Tyler Johnson, MDiv
Tyler is an engineer, teacher, and former pastor. He loves to explore truth through God’s word and God’s works. He lives in Kansas with his wife and four children and spends what little free-time he has practicing tae kwon do and pondering the mysteries of light.
If I were to characterize the motivations of the modern American church I’m afraid that my list of words would not be very positive. Greed would be one, but it would relegated to a small segment of pastors and leaders who are getting rich off their congregations. Power would cover a larger swath of churches, especially those who align themselves with political parties and entities (an area of society that is inherently power-driven). But I think the most common motivational impulse of the modern church, one that applies to the vast majority of churches out there, is fear.
Fear pervades our society and it is alive in our churches as well. Walk into any church in the country and there is a good chance that you’ll hear fearful rhetoric being spewed from the pulpit or fear motivating most of the financial and “missional” decisions the leadership is making. Sometimes you’ll find fearful and hateful speech focused on the “others”, i.e. those unlike the members of that congregation. But far more often it is a much subtler form of fear that exists within a church community, a underlying anxiety that things are going in the wrong direction. And this is a problem. Because as John writes, “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” (1 John 4:18). In other words, fear is the great enemy of love. A community that is seeking to spread love to the world has no space for fear in it.
And yet, as many Ex-vangelicals, Dones, and de-churched people know all too well, the American church is often characterized more by fear, than by love.
There are many facets to this phenomenon. Obviously the pervasiveness of fear has been growing in American society for some time, and it has leeched into the church. But I think there is a more direct line of action that can be discerned for why the church finds itself where it does today. A line that goes back to at least the post-WWII era.
The United States was in an aberrant place after WWII. We had defeated the Nazis in a military and moral victory. If there was ever cause for a Just War, WWII would be the modern paradigmatic example. (Just ignore our retributive use of the atomic bombs on hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese people, and other more local atrocities that we committed in the name of peace and security.) After the war, the church in America thrived and the Leave it to Beaver American family became the ideal. This newfound interest in religion was noticed by the church and no doubt was seen as an act of God, something of a new revival. From it the church developed a vision of cultural influence that it never had before the war. The high didn’t last however. The ‘60’s disrupted society in a variety of ways, and by-and-large the church didn’t like the new changes. It had gotten used to the influence it had gained and sought to keep it. It dug in its heels.
In the ‘70s the church experienced a new wave of influence through the growth movement. Core to this movement was the “homogeneous unit principle” which basically encouraged upper-middle class churches to appeal to upper-middle class people, exclusively. I don’t think it would be too hard to demonstrate that the mega-church phenomenon is largely a socioeconomic phenomenon affecting affluent communities far more than poorer communities. But it became the model for how all churches could grow and “expand the Kingdom of God”. The church growth movement had a profound effect on the American church, especially the Evangelical wing of the church, for decades.
In the ‘90s the American church was thriving and it was spreading. Since the late 1980s concerted efforts had been in place to create a Christian subculture in America, with the goal of gaining influence and power both in the market and in politics. In the ‘90s this dream began to be realized. Whole new markets emerged in Christian music, radio, books, WWJD bracelets, purity rings, and more. It looked like the Christian church was gaining ground in the culture wars.
But then, for complicated reasons that likely include the Gen-Xers and Millennials coming of age, the advent of the internet, and the increase in globalized politics, in the early 2000s the church began to lose people and influence. The pace of loss quickened around 2010 when the smart phone entered the cultural milieu. Scandals in society and the church (#MeToo, #ChurchToo, etc.) further degraded the public’s view of authorities and institutions and in 2020 Covid and the murder of George Floyd (and many other Black men and women at the hands of police) divided the world, America, and the church. It is no surprise then that in March of 2021 a Gallup poll showed that U.S. Church membership fell below 50% for the first time ever. The trend has continued. A recent Gallup poll showed that only about 30% of Americans actively attend church.
So what does this history have to do with fear? It all come down to a principle that I learned, ironically in a church leadership program, that people don’t fear change, they fear loss.
The past two decades in the church have been marked by a increasing loss of people and cultural influence. Much of the “progress” that the church made from the post-WWII years through the ‘90s was lost in the 2000s. And people - including church people, including church leaders, including denominational leaders - don’t fear change, they fear loss. They fear losing influence. They fear losing people. They fear losing a church that is familiar and comfortable to them.
The responses to these losses are usually pretty ugly. Some twist and distort the Bible into a tool used for their own power-hungry aspirations. Some manipulate the words of Jesus into promises of prosperity and ease. Some fear losing cultural relevance and so they take on social causes and use segments of the Bible to sanctify their efforts. And others simply hide, so afraid of the world that put great effort into shielding themselves and their children from anything “out there.” I struggle to see anything but fear lying behind any of these responses.
The good news here though is that the church was never meant to be a culture-leading, culture-shaping entity. That requires walking the path of power and power corrupts, always. The most horrendous actions the church has taken over the centuries have been a result of the church trying to shape the world in its own image, which was really just an image of the world mirrored back. While it should have been divesting itself of power and influence, sacrificially loving others, and seeking to more fully bear the image of Christ to the world.
If the church has lost people and influence over the last couple of decades who’s to say that this is an unambiguously bad thing? It may be a movement of the Holy Spirit because the church was on a trajectory to do more harm than good. It may be a prophetic message that the church has fell into worshiping an idol, or several idols. It may be a strategic move by God to create space for new, more faithful expressions of the church to arise, from people less shaped by the fears and losses that inhabit the existing church.
Regardless of the reasons for the dynamics of the recent past, I do know that allowing these losses, and fears of future losses, shape the actions and decisions of the church is inherently wrong. For the church is called to love. And there is no fear in love.
My advice to the church.
Stop living for yourself. Stop concerning yourself solely with your own survival. The early church was known for entering plague ridden areas to care for the sick and dying. They did this to great risk to their own safety.
Church leaders: Stop worrying about your legacy and making sure the church continues to operate in the ways you are comfortable with. “Take up your cross and die.”
Stop claiming to be inspired by the Holy Spirit and then buying into the same fearful ways of living and acting that characterize the world around us. Consider where Jesus found the most faithful people, not among the religious leaders, but among those they most feared being contaminated by.
Stop grasping for control. Stop sanctifying that grasping with Holy Spirit talk. The coming of the Holy Spirit was a huge disruption in the motives and thinking of the early apostles.
Start trusting that God can and will work in new ways through younger generations for the sake of His glory, and that the future of the church does not depend on you.
Start looking for ways that the Holy Spirit is active outside the church and outside the Christian bubble. Again, this is where Jesus found the greatest expressions of faith.
Start loving your neighbors, not because you fear for their soul, but simply because they are made in God’s image and worthy to be loved, and because this world has a way of beating people down and dehumanizing them, making them feel unworthy of the very love they were created to enjoy. Help them experience some of that love.
Start finding truth, beauty, and goodness outside the church. They’re everywhere. God’s fingerprints pervade our world.
This is the work Jesus was doing with the religious leaders of his day, and through the Holy Spirit he’s still doing it now. This is the work that the church of Jesus ought to be doing as well.