Jesus Said You Will Know Them By...

(The following post was written as a response to mega-church culture.)

Jesus said you will know them by...

...their awesome music ministry

...how large their church is

...how humble their pastor says he is

...their conviction that church is God

...their performace art

...their cool hair and clothes

...their ability-in any context-to always direct attention to their lives to establish themselves as an example for others to follow

...their knowledge of self-improvement

...their ability to be follow the pack and implicitly trust everything they are investing themselves in

...their deep, thorough understanding of church culture

...their keen awareness of the world always applied in church to be relevant


This is just a short list of how Jesus said we'd know the greatest believers among us. Take note, and if your life doesn't mirror this list, you'd better evaluate your priorities. Church, it's time to take inventory of our lives. No more old fashioned church with the Sunday school classes and the archaic hymn books. No more senior citizens hanging about our churches, coming to services, trying to hold us back from going where God wants to take us! Because everyone knows he wants to take us places we've never been. There are careers paths we've never ventured into, houses we've never been successful enough to own, and coolness that we have never plumbed the depths of.

-M.W.

"Only Saints can Sanctify a Society"

In my last post, there was something Wurmbrand said that I think about a lot. "Only saints can sanctify a society." I would think that if we have a large number of born again people who follow Jesus in America that it would have some positive effect on society. Now that I am free of the Word of Faith and all it's hyperbole, I have become more aware of the worsening state of morality and ethics in the Evangelical movement and society as a whole. I become somewhat annoyed when people comment how awesome their churches are. If everybody is so awesome, why can I go into the local Wal-Mart in my rural area and regularly see people with the tell-tale signs of methamphetamine abuse? We've also seen recent displays of immoral behaviour that I have never observed in public before out here in Podunk. We've also watched people we grew up with who were raised in "good Christian homes" live lives adrift from the foundation of their upbringing.

This is just a little food for thought here.

Are we really that awesome?

Is what we are doing in our churches working?

The fruit of it does not bode well.

Excerpts from my list of Post-WOF do's and don'ts

During my post-Word of Faith church-search, I have devised a handy list of do's and don'ts to guide myself through churchy waters:

1) I don't do awesome.

Awesome is an overworked word in the Christian lexicon.

It gets tossed around quite bit, e.g., we have an awesome church...the worship time was awesome...awesome youth group. You get the idea.

With that in mind, I have sworn off all things awesome, since that's usually a sign that the object in question is not awesome.

The awesome comes from the word awe. Awe is defined as "an emotion variously combining dread, veneration, and wonder that is inspired by authority or by the sacred or sublime." I have a hard time seeing myself feel that way about the youth group.

2) I don't do 'vision.'

At our old Word of Faith church, we started each year writing our "Vision list" (also called a to-do-list). The pastor was renowned for his teaching on vision (even though nobody had heard of him). He would exhort us to raise our sights regarding our vision on essential spiritual issues: more money, bigger house. What lowered my enthusiasm about 'vision' was how our vision list was mostly comprised of suggestions that came from the pastor or his family.

Once I got out of the WOF, I realized how much talk there was amongst Christians about vision, such as "finding your place in your pastor's vision." Huh? Why, does he wear glasses?

Right, I'm sure Jesus will be quizzing me about how well I executed my pastor's vision in heaven, or ask for my tithing record and did I appropriately shun offended ex-church members.

3) I don't listen to 'life coaches.'

I don't know if they dress like high school football coaches but it just sounds cheesy.

4) Partial Contemporary Christian music ban

There is a worship song about being free to dance that sounds like U2's Where The Streets Have No Name. I am free of being required to like to contemporary Christian music just because I am a Christian. In some quarters it appears mandatory, no matter how atrocious the music is. Whoo!! Freedom!!

It's not that I absolutely don't accept 'contemporary' worship anymore. But for my vantage point contemporary worship looks a lot like karaoke and I can do karaoke at home. And when I do, I can karaoke to songs I actually like.

Incidentally, am I the only one who is burnt out on the Jesus-love-song format?

Also, when does singing along with a band magically become worship? Didn't I do that when I saw U2 or R.E.M.? Well, I was singing then but I wasn't longing and straining like I was at church.

Hope I'm not sounding too abrasive here but if I'm free to dance, I'm also free to ask questions. Who knows, I could eventually come around and decide that awesome is pretty awesome after all. But I am free to ask questions, something you cannot do in a controlling church environment.

What Now?

We have been out of the Word of faith for over a year. What now? After we left the church we visited nearby churches for over 3 months (we live in a rural area, by the way.). I would suggest everyone give that a shot for a while. I had not gone visiting like that in 11 years. It was quite an eye opener.

I could have a lot of fun describing what we saw at these 100-person-or-less churches. I have a sardonic sense of humor anyway and the church search was not helping. We laughed at some absurdities we saw and cried at the same time wondering "Is this it? Are we just out of luck?"

As we left one church, our kids complained that they couldn't figure out what the minister was talking about. This was understandable because my wife and I were having the same problem. It was the ol' spit-cotton lose-sermon-notes ploy, as Inspector Clouseau might say.

Then there were the churches that freaked because strangers showed up. For some it was bewilderment mixed with slight annoyance that strangers broke in. There was also the other extreme: they were so welcoming and READY for you to join the family that it was too awkward.

There was the church that we joked must be where you go if you plan to run for local political office. Having said that, a few days after our visit, someone from that church had a photo on the front page of the local paper promoting their latest civic service.

One church was relaxed beyond all comprehension. The 20 or so people there were so relaxed they were numb. Maybe that's why one really large person was sitting in a recliner. It was too odd to sit through so we tried to leave as discreetly as we could in a crowd of 20. (Fortunately, the noise the recliner made as the lady kept getting up and "plopping" down to fetch her toddler helped distract the congregants as we slipped out the door.)

We visited a church in our area of a denomination that has a very 'soulwinning' reputation. We came into weeknight service and nobody knew where our kids were supposed to go, including the teachers. So do outsiders really never show up there unannounced?

One of the first churches we visited in the area was a 'Mega-Church Lite.' It had the megachurch identity without megachurch numbers (we are in the country, remember). The main auditorium was darkened (for recording television broadcasts) and they had the praise band that played the current popular songs. I also sensed the ambitiousness of the pastors. Their overall presentation was just right for getting larger crows. There were references in the service we attended about how much the pastors were in demand as speakers across the country. This was too much deja-vu from what we had just left in the Word of Faith. Everyone was captivated by their own awesomeness.

We did attend a small church for several months hoping for a little down-home reality and honesty. Nothing spectacular, just a dose of real-life. It was then that we got a taste of how much church has become an odd combination of tradition, self-help and pop culture Christianity. We even saw troubling aspects of the Word of Faith creeping in, which caused us to jump ship immediately.

So for the time being, I'm cooling my jets on church. I'm not even getting to the questions of why do we do church the way we do (I have a lot of those.) At this point I'm just asking the basic question of 'Why am I sitting through this?' I wish we'd taken a break like this a while back. There is not a clear way out on this topic but that's were I am.