Hamel’s main point is that our world is changing very quickly.  The postmodern American culture has become increasingly hostile toward the church – not toward God and spirituality, but to organized religion in general and especially toward the attitudes and behaviors of evangelical Christians. This point has been made before by many others, and it is not really in dispute. If you have read the book UnChristian by David Kinnamon, you already know the spiel. Using quotes and statistics from Kinnamon and the Barna Institute, he shows that the church has a huge image problem today, especially among young people, and it’s getting worse.

How are churches responding to this sea of change? Drawing upon his own insights from management and organizational psychology, Hamel argues that the response of local churches and denominations is woefully inadequate or nonexistent. As a whole, our churches show all the unmistakable signs of a company that is doomed to fail because it is stuck in the past and clinging to an outmoded business model.

Hamel freely admits that a church is not the same thing as a business. The true Church, the Body of Christ, is going to survive one way or another. But the local congregations and organizational bodies in which Christians worship and serve are in a dangerous position, because they lack many of the self-correcting mechanisms found in the marketplace.  If a business or corporation underperforms, it will eventually be forced to change by angry shareholders or be taken over by a more dynamic and vibrant company. But a church or ministry that refuses to change can keep chugging along for years, run by leaders who become increasingly out of touch but answer to no one, until the whole enterprise becomes socially irrelevant.

One sign of danger is the stunning disparity between how evangelical Christians are perceived by others and how they perceive themselves. Consider this statement:

Christian churches accept and love people unconditionally, regardless of how people look or what they do.

Nearly 80% of pastors agree with this statement, but only 20% of outsiders (non-church members) agree. That’s a ratio of 4:1, an enormous gulf that shows Christian leaders are  truly out of sync with the people that they are supposedly trying to reach.  We might rationalize this by saying, “If only those people knew us personally, if they could see who we are and what we do, they would like us.” But that is simply not true. Most non-believers in America do know who we are. The data indicate that they know us personally; they have come to our churches, have heard the gospel that we preach, have understood the message, and have rejected us.  As David Kinnamon has said, “…outsiders’ perceptions of Christianity reflect a church infatuated with itself.”

Hamel argues that the greatest enemy of a church is not a hostile cutural environment but the organizational inertia that keeps it from adapting to a changing world.  He predicts that the vast majority of churches in existence today will fail to reinvent themselves when necessary and will eventually wither and die.  Yet pastors, church leaders and members will rarely acknowledge this. We live in denial, unwilling to admit that there is a problem until a crisis comes and it is too late. 

I believe that Hamel’s analysis is spot-on. Change is difficult for any organization, but especially so for a church. In a church environment, we are much more prone to cast issues in terms of moral and spiritual principle (right versus wrong) than in pragmatic terms (what works). Now I am not arguing that Christians should be pragmatic. We follow a crucified Lord who often calls us to lose in this world and to count the loss as eternal gain. But I have seen firsthand how difficult it can be for Christian leaders, virtuous and faithful people whom I admire, to vigorously defend their local traditions and refuse to entertain the possibility that things are not going well.

Hamel says, “Every organization is a bundle of habits.”  If you check in to a hotel room, you will inevitably find that the small bottle of shampoo has been placed by the sink, even though we do not wash our hair in the sink. Why do hotels do this? Just because. That’s how it’s done, and no one seems to question it. As Christians, there are certain timeless truths that we cannot change. But regarding how we “do church,” shouldn’t be willing to examine any of our local practices and change them as much as necessary to better serve God’s kingdom? All too often, we seem to be worshiping our local traditions when we should be worshiping the resurrected and living Christ. It is especially tragic when the attitudes and practices to which we cling are precisely those that offend people and drive them away.

How much should churches and ministries be willing to change? As much as is necessary to serve God’s kingdom. Here I believe it is critical for Christians to differentiate the timeless truths taught in Scripture from the extra baggage added by their own communities and cultures. Hamel does not attempt to do this because, as he freely admits, he  has no pastoral or theological training. Personally, I believe that this is the point on which all of us — pastors, elders, and all members of a church — need to do some serious soul-searching, reflection and repentance.  All too often, Christians have been willing to argue, divide, sacrifice our lives or even kill one another (figuratively or literally) over beliefs and practices which, when viewed from the standpoint of God’s eternal kingdom, are truly not important. As Mark Driscoll has said, we need to wisely and prayerfully distinguish between matters that we are willing to die for, matters that we are willing to part ways over, matters that we are willing to argue about, and matters in which we should just tolerate a diversity of opinion.  Clinging to non-essentials can keep committed church members happy as their organization slowly withers and dies.

In 1 Corinthians 12:12, Paul wrote: “The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body.” A human eyeball and a human pancreas look very different. If you encountered these things separately, could you tell whether or not they came from the same body?  I doubt it. But with a very detailed chemical analysis, you could conclude that they share the same DNA. These two parts, and many, many more, are necessary for one body to function. It makes no sense for an eyeball to criticize a pancreas, telling it to behave more like an eyeball. Yet Christians do this to one another all the time. When we observe differences, our gut reaction is to turn these differences into moral or doctrinal issues and try to determine which way is “correct.” But in a healthy body, the “correct” way is for the eyeball and pancreas to remain as they are, retaining their distinctive functions and appearances, while remaining attached to the same body and working in cooperation.

In an organizational sense, the Church has been fractured many times over. Two obvious examples are the Great Schism between East and West in the 11^th century and the Protestant Reformation of the 16^th century. The issues that led to these schisms were real and substantial, and it would be wrong to trivialize them.  Indeed, given the historical circumstances, these schisms may have been unavoidable. Good has come out of them, as our God always seems to know how to create something good even in the midst of tragedy. But each schism has also produced long-lasting bitter fruit. Churches and denominations have continued to split over differences which look foolish and trivial to those on the outside.  John M. Frame, a theologian and professor at Reformed Theological Seminary, wrote an illuminating article in which he identified twenty-one doctrinal issues that led to controversy and division in the Reformed community over an eighty-year period. He asked: “Was it right to devote so much of the church’s time and effort to these theological battles? Did the disputants follow biblical standards for resolution of these issues?” In most cases, the answer is no.

Given the present realities, it is unrealistic and probably undesirable for churches to seek organizational unity on any grand scale. Doctrinal unity, except on basic core issues of faith, is also problematic and unnecessary. Denominations have well developed confessions, bodies of thought and cultural traditions that deserve to be respected. God has worked through those traditions and they continue to inform and balance one another. It seems to me that no matter what you think of the centuries-old battle between Calvinism and Arminianism – the doctrine of human free will versus divine sovereignty and predestination – it is always going to be important to hear what Christians from other traditions have to say, because we must always keep challenging ourselves and one another in healthy ways. But we do need to be seeking a real, visible unity across traditions that is evident in how we think of, speak of, and act toward one another. A unity based not on doctrinal or cultural conformity but rooted in love and a common recognition of the Spirit of  the living Christ in one another.

In Your Church is Too Small, John points out that Christians who instigate division often see themselves as the ones who are standing up and fighting for Truth with a capital “T.” Of course, the Body needs members who understand the value of Truth. There are plenty of them around. But where are the members who are willing to stand up and fight for Unity with a capital “U”?  (It sounds like an oxymoron: to fight for unity.) Many of us have convinced ourselves that divisions are not such a bad thing. But when Christians divide, it is no laughing matter, and the consequences can be far greater than we realize. Divisions impact churches, families and individuals at a very deep and personal level. Divisions cause real pain, lead to real sin, dishonor Christ’s name and greatly devalue the witness of the whole Church.

In today’s postmodern culture, what is the greatest impediment to faith? It is the universal nature of the claims of Jesus Christ. We teach that Jesus is the Way and the Truth and the Life, and no one comes to God except through him. To young people raised in a pluralistic society, this is already very hard to accept. When a nonbeliever encounters a Christian who makes these universal claims and yet displays prejudicial and critical attitudes toward Christians outside his own narrow denomination or group, what does he think? He sees the contradiction right away.  The message he hears: “Following Jesus just as my particular group does is the universal Way to God.” In this day and age, that message has no credibility whatsoever.

Before going on, I need to clarify what the title of John’s book means. It does not refer to the size of a church as measured by the number of congregants. It refers to one’s conception of what the Church — the Body of Christ — actually is. This book is a call for Christians to give up their sectarian tendencies, to stop looking with suspicion on believers from churches other than their own, to stop saying that “those guys cannot possibly be real Christians because they don’t believe XXX or do YYY,” and to practice Christlike charity in light of Jesus’ prayer for the unity of believers in John 17:20-21:

My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.

I will not try to review John’s book here. It would be difficult for me to do so honestly, because over the last year John has become a personal friend of mine. In my biased opinion, Your Church is Too Small is well written, honest insightful, engaging, challenging, etc.  But even if it were not, I would still urge you to read it because I believe the message of this book is vitally important to the spiritual health of all Christians and Christian churches today. I have read a lot of books over the past year — some great, some pretty good, and some mediocre. In the evangelical world, there seems to be an endless supply of gifted, charismatic leaders/speakers/authors promoting ideas that promise to be the next great trend  that will revitalize churches and ministries. Most of these ideas fizzle out in a very short time.

But John’s book is different. His central thesis is an idea that is truly big, a teaching so important it was expressed in the most ancient creeds:  the doctrine of “one holy, catholic, apostolic church.” For the last millennium and especially the last century, this doctrine has been wantonly neglected, violated and even opposed by vast portions of the Christian world. The opposite of this teaching, sectarianism, has been encoded into the DNA of countless believers, congregations and denominations, to the detriment of the gospel and Christian witness. In a future article, I will try to explain why I believe this message is so vital. For now, I would like to explain a few things about who John is and how he came to write this book.

I have been following John’s writings for several years now, especially his daily blog. There is a handful of Christian blogs that I read regularly.  For example, I follow Scot McKnight’s Jesus Creed, which has interesting articles and plenty of lively discussion. By comparison, John’s blog seems to have an audience that is smaller, quieter, and more diverse.  His articles have encouraged, informed and challenged me at a very deep level. John also writes a weekly article that is longer, more scholarly, and geared toward people who serve in church leadership.

Perhaps the main reason why I am attracted to John’s material is that, although he has strong opinions on all sorts of theological and political issues,  he is also one of the most openminded persons I have ever met. He never stops learning, growing and challenging himself, and his personal spiritual journey is laid bare in his writings. And his spiritual journey is a fascinating one.

John was raised as a conservative Southern Baptist but gradually migrated toward Reformed theology and is now an ordained minister in the Reformed Church. When he transferred to Wheaton College in 1969, he was amazed and shocked by the malaise and spiritual deadness he found on that campus, particularly among the student body. He enlisted several friends to pray for spiritual revival, and the then-president of Wheaton, the late Dr. Hudson Armerding, joined their 24-7 prayer chain. On a snowy Thursday night in February, 1970, God began to answer their prayers. During a sparsely attended evening service at Edman Chapel, the Holy Spirit visited those who were there. Students from all over campus and people from suburban Chicago began to pour into the chapel, confessing their sin and crying out to God in prayer throughout the night. This visitation by the Holy Spirit, which many have characterized as a mini-revival, had a lasting impact on the Wheaton campus and bore lifelong spiritual fruit in the lives of those involved. Dr. Amerding later called the 1970 Wheaton revival the highlight of his presidency and credited John as the student who was instrumental in bringing it about.

John remained in Wheaton, Illinois and pastored a small church there for nearly two decades, but left his pastorate in 1992 to spearhead an organization called Reformation and Revival Ministries. That ministry, which was devoted to equipping church leaders to foster spiritual revival, grew repidly, and soon John was besieged with invitations to speak and write. He worked closely with R.C. Sproul and the late Dr. James Boice to found the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals (ACE) in 1994, and could be described as a rising star in Reformed Christianity.

It was about that time, however, that God began to call John to a different path. In his own words, from Your Church is Too Small, this is what happened:

It was an ordinary Sunday morning worship service. We were reciting the words of the Apostles’ Creed, words I had said hundreds of times before. I knew the words. I believed them. But I had never been particularly moved by them. They were just words recited in a service.

But on this Sunday things unfolded very differently. As I said the words “I believe in the holy catholic church” from the Apostles’ Creed, something stopped me. At that moment, the Holy Spirit spoke to my heart: “Do you really believe these words? If you believe them, then why don’t you act like it?” The conviction was powerful and true. I was so shaken that I had to sit down. I wept. Questions flooded my mind. I knew God had spoken. But I had no idea how it was about to change my life.

John began to doubt that the ACE could effectively bring about the kind of national spiritual renewal that he longed and prayed for because that organization, by its unwavering commitment to Calvinist theology, had excluded the vast majority of Christians in the United States. He began to openly speak to ACE leaders about catholicity and suggested that the organization reach out to Methodists, other Wesleyan churches, Pentecostals and mainline Protestatant denominations. That suggestion was not well received. John resigned from his leadership position in ACE and began to take his own ministry in a new direction. He started to develop deep friendships with Christians from a wide variety of Protestant circles and even from Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions. 

After a few years, Reformation and Revival Ministries was given a new name: ACT3, which stands for Advancing the Christian Tradition in the Third Millennium.  Through ACT3, John has been promoting his vision for missional ecumenism. Unlike the flawed and ineffective ecumenical movements of the mid-20th century, which jettisoned truth and attempted to reduce Christian doctrine to the lowest common denominator, John sought to live and promote relational unity among believers across denominational boundaries.  Instead of glossing over or minimizing doctrinal differences, John engages leaders to openly discuss these differences in non-adversarial ways, so that they can relate to one another from a standpoint of understanding rather than ignorance and caricature. This approach can be seen in two recent books that John has edited, Understanding Four Views on the Lord’s Supper and Understanding Four Views on Baptism. John does not counsel Christians from any tradition to sacrifice any of their deeply held beliefs, distinct theologies or styles of ministry, nor does he envision everybody coming together to form one universal mega-church. He does look forward to a day when believers from different traditions will recognize that diversity in the Body of Christ is the scriptural and historical norm and that membership in the Body is not determined by doctrinal purity but by relationship to the living Christ. And he encourages Christians to put aside fear and suspicion and work together wherever they can to serve the greater cause of God’s kingdom.

When John took his ministry in this new direction, he paid a heavy personal price. Most of his closest friends stood by him, but many donors and supporters of his ministry dropped by the wayside and revenues decreased by more than 50%. He has received a great deal of criticism by Christians who perceive him as having compromised truth. While John is a strong defender of orthodoxy, upholds the tenets of Reformed theology and maintains his good standing as a minister of the Reformed Church, he opposes sectarian tendencies in his own denomination and wherever else he finds them. Some of his fiercest opposition comes from evangelical Protestants who maintain strong anti-Catholic positions and characterize the Roman Catholic Church as preaching a false gospel. This is a price he is willing to pay. Other Christian leaders who have taken similar stands have also paid a price. For example, after Chuck Colson joined Bill Bright and other leaders to signed the Evangelicals and Catholics Together document in the mid-1990’s, revenues to Prison Fellowship dropped by about $2.5 million per year. But it opened new doors for Mr. Colson to minister in Latin America and he has no regrets.

[I couldn't figure out how to embed it, so clicking on the image will open another window.  If your internet connection is not fast, turn off the HD option while viewing.]

I’ve been trying to figure out what’s wrong with the Christian church these days. Some of my friends see  back-biting, infighting, inter-church animosity. Others see a lack of church growth. I suspect they are mostly concerned with the lack of growth in numbers, which I agree is serious.  But that is a sign of the lack of inner growth, which is my main concern. 

Here are some trends that get me riled up.  Why do churches reject glorious old hymns, preferring anything written less than one year ago if it features drums and syncopation? Why are we so quick to jettison 2,000 years of Christian culture and embrace the latest fashions and trends of the world?

Why do Christian publishers rewrite the great old books with less actual thought and content?

Why is so much programming on Christian television and radio so specious, shallow and melodramatic?

Why do we make our services flashy and slick but muzzle the preachers, restricting them to a secondary role, like a quick half-time show?

Why do people not really do the work of the church, but content themselves with talking about it and analyzing it and writing about it ad nauseum? (Perhaps I’m shooting myself in the foot here. But I am also learning that this problem we see from various angles is nothing new. It has a diagnosis. Bear with me.)

In short, “Where’s the beef?” What we have is a deluge of milk. Even in my own church—which I regard with special fondness for its depth of Bible study—many sermons are written not to provide rich nourishment for hungry souls, but seemingly to entertain them, to make them laugh.

I think this is simply a lack of maturity. We are remaining as children. Here is what Martyn Lloyd-Jones writes in The Basis of Christian Unity. He is discussing Ephesians 4 regarding what leads to spiritual maturity (and thus to unity) within the church. He comes to Paul’s words in verses 14-15:

Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him that is the Head, that is, Christ.

Here is what Lloyd-Jones writes:

The apostle says that we must “be no more children.” It is interesting to notice what he says about children. What are their characteristics? They are unstable, fickle, ignorant. They like novelty, dislike work, but like play. They dislike being made to think and to reason; they like entertainment and excitement. Children, unfortunately, are very susceptible to showmanship and to that which is plausible and meretricious. These are their obvious characteristics. But, above all, they are liable to be deceived by that which is false.

When I look at young (and some older) Christians, many of them are about showmanship, not content. They want to play more than work. They want to rock and roll, not worship or lead others to worship. Reasoning and study are as foreign to them as hard labor. In short, the church as a whole seems to be getting younger, not maturing. And why shouldn’t this be so?  It is their expressed goal to draw the young and focus on the young, to supplant the old with the new. They jettison anything that smacks of maturity. It reminds me of the angry mobs who devastated old churches during the Reformation, smashing anything that was carved or decorative, just because it was the trend.

Youth has almost become an idol. We kneel before the young people as “the next generation” and are even willing, it seems, to compromise the gospel itself to draw and hold the attention of the young. Instead of promoting maturity, we dumb down our worship and sermons to the point of providing only what infant Christians can accept.

Although serving our youth is a noble goal, such over-emphasis—giving young people exactly what they desire—is a common parental mistake which promotes selfishness and narcissism. It may cause the mature to regress or seek another church.

I’m not saying that “old wine is better” just because it’s old. In the Christian life, we need a healthy respect for both the old and the new. We need both milk and meat. Or do we want to remain as children? Peter says that pure spiritual milk helps us grow up in our salvation [1Peter 2:2]. But Jesus didn’t just serve milk. He offered his flesh and his blood, the bread and wine which symbolize our sanctification, worship and spiritual sustenance [Jn 6]. And Paul made it clear that we need to introduce solid food into our spiritual diets. He wrote in 1 Corinthians 3:1-4:

Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly—mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men?

That was the situation in first-century Corinth. And it also seems to describe us today.  We are worldly, not mature. We want to enjoy, to play, to compete with the next guy (or gal) or the next church. We collect toys and spend our days in fantasies rather than in mature work. As someone once told me, “The church is so worldly and the world is so churchy that you can’t tell the difference anymore.”

Growing up, like being born, is never easy or painless. For the mother, it is sheer agony. And some babies (especially boys) almost resist being born. They want to stay someplace cozy and warm. After being born, some resist being weaned from milk to solid food (again, we noticed this in our boys).

Like the boys in Peter Pan, we resist the discipline and self-denial of growing up. It seems that our whole Christian culture is stuck in Neverland.

What is the solution?  Just grow up. This answer is not likely to be popular. But it’s what Peter and Paul both said.  The job of parents is to ensure that this happens. Spiritually, we are all children of God, if indeed we have been born again. That means we have to grow up.

Preachers, teachers, Christian leaders and parents: Let’s stop pretending that to remain as children is okay. Jesus didn’t denounce Pharisees as “old wineskins” because they were mature. He did so because they thought they were spiritual when they were not.

Let us, therefore, forget what is behind and press on toward the goal: that we may become like Christ, and that we may finish the race, win the prize, and win our world for His kingdom. This isn’t a matter of more education or sophistry. One doesn’t become strong by reading muscle magazines, but by hitting the gym, exercising, sometimes getting really sore or even injured. We can’t win a race by analyzing it from the sidelines, but by long hours of training and sweating and not giving up.

Spiritual maturity doesn’t come to Huck Finns who live for themselves and the next adventure. It comes to those who deny themselves, take up the cross and follow Jesus.