying our cross has been reduced from a radical relationship of self-sacrificing love and humility to cheap advertisements with bracelets, jewelry and bumper stickers. We turned following Jesus into little more than eternal “fire” insurance. In so doing we made Him something He is not: safe.

What happened to Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s idea of, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die”?

The Consumerism Gospel

When we sell people on a Jesus who is easy to follow, can we really blame them for bailing out or drifting off when things don’t go smoothly?

It shouldn’t be surprising living in a consumer-based culture, that many times people bring the same attitudes into church: It’s my way, my preferences, my desires that are important. If I don’t get my way, I’ll take my business elsewhere.

In watering down the Gospel we have taken what is all about Jesus and made it all about us.

Jesus is a part of our lives when He should be our life. He is life. Following Him requires all our life. The disciples ate, drank, sweat and slept ministry from when Jesus called them to the day they died. Jesus wasn’t a part of their lives. He was their life.

We all are guilty of putting things above Jesus. Whether it’s health, wealth, comfort, causes, dreams, hobbies or interests, we all come to Jesus with expectations of what He will do for us. We all have our passions and causes.

But Jesus didn’t come to take sides. Jesus came to take over.

Disciples vs. Converts

Many people come to Jesus thinking it is enough to believe, to stand on the sidelines and root for Him. Jesus isn’t looking for cheerleaders. He is seeking men and women who will follow Him whatever the cost. He is looking for radical devotion, unreasonable commitment and undivided dedication.

Jesus isn’t looking for converts. He’s looking for disciples.

Converts are new believers. We all start as converts. Too often we stop there. We make Christianity all about what we believe. Converts aren’t bad or wrong. They are like babies. There’s nothing wrong with being a baby. The problem comes when that doesn’t change. When a baby acts like a baby, it’s cute. When a 35-year-old does, it’s sad. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13:11, “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.”

For years churches have worked to get people to make a decision to accept Christ, which is a great thing. It’s important. But what happens next? Where’s the follow up? How do we train up new Christians?

Our mission isn’t to win converts; it’s to make disciples. So what is the difference?

1. Converts are believers who live like the world. Disciples are believers who live like Jesus.
2. Converts are focused on their values, interests, worries, fears, priorities, and lifestyles. Disciples are focused on Jesus.
3. Converts go to church. Disciples are the church.
4. Converts are involved in the mission of Jesus. Disciples are committed to it.
5. Converts cheer from the sidelines. Disciples are in the game.
6. Converts hear the word of God. Disciples live it.
7. Converts follow the rules. Disciples follow Jesus.
8. Converts are all about believing. Disciples are all about being.
9. Converts are comfortable. Disciples make sacrifices.
10. Converts talk. Disciples make more disciples.

A disciple is someone who whole-heartedly follows the life and example of Jesus, who makes His mission their mission, His values their values, and His heart their heart.

A disciple is someone who desperately seeks to be like Jesus. A disciple is someone so committed to the cause of Christ that they would follow Him through the gates of hell and back.

A disciple is someone who finds their entire identity, purpose and meaning in Jesus. Jesus is the center of their lives. They are all in, fully committed.

Not only is a disciple willing to die for Jesus, but they are dedicated to living every day of their life for Him.

A Change of Heart

Jesus doesn’t call us to be converts or to win converts. Jesus calls us to make disciples.

Jesus offers us grace and love without condition, but not without expectation. When we try to water down the message by saying things like, You don’t have to give up sin. You don’t have to change. You don’t have to be transformed. You don’t have to die to yourself. You just need to believe. In doing this, not only are we depriving people of the truth. We are denying them access to a real, transforming relationship with the almighty God.

Christianity isn’t just a system of belief. It isn’t a lifestyle. It’s a life transformed by Jesus.

Jesus doesn’t call everyone to leave everything every day. He calls us to be willing to give up everything at any point.

His call for each of us is different. He has uniquely gifted every person to carry out a unique and valuable function in His kingdom. While what we are called to may be unique, the call is an extreme standard: Jesus must be greater than everything else.

By Tyler Edwards

Tyler Edwards is a pastor, author, and husband. He currently works as the Discipleship Pastor of Carolina Forest Community Church in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. He is passionate about introducing people to and helping them grow in the Gospel. He is the author of Zombie Church: breathing life back into the body of Christ. You can find more of his work on Facebook or you can follow him on Twitter @tedwardsccc.

January 3, 2024 Believers Church

March 4th, 2015, By Tom Fuerst

It almost goes without saying that most Americans, especially Christians, think the family is the foundation of society. To that end, one of our greatest impulses is to use, protect or promote our versions of family in order to maintain, protect and promote a society we deem to be rightly ordered, just and good.

Many American Christians have felt the ground shifting from under our feet over the last decades. From abortion to fatherless homes, from divorce to gay marriage, Christians have felt Christendom crumble beneath us. And the collapse of Christendom has coupled itself with, indeed symbolized itself in, the collapse of the so-called Judeo-Christian family model, leaving evangelicals in a mad scramble to reclaim something of the American familial soul.

But what I want to ask in this post is whether or not we’re asking the family to take on more meaning than it is able to carry. I want to ask if maybe we’re placing a greater load on it than God intended. I want to ask whether or not the family really is the foundation of society, whether or not the trajectory of the family necessarily directs the trajectory of the nation … or even the church.

That I’m asking these questions likely indicates to you that I fundamentally disagree with the way American evangelicals have spoken of the family in recent decades. I think the position we’ve taken only makes sense if we’re anything other than Christ followers. In fact, I will go so far as to claim in what follows that our emphasis on the family as the foundation or savior of society is directly at odds with the way both Jesus and Paul spoke of the family and its place in Christ’s kingdom. For rather than elevating the family, the New Testament in some sense seems to diminish its importance, or to so radically redefine it that its importance takes on a meaning quite different than we assume.

This is not, of course, to say that family isn’t important. If I were accused of saying such a thing I’d have to assume you neither know me nor have read me rightly. It is merely to say that our understanding and emphasis on, particularly biological family, cannot carry the biblical load we’ve placed upon it.

And to demonstrate my point, I think it’s only appropriate to look a number of passages from the New Testament.

Who is Christ’s mother and brothers?: Matthew 12:46-50

While Jesus was still talking to the crowd, his mother and brothers stood outside, wanting to speak to him. Someone told him, “Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.” He replied to him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”

The cultural, familial background here is not all that different from our own. Our parents have a high priority in our lives. When they need something, respectful loving children do what they can to meet the needs of their parents within reason. This is probably even more so the familial fact in ancient Israel.

All Jesus’ mother needs in this story is to speak with Jesus. It doesn’t appear to be that demanding of a request. Socially, no matter how famous Jesus is becoming, it’s expected that his mother is given priority. And this expectation sets the stage for Jesus to completely turn the idea of family on its head.

Jesus responds to his mother’s simple request by redefining family, and thus priority, around obedience to his will rather than biological lineage. “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother,” he says. In other words, the family of Jesus is less concerned with flesh and blood, and is more concerned with alignment with the revealed will of God. If Jesus thought the biological family was the foundation of society, he sure did have a weird way of showing it, especially given that he seems to go out of his way to make the point otherwise.

Taking a sword to the family: Matthew 10:34

In Matthew 10 Jesus has sent out his 12 disciples on their first lone mission. In this, he is sending out his new family. They are symbolically the new Israel, the new “sons of God.” As such they spend their time reclaiming God’s authority over creation by driving out demons and healing the sick. As the family of new creation in the midst of old creation, they will encounter resistance, even be put to death. But the force of their witness and the power of their words will create enmity within the biological families to which they preach.

Jesus tells them to expect this enmity and resistance when he says, “Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death. You will be hated by everyone because of me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.

The hatred others feel toward them will result in not only a general societal marginalization, but actually a familial marginalization. The resources, encouragement, love, and protection once given by their biological family will be forfeited on the altar of preaching the gospel. In short, they will be cut off from their biological families because of Jesus and his message.

In case there is any question about what the disciples of Jesus should expect, Jesus makes the issue even more clear:

“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn

“‘a man against his father,
a daughter against her mother,
a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—
a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’

If Jesus intends to reinforce the centrality of the biological family, he’s doing a terrible job of it. But these words communicate rather clearly that his intention is quite the opposite. Jesus has no interest in protecting the biological family as the so-called foundation of society. He has a different family with a different society he’s interested in creating. Those who love and obey him are, as we’ve seen, his new family. And this new spiritual family is to take on those old responsibilities once borne by the biological family: Protection, love, encouragement, challenge, resources, etc.

Jesus did not come to bring peace and prosperity to biological family. He did not come to reinforce the biological family’s prominence in society. He did not come to centralize the family as the foundation of society. He came to start a new family with a new brotherhood and sisterhood, a new idea of fatherhood and motherhood, and that at times meant the rending and slicing up of biological family ties. Those of us who did not grow up in Christian homes know the reality of this all too well. Commitment to Christ can sever familial bonds, but it intends to create all new ones.

Neither marriage nor giving in marriage: Matthew 22:30

In the larger context of Matthew 22:30, a man is asking Jesus about what marriage will look like in the resurrection. Asked in a society specific way, the man is essentially wondering who a woman will be married to in the resurrection if she has multiple husbands who have died on her. Jesus’ response is interesting: “At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.”

Stay with me here as I wander and circle back to the profound statement Jesus is making. The way the kingdom of God works is that there is this already/not yet aspect. In the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus, the kingdom of God – indeed, the resurrection itself – is already taking place in our world. The tension of Christian ethics is navigating the already/not yet realities of the kingdom. We are to embody the what the kingdom will look like while living in a world where that kingdom is only partially realized/arrived.

What Jesus is telling us with these words is that when the final resurrection occurs, when the kingdom of God is fully actualized on earth as it is in heaven, there will be no marriage. By implication, therefore, neither marriage nor family is central to the kingdom of God, either now or later.

As tangible evidence that Jesus did not hold the biological family as central to the kingdom of God, we see that Jesus remained single his entire life. He lived his life in singleness as a witness to his theological belief that the family is not the center of God’s kingdom. If marriage and family were the stabilizing center of society, then surely Jesus would have seen it as imperative that he participate. While he certainly doesn’t seem to be against marriage and family (as illustrated by his attendance and assistance at the wedding at Cana), Jesus does not assume that marriage and family are the center of society or even foundation so the kingdom of God. And therefore he does not assume that saving the family will initiate that kingdom or provide social salvation.

Paul and singleness: 1 Corinthians 7

The Corinthian church is known in Scripture for its distorted family relationships. Using their newfound freedom in Christ, the Corinthians seem to be falling into all kinds of familial and sexual immoralities, including one particular man who is having sex with his father’s wife.

Apparently they’ve written a letter to Paul to explain the extent of their moral freedoms, and as any one who’s ever studied I Corinthians knows, Paul’s return letter is sometimes difficult to interpret because we have to discern “Corinthian slogans” of freedom and immorality from what Paul actually thinks.

For example, when Paul says, “It is good for a man not to touch a woman,” Paul is not advocating what it appears he’s advocating. Rather, Paul is quoting a slogan being used in the Corinthian church to advocate a sort of sexual abstinence amongst spouses. Rather, Paul says that, due to the prevalence of sexual immorality among the Corinthians, they should be having sex with their spouses, not avoiding it.

Now, within this context we circle around to our discussion at hand. In the middle of this discussion of sex and marriage, Paul tells the Corinthians (gasp!) that it’s better for them not to marry at all if they can manage the temptations of abstinence:

Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry,for it is better to marry than to burn with passion. Each person should remain in the situation they were in when God called them. Now about virgins: I have no command from the Lord, but I give a judgment as one who by the Lord’s mercy is trustworthy. Because of the present crisis, I think that it is good for a man to remain as he is. Are you pledged to a woman? Do not seek to be released. Are you free from such a commitment? Do not look for a wife. But if you do marry, you have not sinned; and if a virgin marries, she has not sinned. But those who marry will face many troubles in this life, and I want to spare you this. … A woman is bound to her husband as long as he lives. But if her husband dies, she is free to marry anyone she wishes, but he must belong to the Lord. In my judgment, she is happier if she stays as she is — and I think that I too have the Spirit of God.

Now look, if Paul’s main concern were the situation of the biological family, or raising biological families that will be the foundation of society, or of making sure that everyone gets married so that they can produce Christian offspring, then all the recommendations for singleness make absolutely no sense.

And this isn’t just some awkward, buried thing the Apostle Paul said. No, Jesus says the same kind of thing in Luke’s Gospel (paralleling the passage we cited in Matthew earlier) when some Sadducees (who don’t believe in a resurrection) asked him who a woman belongs to in the resurrection if she’s been widowed more than once. Jesus’ reply decentralizes marriage and family in the new creation and therefore in his kingdom:

Jesus replied, “The people of this age marry and are given in marriage. But those who are considered worthy of taking part in the age to come and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage, and they can no longer die; for they are like the angels. They are God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection.

Let’s just be honest about this: Jesus is weird. And what he’s saying here is incredibly weird. He’s saying that the people of this age are concerned about things like marriage and family, while people of the age of resurrection are concerned about being God’s children and therefore will not marry.

And lest you want to try to get Jesus off the hook by claiming that Jesus is talking about the next life, notice that he’s explicitly addressing people who are worthy of the next life because they didn’t marry in this life. He is not talking about no marriage in eternity, he’s discussing singleness as the ideal of the kingdom right here, right now. He has essentially tied those who marry and are given in marriage as part of a former age, the age prior to the resurrection of Jesus and the arrival of the kingdom.

Again, this is not to say that Jesus doesn’t value family (his honoring of his mother in other places proves otherwise), but it is to say that for Jesus family is not the foundation of society, the church or the new creation. Indeed, Jesus’ language is so strong that it cannot even be mistaken for anything other than a radical and quite odd way of viewing the family. For us to therefore elevate the family to a centralized position in society is to completely ignore Jesus’ words…which, admittedly, would be a nice thing to do as a person who is married and loves being married!

Brothers and sisters

Finally, as one last example, it is clear that the earliest Christians understood the radical new family Jesus instituted was centered around belief and obedience to Christ. So thoroughly did the idea of a new family, defined spiritually not biologically, penetrate their thoughts that they even came to refer to each other as “brothers and sisters.” More traditional churches still maintain this language, “Brother so-and-so is our deacon…”

The idea here is not the institution of new, nice religious titles. The early church really did believe that they were a new family, called by their Father God into the fellowship of His Son – our brother, by the way – Jesus. Everywhere you see Paul and others urge their “brothers and sisters in the Lord” to some activity, they are making an appeal to the fact that the church is the new family arrangement. The church is the foundation of a new creation society.

Or better stated: The church is a new kind of family and a new society all wrapped up in one.

I love my brothers and my sister, but my biological ties to them are not nearly as tight as they are with the people with whom I have scaled the mountains of faith. I loved my mom and dad as well as a son can, but I have other mothers and fathers that understand me even more deeply because we share a common belief. My mother and father-in-law are great in-laws, but what makes them truly my family isn’t that I married their daughter, but that we love the same God and His Son, Jesus.

In the end…

Is it possible one of the reasons the American family is in trouble is because we Christians have placed upon it unwarranted expectations and then judged it according to those expectations? Traditional families won’t save America. There is no soteriology of the family in Scripture. The family didn’t die for us. The family didn’t resurrect for us. The family won’t even exist in the new heavens and the new earth. Maybe, and I say this with the utmost respect and love for biological family, maybe we’ve placed on the family a yoke it was never capable carrying.

In the end, I appreciate the fact that the church in America wants to reclaim family language, but I think our emphasis in the culture wars has led us to a place where we claim too much for biological family. Is the biological family the center of society? I think there are probably good sociological reasons for making this assertion. But let’s not confuse sociological truth with the radical, new family claims of Jesus and the biblical text. We may certainly, and rightly, have much to say about abortion, marriage, divorce and whatever. But let’s make sure we say those things in the right theological, biblical context. We don’t need to create new teachings in order to be a prophetic voice. The scriptural truths are more than sufficient for such a task.

Your turn: What do you think about the radical family claims of Jesus and Paul? How do they align with what you’ve heard taught in church? What do you think would be the implications if we took their claims seriously?

December 5, 2023 Believers Church

By Pastor Gabriel Hughes, Casa Grande, AZ
March 03, 2020

Hebrews 10:24-25 says, “Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.”

I have been privileged to be a part of a wonderful and loving church where I have pastored for the last ten years. I have spoken often about how this congregation has taken care of me and my family. I’m able to do things like WWUTT (When We Understand the Text) and keep it free because of how the Lord has provided everything we need through our church. There are steadfast, dedicated people here, demonstrating the truth and love of Christ.

But as with any church, there have also been those who were not so loving or committed. Some have walked away over silly things, and some revealed themselves to be false converts. I tell this body often to learn from these situations lest they also turn on those whom they call their brothers and sisters in the Lord. No one aspires to be a betrayer. It can happen to the best of us if we’re not careful. “The spirit is indeed willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:41).

The following are ten signs that you might soon be leaving your church. There can be good reasons to leave a church, but that’s not this blog. This is for you to examine your heart before the Lord and how you love the people of God. This was a labor of love to write it, so it will be a labor of love to read it. How close might you be to walking away from Christ’s bride, His church?

1) Your attendance becomes spotty.

If your attendance is spotty, or you’re more like an occasional visitor than a regular member, that is a good sign church is not a priority for you. Perhaps you will gradually pull away and leave quietly, even if you didn’t intend to do so. You didn’t mean to leave your church—it just sort of happened. But there’s a strong possibility that when you cut ties, you will depart out of anger or bitterness.

When your attendance diminishes, so will your affection for the people you attend church with. You will have less charity toward your brothers and sisters in Christ, with whom you should be growing in sanctification. One of the signs of a believer is that you’re growing in love with other believers. But if you’re not attending church with them, you’re not growing in your love for them. If you’re not growing in love for them, you will take offense at them.

Maybe it will be something the pastor says—even though he’s still preaching the same thing he always has. Maybe it will be the fact that so-and-so hasn’t called you—when you are just as capable of picking up your phone and calling them. Maybe it will be over something as petty as the church changing the color of the paint in the foyer without your input.

Now, there are legitimate reasons for missing church. But even when that’s the case, you must still be careful. Spotty attendance will affect your affections for the church. Beware that you don’t cease in your attendance altogether, lest you cut yourself off from the body of Christ and turn yourself over to Satan (1 Corinthians 5:5).

2) You think no one cares.

Tell me if you’ve heard this one before: “I stopped coming to church, and no one called me, so I just figured no one cares.” That’s an absurd excuse for not attending church. You stopped going, and no one called you, so it’s their fault you stopped going?

I have not encountered a scenario where a person stopped coming to church and literally no one reached out to them. I’m sure it happens, but I haven’t seen it. Instead, the matter usually goes like this—A man leaves the church and three people reach out to him: one tries to call and doesn’t get an answer; one sends an e-mail or a text and gets no response; one encounters him out in public and says, “Hey, we miss you at church!” But because only three people reach out and not thirty, and only one of the three actually made a connection, therefore he claims, “No one cares.”

Of course the church must look out for one another. If you notice that someone hasn’t been in church in a while, say something. But your church attendance and involvement is your responsibility. If you stop going, it’s not because no one cares. It’s because you don’t care.

3) The husband is not the spiritual leader of the household.

In a vast majority of cases when a disgruntled family has left our church, the husband has not been leading his wife and his children in the spiritual disciplines of his household. There may be other factors involved. There may be other items on this list that apply. But overall, strong men are lacking (and derided!) in a lot of our culture today.

It’s astonishing how often I’ve witnessed a woman’s sensitivities lead the spiritual direction of a family. I once had a husband say to me, “I would like to stay, but my wife doesn’t want to.” I replied, “Who’s leading in your home—you or her?” At that point, he became quite irritated with me, and he didn’t want to stay anymore either. My question was answered.

Sometimes the children lead a home. There’s a recipe for disaster, when a family is lead by the preferences of the children. If that’s your family, you may start skipping church for extra-curricular activities like sports or dance. Maybe you don’t attend because there’s no child care during church and you just don’t want to wrangle with the kids. Maybe programs for kids or youth determine your attendance. Maybe your teenager thinks church is boring, so you don’t make them go.

The Bible says, “Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them. Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord” (Colossians 3:18-20). A husband is told to love his wife as Christ loves the church, and to raise his children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord (Ephesians 5:25, 6:4). Husband, father, lead your home to church. Wives and children, follow him.

4) You’re ungrateful and your thoughts are mostly ungracious.

Colossians 3:12-14 says, “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you must also forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful.”

If you become ungrateful for your church, you will become uncharitable toward your church. You will consider your wants before the needs of others. You will get touchy and critical, even over things that are none of your business, or situations where you don’t have the whole story. You will begin to resent the leadership because you are not thankful to God for those who have been appointed to shepherd your soul (Hebrews 13:17).

Once you lose charity for someone, it’s nearly impossible to get it back. It takes a move of God, through prayer and the hearing of His word, to convict the heart and make a person realize what a miserable wretch they’ve become toward others. If you know you’ve been saved by the grace of God, it is imperative that you show the grace of God. The church is the bride of Christ for whom Jesus bled and died. Treat her tender and loving, with sacrificial care.

5) You’re hiding sin.

Do you feel guilty? Is there sin you’re afraid of being found out and you’re going to be exposed? Then you’re probably not going to be at your church much longer. We read in 1 John 4:18, “Fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.”

What should you do about this unrepentant sin you’re hiding? You should tell someone. James 5:16 and 19-20 says, “Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.”

If you go on trying to hide your sin, putting on this facade to make everything appear normal, you’re lying. You lie to everyone around you every time you go to church. Do not lie to one another (Colossians 3:9). The wise love discipline, but the foolish hate reproof (Proverbs 12:1). If the grief in your heart is not a godly grief that leads to repentance, it’s a worldly grief that leads to death (2 Corinthians 7:10). Leaving church is a spiritual death you cannot afford.

6) You would rather be somewhere else.

When you’re at church, where are you? Are you going to Bible study? Are you attending worship? Or are you somewhere else in the building? Are you drinking coffee and chatting with others instead of hearing the Scriptures taught? Maybe you’re sitting in the service, but you’re playing on your phone instead of listening. You might say you went to church on Sunday. But did you really?

A few times I’ve had to confront someone who developed a pattern of not going to class or worship. They were coming to church, but they weren’t really in church. They’d even pull someone else out of study to join them. Now, these confrontations are always complicated because they will have what they believe to be a reasonable explanation: “I had this problem, and I really needed to talk to someone about it.” The time to talk is before church or after church—not during church.

I know of a woman who worked in the nursery every Sunday. She did a great job caring for the babies, but she was never in church. This had been going on for years until the children’s ministry director was encouraged to put the woman on a schedule—she could work in the nursery the third Sunday of every month. As soon as the woman was notified of the change, she resigned and never came back. She may have loved babies, but she hated Christ’s bride.

If you do not desire to be with the people of God singing the praises of God and hearing the word of God, your heart does not desire God. This is a sure sign you won’t be with your church much longer—you’re in the building, but you’re not in church.

7) You are thinking about other churches you’d rather attend.

Boy, that church down the street just looks a whole lot better than the one you’re going to now, doesn’t it? You even know a few of the people who attend there, and you like them better than the people at the church you’re currently attending. They have nicer facilities, better music, more stuff for kids, and more opportunities for you. And! They don’t have all the problems that are going on in your church right now—or so you think.

It’s easy to think the grass is always greener on the other side. But pride can still be a big issue here. You can fall into thinking you’re better than the people at your church and you would be making better decisions than the leadership. They’d benefit from listening to someone like you. But because they won’t, you may as well take your treasures and bless some other church. You believe your church needs you, but you don’t need them.

8) You prefer the Digirev or Frankenpastor of Imagichurch.

My son likes Pokemon. The name is an amalgamation of the words “pocket” and “monster.” They’re imaginary monsters that fit in your pocket. Well, the word Digirev is made up of the words “digital” and “reverend.” Frankenpastor is a play off of Frankenstein’s monster. Imagichurch is an imaginary church. Perhaps you can see where I’m going with this.

A Digirev is a pastor you listen to through some digital device—maybe on a podcast, watching YouTube videos, or viewing the live-stream of a Sunday morning service. You don’t really know this pastor, and he doesn’t know you. No elder at this church has any way of shepherding you. But you like him much more than the pastor at the church you’ve been attending.

The Frankenpastor is a mix of all kinds of theologious ingredients—this John Piper sermon (but not that one), the Beth Moore Bible study you liked, Matt Chandler sermon jams on YouTube, some memes you saw on Pinterest, the memory of that Sunday school teacher you had when you were a kid. Boom! Like Frankenstein’s monster, you have created Frankenpastor! Hey, he looks just like you!

Together, your Digirevs and Frankenpastors are the elders of Imagichurch, a place you can attend right from the comfort of your own home. You don’t have to heed anyone’s instruction, no one will confront you about anything, you don’t have to listen to anyone else’s problems, and thank heavens no one is prodding you about yours. Imagichurch is so much better than your real church.

If this is you, your love for Christ and His church are as fake as the simulation church you’ve built in your imagination. “For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen” (1 John 4:20). Repent, and go back to church.

9) You are priority number one.

How much of the pastor’s time are you taking up? If he doesn’t meet certain requirements of yours, do you think he has somehow unqualified himself? Do you think you hold the standard of whether or not he does his job well? Does he have to listen to you, but you don’t have to listen to him? When you come to church, are you there to grow in the word of Christ, or are you there to make sure the pastor says the right things and everyone believes as you think they should?

How much of everyone else’s time are you demanding? Do you highly regard your own counsel, and you take it personally when others don’t ask for it? Have you been willing to listen to anyone else, or are you immediately ready to argue, even against correction offered lovingly? Do you have to be in everyone else’s business, but no one better be asking about yours? Are you able to rejoice with those who rejoice (Romans 12:15), or does it upset you when God blesses someone else? Do you rejoice when sinners come to repentance and get saved, or are they not saved enough for you yet?

Is the gospel for that family sitting over there and they better listen to the sermon today but you’re good? When you come to the Lord’s table, are you secretly sneering at people you think shouldn’t be taking it? Do you think you know who in your church is saved and who is not? Is everyone in church a bunch of hypocrites, but you’re the one who’s got it right? Do you think your church would be much better if everyone was just good like you?

Are you wondering why your church isn’t doing more evangelism, why haven’t we sent out any missionaries lately, why aren’t there enough people working in the nursery, why hasn’t the pastor done something about that person yet, why hasn’t anyone called me, why doesn’t someone vacuum this floor, but you’re not willing to put forth the effort and serve?

If the needle on your me-meter has dropped past a certain level, you might be leaving your church soon. And you should go. You want the attention off the cross of Christ and put on yourself.

10) Something else has taken priority over the gospel.

Every church should be about proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ—naming sin, calling to repentance, preaching Christ and Him crucified, practicing the ministry of reconciliation, seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, regularly meeting together every Lord’s Day, encouraging one another in love and good works, and all the more as the day of the Lord draws near. If this is your church, good. Stay there. As Charles Spurgeon once said, “Don’t go where it is all fine music and grand talk and beautiful architecture. Go where the gospel is preached and go often.”

The moment something else becomes a priority for you over the gospel, you will find yourself becoming more and more disconnected from your church until eventually you leave it or you have to be disciplined out of it. Beware, my brothers and sisters, lest you be as the rocks or the thorns in Jesus’ parable of the sower. You’ve heard the message of the kingdom, and you immediately received it with joy. But have selfishness and sinfulness, worldly pleasures and philosophies choked out the word and it proves to be unfruitful?

When the gospel falls upon good soil, it springs up and produces a bountiful harvest. But those who walk away from the gospel of Jesus Christ and His church reveal that they were never truly part of His church to begin with. “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us” (1 John 2:19).

August 2, 2023 Believers Church

…Opinion by Jake Meador • The Atlantic

Nearly everyone I grew up with in my childhood church in Lincoln, Nebraska, is no longer Christian. That’s not unusual. Forty million Americans have stopped attending church in the past 25 years. That’s something like 12 percent of the population, and it represents the largest concentrated change in church attendance in American history. As a Christian, I feel this shift acutely. My wife and I wonder whether the institutions and communities that have helped preserve us in our own faith will still exist for our four children, let alone whatever grandkids we might one day have.

This change is also bad news for America as a whole: Participation in a religious community generally correlates with better health outcomes and longer life, higher financial generosity, and more stable families—all of which are desperately needed in a nation with rising rates of loneliness, mental illness, and alcohol and drug dependency.

A new book, written by Jim Davis, a pastor at an evangelical church in Orlando, and Michael Graham, a writer with the Gospel Coalition, draws on surveys of more than 7,000 Americans by the political scientists Ryan Burge and Paul Djupe, attempting to explain why people have left churches—or “dechurched,” in the book’s lingo—and what, if anything, can be done to get some people to come back. The book raises an intriguing possibility: What if the problem isn’t that churches are asking too much of their members, but that they aren’t asking nearly enough?

The Great Dechurching finds that religious abuse and more general moral corruption in churches have driven people away. This is, of course, an indictment of the failures of many leaders who did not address abuse in their church. But Davis and Graham also find that a much larger share of those who have left church have done so for more banal reasons. The book suggests that the defining problem driving out most people who leave is … just how American life works in the 21st century. Contemporary America simply isn’t set up to promote mutuality, care, or common life. Rather, it is designed to maximize individual accomplishment as defined by professional and financial success. Such a system leaves precious little time or energy for forms of community that don’t contribute to one’s own professional life or, as one ages, the professional prospects of one’s children. Workism reigns in America, and because of it, community in America, religious community included, is a math problem that doesn’t add up.

Numerous victims of abuse in church environments can identify a moment when they lost the ability to believe, when they almost felt their faith draining out of them. The book shows, though, that for most Americans who were once a part of churches but have since left, the process of leaving was gradual, and in many cases they didn’t realize it was even happening until it already had. It’s less like jumping off a cliff and more like driving down a slope, eventually realizing that you can no longer see the place you started from.

Consider one of the composite characters that Graham and Davis use in the book to describe a typical evangelical dechurcher: a 30-something woman who grew up in a suburban megachurch, was heavily invested in a campus ministry while in college, then after graduating moved into a full-time job and began attending a young-adults group in a local church. In her 20s, she meets a guy who is less religiously engaged, they get married, and, at some point early in their marriage, after their first or second child is born, they stop going to church. Maybe the baby isn’t sleeping well and when Sunday morning comes around, it is simply easier to stay home and catch whatever sleep is available as the baby (finally) falls asleep.

In other cases, a person might be entering mid-career, working a high-stress job requiring a 60- or 70-hour workweek. Add to that 15 hours of commute time, and suddenly something like two-thirds of their waking hours in the week are already accounted for. And so when a friend invites them to a Sunday-morning brunch, they probably want to go to church, but they also want to see that friend, because they haven’t been able to see them for months. The friend wins out.

After a few weeks of either scenario, the thought of going to church on Sunday carries a certain mental burden with it—you might want to go, but you also dread the inevitable questions about where you have been. “I skipped church to go to brunch with a friend” or “I was just too tired to come” don’t sound like convincing excuses as you rehearse the conversation in your mind. Soon it actually sounds like it’d be harder to attend than to skip, even if some part of you still wants to go. The underlying challenge for many is that their lives are stretched like a rubber band about to snap—and church attendance ends up feeling like an item on a checklist that’s already too long.

What can churches do in such a context? In theory, the Christian Church could be an antidote to all that. What is more needed in our time than a community marked by sincere love, sharing what they have from each according to their ability and to each according to their need, eating together regularly, generously serving neighbors, and living lives of quiet virtue and prayer? A healthy church can be a safety net in the harsh American economy by offering its members material assistance in times of need: meals after a baby is born, money for rent after a layoff. Perhaps more important, it reminds people that their identity is not in their job or how much money they make; they are children of God, loved and protected and infinitely valuable.

But a vibrant, life-giving church requires more, not less, time and energy from its members. It asks people to prioritize one another over our career, to prioritize prayer and time reading scripture over accomplishment. This may seem like a tough sell in an era of dechurching. If people are already leaving—especially if they are leaving because they feel too busy and burned out to attend church regularly—why would they want to be part of a church that asks so much of them?

Although understandable, that isn’t quite the right question. The problem in front of us is not that we have a healthy, sustainable society that doesn’t have room for church. The problem is that many Americans have adopted a way of life that has left us lonely, anxious, and uncertain of how to live in community with other people.

The tragedy of American churches is that they have been so caught up in this same world that we now find they have nothing to offer these suffering people that can’t be more easily found somewhere else. American churches have too often been content to function as a kind of vaguely spiritual NGO, an organization of detached individuals who meet together for religious services that inspire them, provide practical life advice, or offer positive emotional experiences. Too often it has not been a community that through its preaching and living bears witness to another way to live.

The theologian Stanley Hauerwas captured the problem well when he said that “pastoral care has become obsessed with the personal wounds of people in advanced industrial societies who have discovered that their lives lack meaning.” The difficulty is that many of the wounds and aches provoked by our current order aren’t of a sort that can be managed or life-hacked away. They are resolved only by changing one’s life, by becoming a radically different sort of person belonging to a radically different sort of community.

Last fall, I spent several days in New York City, during which time I visited a home owned by a group of pacifist Christians that lives from a common purse—meaning the members do not have privately held property but share their property and money. Their simple life and shared finances allow their schedules to be more flexible, making for a thicker immediate community and greater generosity to neighbors, as well as a richer life of prayer and private devotion to God, all supported by a deep commitment to their church.

This is, admittedly, an extreme example. But this community was thriving not because it found ways to scale down what it asked of its members but because it found a way to scale up what they provided to one another. Their way of living frees them from the treadmill of workism. Work, in this community, is judged not by the money it generates but by the people it serves. In a workist culture that believes dignity is grounded in accomplishment, simply reclaiming this alternative form of dignity becomes a radical act.

In the Gospels, Jesus tells his first disciples to leave their old way of life behind, going so far as abandoning their plow or fishing nets where they are and, if necessary, even leaving behind their parents. A church that doesn’t expect at least this much from one another isn’t really a church in the way Jesus spoke about it. If Graham and Davis are right, it also is likely a church that won’t survive the challenges facing us today.

The great dechurching could be the beginning of a new moment for churches, a moment marked less by aspiration to respectability and success, with less focus on individuals aligning themselves with American values and assumptions. We could be a witness to another way of life outside conventionally American measures of success. Churches could model better, truer sorts of communities, ones in which the hungry are fed, the weak are lifted up, and the proud are cast down. Such communities might not have the money, success, and influence that many American churches have so often pursued in recent years. But if such communities look less like those churches, they might also look more like the sorts of communities Jesus expected his followers to create.

February 4, 2021 Believers Church

February 2021 Recommended Media

Podcaster, Carey Nieuwhof sat down with renowned preacher, author, and thought-leader, Tim Keller. In this conversation, they discuss what challenges we face today when taking the Gospel to the people around us, along with how things will likely change in the future for the church in America. The subject is well worth our time to listen in on the thoughts and insights they unveil.

December 4, 2020 Believers Church

Real soon, we will be heading into 1st Corinthians on Sundays. If you want to expand your study, Pastor Jon Courson just walked through it in 2019.

Below is the first sermon from the series. Click the button below the video to view the rest of the teaching from this book.

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