Church Programming

Praxis As Tongue: How Churches Undermine the Gospel with Contradictory, Invisible Messages

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A man comes up to you and says, “This is the world’s finest car.”

Now imagine these two contexts:

1. You are in the International Automobile Museum in Munich, Germany, an architectural masterpiece of modern design. Glass, aluminum, and chrome details make the place look like it materialized out of The Jetsons. The man, each hair on his head perfectly in place, wears a bespoke suit and silk tie. He sports a badge that reads Johannes Karlsburg, Director. Others in the museum gaze with wonder upon the object of Karlsburg’s comment.

2. You are in a used car lot. A sweaty man in a bad polyester suit left over from the 1970s chomps on his cigar and adjusts his silvered aviator glasses as he talks with you about the car upon which his hand now rests. You can see through the dusty glass of the lot’s office and notice the office has a fake bearskin rug on the floor before a desk that must have come from the public school they closed down a decade ago. A cigar store Indian stands inside the office doorway. A Snap-On Tools pinup calendar on the wall is stuck on last month. And the car? It has a windshield soaped to read $599, NO MONEY DOWN!

Notice that the message of both men is identical. Only the contextual details and settings are different.

Now which man are you more likely to believe?

I have been a part of many churches over the years. I have carefully observed their messages and how they present them. What unified every church was an almost desperate desire to present the Gospel to lost people and to do that Gospel justice. Commendable, all of them.

Sadly, many of those churches crashed and burned in their efforts. Not because they stopped preaching the Gospel, but because contradictory, invisible, subcontextual messages presented by those churches overwhelmed that supposedly primary Gospel message.

This is not to say that the Gospel cannot stand on its own. It can. It does.

But God did not design us to hear only the obvious, pure, spoken text of messages. Indeed, the majority of our communication (with some researchers claiming as much as 80 percent) is understood through nontextual, unspoken means. God Himself made us to sense more than the obvious. He made us to “read between the lines.”

We are fearfully and wonderfully made.

However, churches often forget the complexity of human comprehension and understanding. They believe “the main and the plain” are all we spot.

And this is a grave, grave error.

***

A story…

First Baptist Church notices something going on at Second Baptist Church across the street. Building crews. Vans from Lowe’s. A dumpster filled.

Deacon Fred heads across the street to check it out.

Inside, Fred sees that Second Baptist has updated the sanctuary by removing the stained glass windows, stashed away the large wooden cross at the altar, removed the banners that lined the sanctuary walls, changed the altar area into a stage, swapped out the pews in favor of theater-like seats, and installed a digital sound system with computer-controlled lighting.

Fred reports this back to Pastor Joe. Pastor Joe suggests Deacon Fred do a little more spying this Sunday. So rather than taking his typical spot in First Baptist’s doorway handing out bulletins, Deacon Fred surreptitiously takes his place in the seats at Second Baptist.

Gone are the hymnals he once remembered (since Fred once attended Second Baptist before settling on First). In their place is a giant screen behind the stage. Words to songs he hears on the Christian radio station flash by along with a background video of waterfalls and sunsets.

A young man with an electric guitar seems really into the worship music he strums, backed by a band. Fred thinks he knows the band members from the local country band that plays the fair circuit and all the school proms. Maybe some of the bars too, though Fred wouldn’t know that for sure.

Following the worship time, which Fred notices is only 15 minutes, down from a half hour, a video plays and talks about all the wonderful programs Second Baptist now offers. This is followed by another video about an upcoming conference that costs $159, which everyone should attend. And yet another video, a funny one, says something side-splitting about how Christians talk and confuse people with their “members-only” language. Fred thinks the videos are all in “high-def,” a term his son often drops in casual conversation.

Fred spots Old Edna a couple seats over. She looks more ragged than he remembers. Fred wonders if her long-running money troubles are taking their toll.

Fred also notices how dark the sanctuary is now. Feels like a theater.

Pastor Glen, who used to wear a clerical collar and polyester pants, comes out in a Hawaiian shirt and jeans. He sits on a stool on stage and chats up folks for a while. Tells a joke or two. Everyone laughs. He then talks about how Jesus matters more than everything else in the world. He talks about Jesus’ death on the cross and its importance. He talks about being born again and not being like the world. Ends it all by saying the clock says it is time to wrap things up. Fred feels it was a good message.

After the message, which Fred thinks is much shorter than he remembers, everyone reaches to the arm of his or her seat and removes a small plastic cup with some juice inside and a plastic-enclosed wafer sealing the top, all sanitary and convenient. A few words are spoken as an invocation. Everyone trashes the empties as they leave, and the band plays one last song, which Fred thinks is an old Beatles number. Something about love being all you need.

On his way out, he glances into the Children’s Church area. It looks like something from a discotheque. The loud music can’t be ignored, the kids doing that pogo dance thing Fred heard about once, pumping their fists as they jump in the air. Some young guy with a guitar is yelling, “Jesus is awesome,” over and over.

Fred reports his findings to Pastor Joe. Three months later, Fred and Joe notice the parking lot is being expanded over at Second Baptist. Within a couple more months, even that expansion is full.

The board of First Baptist Church makes a decision.

Six months later, First Baptist looks a lot more like Second Baptist. They expand their parking lot too.

And it, too, fills like Second Baptist’s once did. Once, since Fred now notices more empty spaces in Second Baptist’s lot.

Then, Fred begins to notice them in First’s.

And so it goes.

Soon, all the fancy, costly programs at First Baptist run into a financial crunch because giving is down along with the attendance figures. The extra staff they hired get that dreaded pink slip. The mood changes in the church. There’s a sense that the good days are in the past.

***

Those two churches never strayed from preaching the Gospel. They didn’t water down their messages.

But other messages intruded.

 

In taking down the religious symbols…

Intended message: Our church is contemporary and speaks a modern language.

Unintended message: Religious symbols are old fashioned.

Worse unintended message: Religious symbols are meaningless.

 

In converting the sanctuary into a theater-like auditorium…

Intended message: Our church is contemporary and relates to what modern people understand.

Unintended message: We are here to entertain you, just as if you are at a rock concert or movie theater.

Worse intended message: What we do here has no more meaning than other forms of consumable experiences.

 

In moving toward a more professional caliber of musician…

Intended message: We are professional, and we Christians can excel too.

Unintended message: We are professionals and you aren’t.

Worse unintended message: Don’t bother to serve here, because you aren’t professional enough.

 

In moving toward worship that consists of top 40 Christian songs heard on the radio, with words displayed on big screens…

Intended message: We are aware of what is excellent and noteworthy, plus we understand what resonates with you and is convenient for you.

Unintended message: What we believe is worthwhile is ever-changing.

Worse unintended message: Everything is transitory and disposable, even our worship of God.

 

In moving toward videos for connecting with people…

Intended message: We can be as professional as a TV show. Hey, we get this YouTube thing too.

Unintended message: Church is meant to be entertaining. People who run this church are as approachable as TV celebrities (which is not very).

Worse unintended message: Our message is worthwhile only if it entertains you.

 

In spending a large sum of money to renovate and “improve the church”…

Intended message: What we do here is valuable, so we need to spend money to be relevant to you and to our message.

Unintended message: Money really, really, really matters here. Just like it does out there in the world.

Worse unintended message: Money, and what we do with it here, matters more than Old Edna. And you either.

 

In the pastor’s new wardrobe…

Intended message: Hey, we’re just like you.

Unintended message: Hey, we’re no different than the rest of the world.

Worse unintended message: We’re just as fake as everyone else. And possibly even more so.

 

In delivering the Gospel unflinchingly, but compactly…

Intended message: We may have changed a lot about how we deliver our message, but it’s the same message.

Unintended message: Hey, look at the clock…

Worse unintended message: While this message is important, it’s not as important as your busy lives.

 

In upholding the supremacy of Jesus and our unity in Him through the Lord’s Supper…

Intended message: Jesus is all that matters. His sacrifice for us is infinitely valuable. And so are you to Him.

Unintended message: Look how we have packaged Jesus’ Body and His blood for your convenience and ours.

Worse unintended message: Jesus is a commodity to be prepackaged and consumed with an eye toward convenience and easy disposal. If that’s how we think about Him, then that’s how we think about you.

 

In “pumping up” Children’s Church…

Intended message: Kids, Christianity is cool and fun! You can have just as much fun in church as your unsaved friends have in the world.

Unintended message: Christianity is as much a fad as anything else.

Worse unintended message: When Christianity ceases to be fun, it ceases to be worthwhile and meaningful.

 

Everything a church does in its practice and expression of the Faith either reinforces or detracts from the Gospel message. Our unintended messages often eclipse the Gospel message for this reason: Because we are more focused on those countermessages than the Gospel itself.

We cannot practice the Faith in a vacuum. EVERYTHING we do matters, not just what we say. And honestly, in a world where Christians have said a whole lot and not followed up well on most of it, what we overtly speak often takes second place to how we act and express nonverbally what we say with our lips we believe.

If we do not understand this, we will forever be tinkering, inadvertently creating mixed messages that ultimately hurt our churches.

I’ve personally witnessed the backfiring of countless church changes that worked against the Gospel and the intended message. I’ve witnessed numerous churches commit these same blunders, all thinking they are doing the right thing but never considering the unintended messages they communicate.

If you have witnessed similar unintended messages that derailed a church,  please feel free to share them in the comments. Perhaps they will serve as a cautionary tale to well-meaning change agents who haven’t thought through their “vision.”

Are Small Groups Doomed?

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Faces in the crowdIf you’re an Evangelical Christian, chances are that you’ve been in a small group associated with a church or parachurch organization. It’s almost a rite of passage if you’re born again.

My wife and I are part of two small groups. One is affiliated with our old Vineyard church. We’ve stuck with that group because we have a lot in common with the other four couples. It feels like family. We’ve been a part of that group for about seven years, as have most of the other couples in it. We’ve gone through a lot of trials together. Our second group is through our current Pentecostal church. We’ve been in that group for about three years.

The groups are alike in that both meet in the home of one of the couples, eat a meal together, catch up on life, and discuss spiritual things. The Vineyard group has had a flexible focus over the years, though the corporate Vineyard small group emphasis of fellowship, worship, nurture, and prayer have been consistent. It’s the nurture portion that changes over time. That particular group has nucleated to the point that we all agreed it’s a closed group, meaning it isn’t open to newcomers. The Pentecostal group doesn’t have the worship portion of the meeting, so it spends more time on the nurture. It’s billed as a marriage & family group, so the nurture portion has focused on improving marriages. That group is open, and all the participants have agreed that it serves as a step into the church for visitors. Unlike the Vineyard group, our pastor and his wife attend the group, not as leaders, but mostly for their own edification and as a sounding board for new couples.

The Vineyard group has been hosted by the same couple the entire time we’ve been a part of it; same for the Pentecostal group. Just about every couple has led the nurture at some point in the Vineyard group, while the host couple has primarily led at the Pentecostal church, with me filling in when they’re busy. Because the Vineyard church is quite large, the couples in that group, though highly involved in the life of the church, would not devastate the church if they should decide to leave one day. However, the couple who hosts and leads the Pentecostal group are possibly the most actively involved in a church’s life on all levels of any couple I’ve met in my entire life. Calling them pillars of the church seems almost inadequate a description.

Each group meets twice a month, and we asked that the Pentecostal group stagger its meetings to accommodate our other group. Since it wasn’t a huge issue, they did.

Those are our small groups. We are indebted very much to both.

I’ve spent most of this weekend thinking about small groups. As someone who grew up indoctrinated in the idea that the real life of the church happens in small groups, I worry about the small group model.

Some churches, especially those of the mega variety, pin their entire ministry model on the idea that people will flock to small groups and find there what they cannot within the larger ministry of the whole church. Many churches live and die by that ideal. It’s one reason why I’m concerned.

A few years back, Joe Myers, who lives in my general area, wrote a book called The Search to Belong: Rethinking Intimacy, Community, and Small Groups. I struggled through that book in all honesty, partly because I thought it was a little too in love with its demographic studies and quotes from sociologists (pretty typical of Emerging lit) and because the studies and quotes painted a disturbing picture.

Myers’s assertions included the following:

1. A church that gets a third of its regular attendees involved in small groups does well. That being the case, it’s ridiculous to drive a church model based on small groups because two-thirds of attendees will never plug into one no matter how hard the church promotes small groups.

2. Having a small group meeting in a private home asks too much of people today. Far too many people feel uncomfortable walking into another person’s home.

Let me talk about the latter statement first.

One of the best parts of both of our groups is the shared meal. I think that echoes the early Church well. I love eating together. I enjoy making meals together, too. There’s a dynamic on that meal prep that bonds the group.

Problem is, that’s hard to do outside a home. Plus, for those people who have a gift of hospitality, part of their gift is thwarted by not being able to host in their own living space. This is not to say that people can’t be hospitable outside their own homes, only that something can be lost by moving to another venue. The Bible appears to reflect this ideal, also, by showing us how the early Church met in each other’s homes.

Worse, if Myers is to be believed on this point, I have got to wonder how bad off we are as a society when people can’t walk into another person’s living space without getting the heebie-jeebies. Honestly, if people today freak as badly as Myers insists they do on crossing the threshold of another person’s house, call Malcolm Gladwell because we’re not only past the tipping point, we may as a society be on the way to the point of no return. If my house scares you, then you’re going to be petrified of my personality. So much for any kind of small group dynamic—please pass the Paxil.

On the first point concerning the one-third involvement, my own experience proves that this is a general number that does, indeed, hold up under scrutiny. Now I know I’m going to get people who write in and say, “Well, in my church, half the people are in small groups.” Great. You are the exception to the rule. But by and large, I’ve been around enough to believe Myers’s statistic is true when viewed on a macro scale.

More to the point, I believe that the one-third number wil increasingly shrink for several compelling reasons:

Bowling Alone Syndrome – The seminal book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community by Robert Putnam has been quoted by every long-time leader I know, no matter what type of group they lead. Every last one laments the loss of community that once thrived in American culture as exemplified by our fraternal organizations. I don’t care what kind of public group we’re talking about—Kiwanis, Boy Scouts, Sierra Club, softball teams, card clubs, even churches—they’ve all seen the number of involved members drop precipitously. People just are not participating in face-to-face interpersonal groups like they once were. To many, the commitment asks too much. Couple this with the increasingly rootless nature of a society whose individuals spend less and less time in one place. These difficult realities pose enormous problems for churches, especially those that base their ministry model around small groups.

A lack of qualified small group leaders – Too many churches that expect their primary teaching and discipleship  to occur in small groups pin their hopes on people who are increasingly less qualified to lead what they teach. In many cases, the leader of a small group is promoted out of another small group who may have had an inadequate leader. Law of diminishing effects anyone? As so many Evangelical churches have gone this route, is it any wonder that so many Evangelicals display ignorance of even the most basic biblical truths? And if the people lack knowledge, they perish, right? That’s not a formula for successfully perpetuating a thriving small group model.

The Hegelian Dialectic – I’ve talked about this many times here (see this post in particular), but the tendency toward thesis/antithesis/synthesis teaching in small groups undermines genuinely fruitful Bible study more than we care to admit. Unqualified teachers create some of that problem but so does the need not to make anyone feel uncomfortable should they hold an errant view on the topic being taught. I’ve long contended that small groups may do some things well, but, for most, teaching ain’t it.

Busyness – This comprises a part of the Bowling Alone Syndrome. Frankly, I find it amazing that any small group meets at all given how overly scheduled our lives are. To the people I talk with, it’s only getting worse. In the case of both small groups I’m a part of, year over year we’re seeing more scheduling issues. I can’t recall if our Vineyard group has met as an entire group so far this year. Due to the nature of our other small group, it’s never met with the same core people from one month to the next. That makes it hard to develop the momentum needed to keep growing in discipleship through the group.

Expectations – Here’s a loaded issue: group member expectations. I think more small groups burn out due to participants’ unmet expectations than for any other reason. I also think that this was less of an issue in the past because people then didn’t know what to expect of small groups, so their expectations were low. I will also contend that too many people today come to a group with a list of expectations an arm long because we’ve indoctrinated people into believing that the world exists to meet their needs. (In truth, the modern church’s constant catering to felt needs only exacerbates the issue.) That’s a huge problem to overcome because people will flee a small group the second it looks like it won’t meet their needs perfectly. They never find a home, instead flitting from one small group to the next. Worst of all, should the group cater to couples, if one of the spouses sours on the group because of unmet expectations, it puts the other spouse in a bind. You almost always wind up losing two people instead of just the discontented one.

All these issues combine to exert enormous pressure on small groups.

Resolving these issues requires smarter people than yours truly. Several of the problems exist at a societal level, requiring upheavals that too many church leaders are not willing to discuss. That timidity, though, is at the root of the failure.

My contribution:

I have never believed that the small group model works well in teaching the Scriptures to people. I’ve been in numerous small groups over the years, and only one or two have had solid teaching. Perhaps, then, we should focus on other things, especially discipleship through example, which means ensuring the fellowship works well—no small task in itself.

I also think we have to ask ourselves how important the basic philosophy of small groups is to our personal growth. If we believe in what small groups are supposed to provide, then we need to be committed to that belief. We can’t let outside influences distract us from the core vision.

I’ll be upfront and say that I’m pessimistic about the future of small group ministry within churches here in the United States. This is not to say that small groups will cease to exist, only that their influence within churches may be waning.

This begs a greater question: If small groups are increasingly under pressure to provide what churches depend on them to provide, what will replace small groups as the primary means of doing “what small groups do” within our churches? How will churches provide for the spiritual needs of their congregants should the small group model wither?

On this issue, where does your church stand?


Hidden Messages of American Christianity: “We’re Cool, Too!”

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This is the fifth in a series of posts covering the hidden messages that sneak into American churches’ proclamation of the Gospel. For more background, please refer to this post.

High school is the grand social experiment wherein hormonally-driven young people seek to establish a place in the social pecking order. Any keen observer of the high-school scene will easily note the depths to which some teens will sink in order to be perceived as cool or attuned to the latest vibe. CluelessNo one wants to be left out.

Everyone knew (or some of us may have been) that kid who spent every waking hour trying to fit in. The tragi-comedy of the teen years is observing the desperate lengths to which some kids go to keep from being deemed irrelevant to the greater theatrical production. If all the world’s a stage and we are merely players, no one wants to be the understudy.

Hopefully we all move on and grow into maturity. Even then, a high school reunion will expose that handful of people who are still trapped in the “Please look at me! I’m cool, too!” phase.

We can excuse our teenagers for this desire, but we can’t excuse adults who never get over it.

Large swaths of the American Church can’t get over it. There is a desperate longing to be perceived as smart, “hip,” and worldly wise. Step into a few churches today and note that they not only serve you a latte you can take into the worship service, but the coffee is pitched as being free trade, so no one can accuse the church of not being cool enough to be sensitive to economic and environmental issues.

Like the teenager screaming, “Please look at me! I’m cool, too,” American Christians have become obsessed with not being left out of the “be there or be square” party everyone’s attending.

If you’re an American, you had to have been squatting in the bowels of Carlsbad Caverns for the last year to have missed the fact that THE MOVIE is debuting this weekend. All of us having sucked long on the marketing teat behind THE MOVIE, I need not mention its name. You and probably everyone you know are aware of THE MOVIE. Many of us are planning on seeing THE MOVIE either Friday or Saturday for fear we won’t be able to discuss it on Sunday before and after our church services.

After all, we let Hollywood know that we demand more movies like this, movies that cater to us, because hey, we’re cool, right? We have money as well. And we don’t ever want to be left out of what’s cool for fear the world will think less of us. What good is a Church that avoids the world’s party?

In far too many churches in America today, the message on Sunday is that Christianity is cool and hip. It’s a faith that makes cultural demands that need to be met by the world’s power brokers. It cries out for Christian-themed amusement parks, Bibles with dimpled steel covers, and stuffed Aslan dolls that better darned sure look exactly like Aslan (or else we won’t buy it.) It’s a new and improved Christianity that walks with a swagger and demands to be on student council so that popularity is assured. Sure, we may talk about a savior who was killed by crucifixion, or we may espouse ideals of dying to self and to the world, but that doesn’t mean we can’t look cool doing it. Or so the conflicted message goes.

For a lot of churches and the Christians who populate them, the greatest fear is to jammed into a locker and have the door slammed on us. Once you’ve been assaulted in that manner by the school’s alpha jock, you’re relegated to loser status forever.

I seem to remember this Bible passage, though:

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”
—Romans 8:35-36 ESV

Regarded as sheep to be slaughtered? Highly, highly uncool.

Or how about this:

Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man!
—Luke 6:22 ESV

You’ll never be class president if you’re reviled. They’ll vote for that Pedro guy instead.

This one stings a little:

For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.
—Philippians 1:21 ESV

It’s hard to be a debutante when you’re dead, isn’t it?

Or…

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.
—1 John 2:15-17 ESV

I guess the prom is out then, huh?

Or…

And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself? For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.
—Luke 9:23-26 ESV

But the popular kids like me now!

We’ve got to stop this high school behavior in the American Church. We’re so wrapped up in our image that our main message of the Gospel is threatened with becoming the real hidden message. We’re glorying in worldly acclaim, but that acclaim is worthless. We’re excited about the power we supposedly wield politically, culturally, and so on, but it’s all a façade. We’re high school kids caught up in the social milieu, desperately trying to be cool and popular.

Th result of our dalliances is that we’ve made Christianity nothing more than a check mark on a To-Do list somewhere next to “Get a date for Homecoming” and “Buy more Clearisil.” The transforming power of the Gospel has been replaced by a message that’s a salve for getting dumped before prom night, or strength for revenge against the stuck-up girl who made us look bad in gym class a month ago. Dying to self, loving Christ and others, making disciples, being salt and light—that’s the heart of the Gospel, not all that kiddie stuff.

High school isn’t the real world, folks. “Please look at me! I’m cool, too!” is like…so yesterday. It’s time we American Christians grew up and acted like adults.

{Image of the movie poster from Clueless — Paramount Pictures.}