The one who has an ear had better hear what the Spirit says to the churches.
—Revelation 3:13
The Church is triumphant, ultimately. Christ returns and redeems His bride. However, looking around the world, we can clearly see that the Church, especially the Evangelical Church, has many failures that Christ will need to fix. Consider how many of the mega-churched do not know the Nicene or Apostle’s creed. Huge swaths of new converts are never properly placed within the history of their own movement, easily led astray by new and false gospels (2 Timothy 4:3-4). Or consider how ancient heresies like Arianism, Pelagianism, and Gnosticism, all of which I have personally had to counsel believers away from who have been a part of the Church for over a decade, have suddenly found new life.
For another example of the shallowness of modern Evangelistic Christianity, consider the absolute decay of community. Not only are most people who visit a mega-church not a part of a ‘small group,’ but those who are often have no idea of anything significant in anyone’s life. Topics of conversation focus solely on emotional responses to the latest sermon, keeping the focus on Sunday rather than the rest of the week. Furthermore, this lack of vulnerability prevents Christians from accessing the fullness of the Church, such as James’ promise that if we confess sins to one another, we will be healed (James 5:16). Catholics, flawed though their theology is, at least continue this practice of confession. Yet to even ask another to hear a confession of sin in many of these small groups is to turn away another who finds the sudden vulnerability awkward or off-putting. It is not unlike the situation where someone asks, in passing, “how’s the day” at work. An actual, emotional answer is not expected. This is not true community – as the focus of these small groups should be. Rather, they have become an advertising point, feigning true community while shunting the responsibility of the pastoral staff to untrained, unvetted laypeople. Should one of these laypeople try to confront an issue (shall we say, sexual immorality), there is no true community grounding the sinner at the church and so they will simply uproot, find a new church, and pretend nothing is amiss. Church discipline has been abandoned, completely. The church has become corporatized – numbers trump everything else, from baptisms, to giving, and more.
Just like a corporation, the Evangelical Church has become consumed with marketing. Sermons are clipped and shared on social media, every pastor seems to have a podcast, and in the effort to reach any lost soul in the pews, teaching becomes milk only (1 Corinthians 3:2). Faithful believers will spend years under a pastor and grow no more in their faith than the first day of their conversion. The rich theology of the Church has been lost, cast aside for quick and easy three-point take-aways to apply any given week. Thus, the Evangelical Church is filled with the spiritually immature who know how to do nothing but sit, listen, and leave. The few who do, somehow, mature, are used as ballasts to keep the church afloat while they are ran ragged.
While the Bible certainly tracks the numbers of conversions (Acts 2:41), more important is the way those converts are discipled, which then naturally leads to more conversions (Acts 2:42-47). Consider how recent research shows that the most important age for determining if someone will be religious is before the age of thirteen (https://ifstudies.org/blog/secularization-begins-at-home). And yet, children are sent to an even further watered-down version of church where videos, games, and fun take precedence over Truth. If the Evangelical Church was truly serious about conversions, ‘Kid’s Church’ would be where the majority of the focus was, not ‘Big Church,’ as if such a divide has ever existed previously in all of Christendom.
So concerned with being ‘relevant,’ churches have replaced the Cross with whatever is popular, from ‘Night at the Movies’ sermon series, with pastors dressed up like cartoon characters, to sound and light shows that make rock concerts look tame. This trains pastors and parishioners both to seek conformity and approval from the world, explaining their cowardice (Matthew 6:24-26). Again, why? Because for years, leaders from Keller to Piper have been so focused on ‘winning the city’ that they have forgotten the backwaters and the back-alleys. The goal of apologetics won out over spiritual warfare. The Evangelical Church was catechized by the business culture of the 90’s and, truly, it has never recovered. Not every pastor is Billy Graham, not every church needs to seat thousands. This focus on winning souls over any other concern, possibly impacted by the popularity of ‘Rapture’ theology, hollowed out the Church like a shantytown, ready for a conflagration. Now, rot has taken over. Today, Christians support everything from child mutilation to child sacrifice, all in the name of love, and those who are grounded enough to know such support is evil, would rather argue with their fellow grounded believe over secondary and tertiary doctrine than stand up to false doctrine.
A brief example: a town close by recently had a pagan festival with witches and ‘un-baptisms.’ Leading up to the event, various denominations, including Catholics, sought to unite in prayer. One parish, a non-denominational church a friend of mine was attending, refused to partake due to the Catholics being present, citing theological concerns. And yet, shortly after, that same church suffered a split when the pastor’s daughter was so aggressively anti-God on social media that parishioners began to question his qualifications. Elders then ejected said parishioners in a town-hall akin to an inquisition. Out of ‘love,’ any and all attempts to work with prayerful Catholics was denied, lest they were accidentally blessed by their theological betters, but attempts to hold to Scripture over female modesty and blasphemy were chased out of the church. Why? Because it is easier to blind yourself with hypocrisy than face the truth of the matter.
The Evangelical Church has failed. It has no relevance in a world that is uninterested in giving it a seat at the table it fought so hard to set. Rather than keeping out heresies or demons, it sought to break bread with the culture around it, believing that its influence was sure to wane and seeking to leverage its current relevance for later honor (Luke 16:1-13). However, we are called to not align with the enemy (2 Corinthians 6:14-16). These unholy allegiances have only led to the cross of Christ being torn down and replaced with Asherah poles, seen throughout Protestant churches with drag queens leading liturgy, homosexuals serving as clergy, and those actively living in sin being embraced in the church community. An alternative must be sought. Large, city-based churches are not unholy. Afterall, the Church itself is the New Jerusalem (Revelation 21). Rather, we have failed in the proper stewardship of this idea, making the Church like the city instead of the city like the Church. Let us, then, return to the basics of the faith: the proclamation of sin, the need for a savior, and Christ’s Kingdom come (Mark 1:14). Evangelicalism may be dead; evangelism cannot die.
But I have this against you: You have departed from your first love!
– Revelation 2:4
A special thank you to my dear friend George who filtered through my testimony and wrote this in order to prevent me from sinning.