by Tom Johnston
March 2007
285 Billion
That’s what the American Church spends on ministry each year, on average (Dr. David Barrett). That’s right – $285 BILLION, not thousand, or even million. Based on this, if the church in the America was a single corporation, it would be the THIRD LARGEST in the world, right behind ExxonMobil and General Electric and just ahead of Microsoft. And yet, Christians as a percentage of U.S. population continue to decline.
Living in New Hampshire, a state with the highest per capita household income (2005), and one of the lowest charitable giving rates (ranked 50 in 2005, 47 in 2006), we have 2.4% of the population attending an evangelical church in any given week (www.theamericanchurch.org). Not sure about where you live, but up here in New England, it looks like we are losing some serious ground. In fact, nationally, the Church is in serious decline as far as attendance goes. While Christianity seems to be holding it’s own in some regions of the country, the fact is, we aren’t even reaching the percentage of population equivalent to our own children.
So, what’s it all mean? Well first of all, what we are doing doesn’t seem to be bearing much fruit either in making more disciples or impacting culture. Secondly, it doesn’t seem like we need to spend more money on church stuff! (Granted, we may need to spend it differently.) If we keep on this track, we will continue to see the decline of the totality of Christian witness in the West. This is all hard to see from within the “belly of the beast” of ministry. But it is time for a wake-up call – and a revolution.
Christians in America by-and-large are not risk-takers. We are extremely conservative in behavior and often focused on trying to maintain a connection to a preferred past – an idealistic (and inaccurate) view of or nation’s religious history. What we need to do is focus on God’s preferred future for us, not the past. And we need some serious risk-takers (read: people of faith) who will step out of the normal Christian experience and do something truly profound – live a life of simple devotion to Jesus Christ – so that God’s hope for the people of our nation can be realized. We need people who will build their life and faith around the simple construct we often present – the “irreducible core” of our faith – namely, loving God, loving others, and making disciples everywhere we go. A simple Christian faith simply lived out in front of others, a way of life, not a life full of religious activities which costs $285B and seems to have little impact - on us or the society around us.
If we are spending all this money on programs, buildings, evangelistic events – and losing the battle – we need to do a serious re-think on our life and faith. Let’s talk about it.
3 comments:
We need a different idea of what success is in the church. Is it a building on the corner or is it the simple core. Loving God, loving each other and reaching out with that message of grace to others.
I pray that we can again become the church and not a monument to the past, or to a cold doctrine statement, but instead filled with a desrie to be all that God would want us to be.
Tom, Good word. The truth hurts, can't fight the facts, the truth also frees.There must be an admission that what we as he church do without the power of the Holy Spirit doesn't work.We should go back to Acts and study how Jesus commanded the 120 to wait and ask, "why?". So ofen we have not the patience to wait like Peter before Pentacost, moving out with a program,"let's pick a new apostle" even using the Bible as a text book but without the Spirit's direction.The biggest risk, I think is not letting the Holy Spirit guide, we fail to fully understand His fulness, His direction, His ministry to be Lord of the believer/Church. I think Jesus let them wait in the upper room to make them realise how powerless they were to do what He had commissioned without Him there. What was the outcome when the Spirit[ His presence] was poured out on humble, waiting believers? Fruit and lot's of it! Power from on high to "go into all the world, make disciples" and they did it. In many ways we as the church today must go back to a spiritual upper room and humble and empty ourselves of 2000 years of doing ministry 'leaning on our own understanding' and understand the teaching of Jesus on the Holy Spirit's work in and through a believer and the church.Pastors,admit it's not working and get back to the upper room and wait and recieve a 'baptism of Holy Spirit and fire'. Study John the baptist's words "I need to be baptized by You". John didn't mean water baptism. John Brigham of Whitingham, VT
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