Here’s the sad reality: Evil gravitates toward good like a cancer latching onto its host. Churches can attract people to leadership positions who want to exercise power and control over other people, and typically these power-hungry people are individuals who feel absolutely powerless at home or at work. They line up to join church committees, they love long unproductive meetings, they become territorial, and they enjoy issuing orders for which they will neither commit to helping with nor funding themselves personally. These types of people have missed the value of transformation — they only know how to tally up “nickels and noses,” i.e., when it comes to “church” the contribution and attendance are all they care about.
Because of these power brokers, pastors and congregants alike have left their churches in droves — this possibly includes you as well. Statistics show that many ministers suffer intense burnout rates, and the average preacher will spend more time earning their seminary degrees than they ever will serving in church. Many, actually most, teenagers will become collateral damage, themselves fleeing from church as adults after a lifetime of listening to their grumbling parents struggle with the volunteer leaders in their local church. And, as you may have noticed, countless churches are closing their doors, shuttering their windows, and simply vanishing.
Why shouldn’t we simply give up on the idea of church, since there are so many problems within her walls? Not to mention, it seems like “celebrity pastors” are falling like dominoes to one scandal or another all too often. Why? Because the church isn’t limited by “four walls,” and it doesn’t have to be run like a business, driven by a consumer mentality, or feel like a major theater production.
Churches can focus on serving Jesus, and caring for His flock. When you get away from the bright stage lights and “organized Christianity” and attempt to follow the Bible instead of Robert’s Rule of Order, church becomes more organic, more wholesome. It becomes real. Will you still have problems? Certainly, since none of us are perfect, but considering the alternatives it’s worth it.
There will always be parasitical, argumentative, hypocritical powermongers attempting to leech off of the goodwill of believers, which neither nullifies the work Jesus sets before us nor does it excuse us from serving.
You can find a church (or plant one) that is focused on transforming lives through the power of the Cross, the moving of the Spirit, and through the enrichment of the Scriptures.
There are loving and welcoming, non-judgmental, life-changing churches focused on changing lives. They might not have a steeple on their roof. In fact they might not even have a building to their name to put a steeple on, but they have what matters — the heart of Jesus.
Originally published in the Kingsport Timesnews:
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