Why people might want to change church

A friend of mine told me that they had decided to change churches. I spent quite some time listening to the story they told and here are some thoughts on how one would think of church on the basis of this person's experience. Sometimes, one person's story triggers some realities that you have already known. The story just put a voice to them.

1. It's about pastoring not about programmes

The purpose of the church is for us be to transformed into the likeness of Jesus. How does that happen? The contemporary answer is to put on a good and professional show. Nice surroundings, good PA, efficient staff, lively worship, good coffee and a good message But that can leave people empty if they don't have an empathy and genuine connection with their believing community. Perhaps, often unknowingly, the church can use its people to fulfill its mission when really the truth is the people are the mission. As Willard perceptively says "We should spend less time trying to get people into heaven and more time trying to get heaven into people"

2. It's about the gospel not about "good"ness"

The church can quickly become Galatian. What do I mean? Well, Paul wrote one of his strongest sentences to the Galatian church saying how amazed he was that they had deserted the gospel. Christian's will so easily and quickly stop hearing grace and start hearing obligation, performance, effort and self-justification. Pastors inevitably want to move their people on, do the mission, fight the battles and unknowingly their people forget the grace of God. This leads to legalism, failure, unworthiness, comparison and death. I've lived in Galatia and it's rubbish. The solution? Well- preach the gospel- over and over and over again. My friend left their church because they found themselves living in Galatia.

3. It's about passion for people and not about their performance

I am increasingly convinced that numerical growth is an incredibly poor measure of spiritual depth. Willow Creek have realized this in their 'Reveal' survey. Yet, because leaders use numbers as a measure of effectiveness this can easily trump the priority of people. Pastors must LOVE their churches and it's hard to love people when you don't know their marriage is struggling, that they are depressed, that their husband is going through a troubled time at work. Love knows the story. The truth is that if to love people is to know them well then churches can't be that big. Maybe we should be aiming as Chuck Colson commented for churches of depth and not width.

I am reading my way through a small pile of books on this: Why we are not emergent, Transforming discipleship, The Wisdom of each other and a few others.

I will post some more thoughts over the coming weeks.