They Unchurched the Church

So who’s filling all these churches? Every week, some of the attractional leaders post growing numbers of baptisms and “decisions.” What can we conclude? As the research shows, by and large the people filling these church buildings week in and week out turn out to be other Christians. Often they are de-churched Christians or disaffected Christians or disillusioned Christians, but the idea that the attractional church is having its doors beaten down by lost people is a myth.

Wilson finds that the churches aren’t actually growing from conversion growth but rather transfer growth. And this transfer growth often comes from smaller churches that can’t keep up with the larger churches or other megachurches that aren’t meeting the consumer’s needs.

This makes me ask uncomfortable questions. Why are they doing this? Who are they doing this for? Why the music? Why the teaching? Why the whole production? Is Wilson right…is this whole thing not for the seekers after all but for the consumer-minded Christians? Are we holding back doctrine because the Christians want us to? Are we not using tough theological words for the Christians? Are we singing peppy but airy songs devoid of the real stuff of life (suffering, trials, apostasy) for the Christians? Are we accumulating teachers after our own desires? Is this what itching ears looks like (2 Tim. 4:3)?

It breaks my heart to consider this perspective. I think of an unbeliever going to church, a Christian church, and walking away disappointed because it lacked a seriousness, weightiness and gospel content. It was so practical that it was irrelevant. What in the world are we doing?

When I think about the gospel and the church I often think of one of my favorite hymns, How Sweet and Aweful Is the Place. “Aweful” here has the old sense of the word that means inspiring reverential wonder or fear. The church is the place where people are to be brought to reverential wonder or fear of God through the consideration of the God of grace and the grace of God. Take a read through.

How sweet and aweful is the place
With Christ within the doors,
While everlasting love displays
The choicest of her stores.

While all our hearts and all our songs
Join to admire the feast,
Each of us cry, with thankful tongues,
“Lord, why was I a guest?

“Why was I made to hear thy voice,
And enter while there’s room,
When thousands make a wretched choice,
And rather starve than come?”

‘Twas the same love that spread the feast
That sweetly drew us in;
Else we had still refused to taste,
And perished in our sin.

Pity the nations, O our God,
Constrain the earth to come;
Send thy victorious Word abroad,
And bring the strangers home.

We long to see thy churches full,
That all the chosen race
May, with one voice and heart and soul,
Sing thy redeeming grace.

We do indeed long to see the churches full of people but not without the pulpits full of Christ. My friend’s experience is a sobering reminder of this truth: An aweful church preaches Christ, and an awful church does not. Even an unchurched guy can see this.