How Post-Christian Are You?
I don’t blame Barna for trying to come up with tangible measures for people’s faith. But look again at how Barna measures a full third of what makes us “Christian.”
Christians, we are being measured by our loyalty to what is often a human organization with a spiritual veneer on it. Not just by Barna, but by churches everywhere. It is the simplest way an intangible thing like being “born again” can be measured: butts in the seats.
We are being measured by our attendance records, because church programs that do not meet “critical mass” are considered “failures.”
We are being measured by how much time we take away from our families in order to promote the agendas of our churches.
We are being measured by how much money we contribute to building church parking lots.
I just wonder if any of this is a true or accurate measure of any of our faith. Maybe you haven’t contributed money to your church because the sound system is good enough, and you’d rather sponsor a child in Africa. Maybe you have not gone to small group or Sunday school because you are at home reading Bible stories with your kids. Maybe you haven’t volunteered to do some menial task that your church shoehorns you into, because you’d rather volunteer someplace that actually appreciates your talents and creativity.
In fact, I wonder how much post-Christian attitude is a rebellion from this exact kind of dehumanizing, hierarchy-promoting number crunching. Maybe people are being tired of being a number on a church’s bank account.
You Will Know Them by Their Church Attendance
On the one hand, I do think that Christian faith is best experienced in community. And there is no doubt that America’s faith is deteriorating.
But measuring our deteriorating faithfulness to Jesus by our deteriorating faithfulness to churches is just not fair.
Why don’t we measure Christians the way Jesus told us to? Why are we not measuring cities by their peacefulness, patience, kindness or gentleness?
Because the fruits of the spirit aren’t measurable metrics?
Why aren’t we measuring Christian faith by the amount we give to all charity, rather than just churches?
Because that’s not a convenient metric?
If the true metrics of a Christian are not really measurable, then this survey proves only one thing: that Christians (however many there are) are not being tricked in such large numbers as they used to be. Churches may be trying to make us confuse their kingdom with God’s kingdom. But we aren’t buying it anymore. It may work with the “seeker” crowd, but not for us “lifers.” We will not have our stewardship measured by your accountant. We will not have our faithfulness measured by your attendance records.
What do you think? Are there accurate ways to measure “faith” in America, or do those measurements only show our faithfulness to church.
