If you ever want to see me get passionate quickly, put me in the room with a bunch of people who are considering leaving the church – and I mean passionately defensive of them. But if you ever want to see me lose all remnants of decorum, add in people who will defend the church at all costs.

(Listen to “The Gospel For Those Broken By The Church” for FREE.)

The last couple days have been interesting. I’ve had a Wall Street Journal article forwarded to me by several people, and by itself it inclined me to post something about it here on our blog. But now I’ve run across some other discussions on the web and on Facebook which happen to be making the rounds at the same time.

What is it about a building – a structure of wood, metal, glass and stone… or worse, wood, drywall, a stage, and a heads-up display or projector and serious sound system – which makes it a church?

The title of the WSJ article I read is entitled, “The Perils of ‘Wannabe Cool’ Christianity” – or better, to use the name of the page on the WSJ website, “The Perils of Hipster Christianity and Why Young Evangelicals Reject Churches That Try To Be Cool”. The writer briefly considers why so many young people are walking away from church entirely.

Mr. McCracken, who describes himself as a 27-year-old evangelical, quickly identifies the problem:

Recent statistics have shown an increasing exodus of young people from churches, especially after they leave home and live on their own. In a 2007 study, Lifeway Research determined that 70% of young Protestant adults between 18-22 stop attending church regularly.

I won’t cover how some churches are trying to solve this problem. I invite you to read the entire article yourself. Instead, I’d like to jump right to the take-away lines offered by Mr. McCracken in his summation:

As a twentysomething, I can say with confidence that when it comes to church, we don’t want cool as much as we want real.

If we are interested in Christianity in any sort of serious way, it is not because it’s easy or trendy or popular. It’s because Jesus himself is appealing, and what he says rings true. It’s because the world we inhabit is utterly phony, ephemeral, narcissistic, image-obsessed and sex-drenched—and we want an alternative. It’s not because we want more of the same.

What have we here at NRP been saying?

(Listen to “The Gospel For Those Broken By The Church” for FREE.)

Then, to add insult to injury, I find this line making its way around Facebook: “Going to Church Doesn’t Make You Any More a Christian Than Going to the Garage Makes You a Car”

I’m going to come at this from the other side now. Let me ask you something. (And this is mostly aimed at my fellow Lutherans.) When was the last time you visited other churches, particularly ones not in your own denomination, and especially ones which could be considered ‘mega’ or at least on the cutting edge of ‘contemporary’?

I and some friends have done this. We visited some of the most well known contemporary churches available here in southern California. We called it our Megachurch Whirlwind Tour. (I think Pat has mentioned this before in one of our podcasts.) I won’t name names, but a couple of them are well-known even outside the U.S. We did it so we could know first hand what people were hearing on any given Sunday. Heck, we even got my father to tag along for one of these. You can only imagine how much it stands out when Dr. Rosenbladt sits in a contemporary church of a relatively smaller size. I can’t tell you how many people were craning their necks to figure out who this visitor was. (His age was not part of their targeted demographic. He was a 60-something guy in a sea of 20-somethings.)

The reason I say this is that I’ve seen some discussion detailing why going to church makes a Christian. (Baptism, assembly of the congregation and at the Lord’s Table for His Supper.) This is, of course, true. But too often, those who are analyzing the people leaving the church too often assume that other churches have the same Christ-centered content as theirs. This is too often not at all accurate.

Having visited the shining examples of today’s contemporary churches, as well as a couple of their offshoots, I can tell you the one thing that matters: Christ is not being preached there. His Gospel is entirely absent.

(Listen to “The Gospel For Those Broken By The Church” for FREE.)

So, to return to the discussion spawned from Facebook, what makes a church Christian? If no Christ is preached, if there is no preaching of a dead-and-risen Jew on a particular Sunday outside of Jerusalem for MY sins, just what is it about that church which makes it Christian? For that matter, why do we call it a church instead of a theater or stadium or lecture hall or club? If Christ is absent, and all we’re really doing is repackaging “how great I am” one more time so that I can encourage myself to please some generic ‘god’, why even attend? I can get that on the radio. As a matter of fact, I’d argue that you can get much better from the likes of Zig Ziglar and Tony Robbins! If I want self-help, I’ll go to that section of the bookstore, thank you very much. And we haven’t even gotten to the churches which have fallen into the traps of the ancient heresies.

Why do you think when I’m considering attending a church after relocating from one home to another that I quickly corner the pastor and assault him with, “What do you confess here?” And I say it in a way that makes them come up with a real answer, like right now. If you go all “car-salesman-y” on me, avoid answering my question and start talking about your great church programs and all the wonderful things you make available for children, etc., I’m out of here. The answer to my question is simple and quick. It’s a no-brainer for a Christian church. (And it must be backed up by Gospel-focused preaching from the pulpit. It’s small consolation if you’re liturgical yet spend half an hour not preaching about Christ and His atoning sacrifice for me.) I don’t have the time for more worldly Christless garbage. I need my faith fed.

Can’t deliver? Buh-bye! (Imagine a screeching of car tires out of the parking lot!)

It takes a special level of misguidedness to condemn people for leaving a church which (following the statistics) is not likely to even be Christian, and particularly if you haven’t even taken the time to hear their story about why they’re leaving. (Just listen to the stories of those heading out the door and you’ll quickly find out.)

So, here are the questions with which I leave you. Have you found out just what it is someone is leaving when they decide to leave a “church”? Did you ever consider that, too often, in leaving the “church” he or she was attending, someone may have just taken an initial step TOWARDS Christianity? Was there anything said in the church they just left which couldn’t be said in a Mormon stake?

And finally, for the many who are struggling in their church and faith… if you find that all this subject matter pokes right at the heart of the struggles you’ve been having in your church, regardless of which denomination you’re in, and no one else is addressing it, please listen to Dr. Rosenbladt’s “The Gospel For Those Broken By The Church”. He wrote it just for you. It’s now FREE.

Listen to it. Now!

(Listen to “The Gospel For Those Broken By The Church” for FREE.)

By Ted R