(Ref: a previous post by similar title.)
Yet another comment on my critical review of Life Church from your typical modern Christian Pharisee. The real issue remains the deep failure to understand what is normative. I realize that the biggest and most successful churches today aren’t that different from LifeChurch.tv. When I first decided to attend worship at the MWC campus of Life Church, I already knew pretty much what I was getting into. There was no intent to undermine or steal sheep or any of those human motives you might expect from someone visiting a church they knew wasn’t really their cup of tea. I went because it was an opportunity to find those not being served. Every church has them and it’s no particular shame, but I knew God had called me to handle things most professionals in ministry would avoid. Yes, I was cynical, but I bore no malice.
What I didn’t expect would be the huge portion of folks who weren’t being served. That is, everywhere I turned, when the frenetic pace of activity slowed just a bit and I had a chance to chat with people quietly, I was shocked at how many were frustrated by the refusal of the church staff to address their deeper needs. Yes, I said refusal. Not in the rude and blunt fashion of someone who is honest, but in the sneaky soft fashion of someone who tries to avoid alienating folks who might be dropping money in the offering buckets.
You see, Life Church is a very high efficiency operation. They spend lavishly on the basic setup, but it’s designed to draw a big crowd of prosperous middle class whites so that per capita spending is quite low. That’s Craig’s secret. Actually spending resources meeting deeper human needs is not just forgotten, not just shoved aside, it is purposefully drowned out by a flood of shallow stuff that is sold as “one size fits all.” This is all carefully enforced by folks distributed around the system to ensure anyone attempting to do real ministry is shut down. That’s what happened to me there. I saw some real needs and attempted to meet them without getting in the way of program. Little did I know the program was so pervasive and watchful of this very thing. I was shoved aside very politely but very quickly after I successfully beat back an episode of Delphi Technique attack. The NSA could learn a lot from how Craig runs his operation.
The point is this: Most of what folks refer to as “spiritual problems” are actually moral issues of God’s Laws. It’s the Two Realms thing again. When Satan is pestering you, it’s because you are legally on his turf. The second you start pulling away from his agenda and start embracing God’s moral character woven into the universe, the Enemy’s grip weakens and his power declines rapidly. In other words, the sin and sickness is easily remedied if you bother to discover God’s Justice.
Life Church is simply more creepy about doing the same thing you get from the likes of “Purpose Driven” and other programs of church renewal. All of them aim at centralizing control for the sake of control and money, but pretending all the while this is about people and the gospel. They dress it up in some simulacrum of Western evangelical orthodoxy — there are many flavors — and pretend it’s what God intended. Yes, I realize the majority of them are sincere, but they are sincerely wrong. All of Western Civilization is wrong, which means all religious activity based on European Church History is wrong. So what’s new? I went about things doing my best to stay out of the way. As soon as I realized how there was no room for genuine spiritual and moral operations, I left so as not to cause trouble. Later, I found out a bunch of other folks left at about the same time for similar reasons. There are several different ways to stay friendly while driving folks out who refuse to conform to your plans.
So the entire gamut of Western Christianity, as far as I can tell, is suffering a serious moral confusion. I remain utterly certain I will live to see many of these operations collapse under their own weight. I’m not gleefully watching from the sidelines. I wish desperately I could help, but there’s no room to operate from inside any of the systems I’ve encountered. The best I can do is stand outside and shout with the prophet’s voice of doom.
I weep for you, churches.
