Is Christianity Collapsing? — http://thegodjourney.com/wordpress/2009/03/27/is-christianity-collapsing/

It's now time to think outside the box of what we've always known. I myself will tend my sheep and have them lie down, declares the sovereign lord. I think that's a profound turning point in somebody's relationship with God. And our hope in starting this was that this would become an ever-expanding conversation. Just two real guys talking about life, that's a nice tagline. I'm Wayne Jacobson, and I'm Brad Cummings. And welcome to another edition of The God Journey. The God Journey. Happy birthday, Wayne. It's too late. It's already past. Yeah, I know, but we're just a week, you know, who knows when people listen to this. This way you get cars coming all year. I don't, I am overwhelmed by the expressions of my birthday was public this year for reasons of the internet that I will not say because then more people will just cram onto that. I'm trying to save myself the hassle, but I got lots of greetings from all over the world. I feel well-birthday. That's awesome. I've made it to 56. I figure I'm about halfway done, so. Halfway done. Yeah, so I'm thinking. Are you going to go for 110? Still trying to get to the front of that line, you know, to get on that space mountain ride, but still going to take me a little more to get there, I'm afraid. So, do you have a good weekend? I had a decent weekend, a bunch of stuff to do, but had a blast. Good. Funny thing, my kid's writing a report about some, he's got to do some biography for, you know, sixth grade, and he's, in it, he had to quote another book, and the book is to Helen back, and so he wrote in his essay to heck and back, and Kelly's proofreader like, well, Jonathan, you probably need to refer to the actual book correctly and says, well, mom, you only put hell in my report, and he looked at it real seriously. If I do this, are you going to back me up? I just thought that was so fun. It's like, here's my kid going, no, I can't write that. Yeah, that brings me back to really, I remember being in the first grade and going through my teacher to say, you know, because we had been to some farm and helped milk some cow, and I was doing those little, you know, you draw a picture and you write a little story underneath it, and I didn't know what to call that little thing you pull on the cow. So, I wanted to just say, what do you call that thing? She said, a teat. And I went, oh God, I can't, I'm a first grader, I can't write that. But I would drew the picture, it's all, it was horrible, I still have memories of this moment. I just, I love the fact that my kid was having a little quandary over it, where you just go like, you know, when all the other kids out there are, you know, f'ing this, f', you know, freaking that, and all that other stuff, you just go like, I love the fact that my kid was like, no, somehow. He will change the title of a book. Yeah, somehow, that's not right. Oh boy, this is a good deal. Pardon this brief intrusion, if you would, after Brad and I recorded the podcast today, we got a request from a university that's doing some research on The Shack and asked if we could tap some of our audiences to fill in a reader survey about The Shack and how it impacted their lives. They're doing a broad-based survey nationwide to talk about how this book has touched your life, how it's influencing the culture. So if you don't mind, go to the blog at thegodjourney.com, and there'll be a link there. You can punch on it and go take the survey. Add your thoughts to the rest of them now. Back to the podcast. Well, we've got Christians all over the news. My gosh, Newsweek Magazine, Time Magazine, we've got plenty of stuff to talk about there, maybe. Christians all over the news? No way. Not positive. I'll tell you. It's not good. You know, the God is Dead movement that was back in the 70s, and that was kind of... Is it back? It is dead in their way of viewing it. We may get to some of that, but I want to read this letter from Kelly first. Kelly's from Maine. Kelly said, first, the insight Robert gave from Romans 5. I remember that about not getting the head to the heart, but letting the heart overwhelm the head. And she said, nothing less than transforming. Thank you, Robert. Thank you, Father. And thank you, Wayne, for sharing this insight. As soon as I heard it the first time, all sorts of lights went on. And it was as though I felt an old, rusty, heavy door, which had been smunched down on my heart, began to be pried open, and something living began to work its way into my mind. Oh, that's fantastic. Isn't that lovely? More than once, I prayed that the love which has been copiously diffused in my heart by him would overwhelm my malinformed, twisted mind. Now that is good news. She said, second, when you brought up the conversation Romans 11-12 from the message, make sure you stay alert to these qualities of gentleness and kindness and ruthless severity that exist side by side in God. She said, the phrase from Sanctonians 5.14 kept repeating over and over in my heart as I listened to the rest of the podcast, the love of God constrains us. I looked it up after the podcast. Guess what? The word constrains can be translated to hold together lest it fall to pieces. I would a picture of you two shared, his love holding us together lest we be undone, lest we fall to pieces, as he brings light, his ruthless severity to our lives. This is even greater good news. Good stuff. That is, that's fantastic. She goes on. She talks about why this podcast meant so much to me. She's been so afraid all of her life because of things in her childhood, of never, of being homeless, of not having money for food, of just being density. All security stuff. And they're, they're retirement age now. So they watched their retirement funds be cut in half by the current economic thing. And she said, my nightmare is right here again, but she said this whole new encounter with God's love has set her heart at rest even in the whole economic thing going on. So pretty cool. Yeah. You know, I think one possible benefit of everything that's getting shaken right now is that you do, you're, you are left with where does my security lie? And I think they're all false unless they're found in him. And that could be a nice trite little phrase, but I think it's absolutely true. And I don't think that's where most people draw their security. They don't draw it from the fact that, you know what? I am loved. I am part of his cherished body. Yeah. And if we rested in that, I think we would face life completely different. Yeah. We had a friend out here, Kent is on the God's journey for him quite a bit. He was out here with a friend for a weekend. One of the things he said, I thought was interesting. I don't know where he got it. And we didn't pursue in a conversation, but he says, money is what the world gives you to participate in its system. Huh. And that's kind of been ringing around in my head like, wow, you know, we look at money as something real that God needs for the world to go around or whatever. But it's the tokens the world gives you to make it play its game. And we've talked about this economic crisis going, boy, if the duct tape isn't off the whole fallacy of the economic illusion building, the haves ripping off the have-nots, I mean, it's all off now. You can see exactly what it is. And money is the way it gets us to play its game. I'm thinking, you know what I'm going to do with that money? I'm going to give it all away and I'm just going to sit in my house and see what God does. In the summer, Kelly and I had, I had, I left a nice, wonderful job that was secure. It was upwardly mobile at AT&T and I left it and we went on the mission field for the summer. That summer, we actually didn't have any dollars, any money in our possession for, I think it was almost like 10 weeks. We didn't, we didn't touch it. We didn't need to. We didn't have to. And life was fine. Things that we had done were taken care of. And it was a bizarre deal to all of a sudden step back into the regular throes of everything else going like, gosh, I didn't miss this. Yeah. I really did. It was, it was a mind bending kind of comparison of, it felt free to not be bothered by it. Yeah. Anyway, Kelly underlie it this way, however, thanks to the relentless pursuit of my loving father who has found me again, who loves me too much to let the darkness remain. I am now aware of love himself holding me that I might face instead of run, that I might allow his fire to consume that beast, which has ruled and manipulated and crippled me way too long. Oh, that's awesome. Your podcast put into words when I knew him, he was whispering to me for several weeks. Yahoo! Thanks for fleshing out his love for me. That's all good. Now we've got some stuff on the thoughts on structure pie. This is fun. It's from a former pastor. I think people will find this interesting. According to stats that we were sent this week from the Fuller Institute, George Barnett and Pastoral Care Inc. Thank you, Amy, for sending these along to us. They're saying over 4,000 churches closed in America last year. Over 1,700 pastors voluntarily left the ministry every month last year. And 1,300 more pastors were terminated by their local churches every month last year. 3,500 people a day left their church last year. 3,500 people a day. Thanks a lot of folks to find hanging out on the God Journey if they're all there. Somebody asked you today how are our stats doing. You know what? We had our host provider moved our website to a different server, didn't migrate the stats. Oh no! They've lost everything. We're flying blind. So we can't count them. Just like David couldn't, you know, let's not count them. That's probably fine. It's probably okay. So we don't have a clue right now how many people are listening, but we do get enough feedback to say there's plenty. This from a former pastor though. This is an interesting letter. He said, listen you Brad talked about the gap between folks inside the four walls and those living outside the physical walls brought me some latent regret. As a former professional pastor I see how in my heart I once functioned in this caste system. Unfortunately, because of my position I was privy to who tied and who didn't. And as I look back I must sadly admit I developed an elitist heart embracing those on the team, wearing the uniform, paying the club fees which provided me a paycheck, faithfully coming to team practices and sending all the games, yet secretly I despised those who thought they were on the team but hadn't bought the uniform. My prejudiced heart, my members only heart kept so many fellow believers at arm's length. I'm not so sure I was being Jesus to them. What friendships and memories never happened all because I kept the wonderful people sitting on the bench of my heart. I've been in a process of repenting now for a while. Freedom from the walls is wonderful yet very much a process. I'm not sure folks can read or even see the pardon our progress. I'm not a sign hanging over my life but Jesus is gracefully reorning my thinking and renewing my love for people, people outside and inside the walls. People inside the walls, outside the walls wearing uniforms or two uncoordinated even try out for the team. The process is slow at times but Jesus is in a hurry. Thanks for the dialogue. Thanks for the podcast. Thanks for the friendship. Wow. I was just with Mark out in Georgia. So shout out to you Mark, you had a great time. We walked down this, he's got to walk down the gap with 620 stairs to the bottom of the gorge. That's wild. That's a profound recognition of something that I think, I don't think a lot of people recognize just how intertwined our present establishment of the institution really is with the same economy of money. Yeah, and I think before we bash pastors too hard here, I do think most people live our lives exactly this way. Not necessarily a team uniform and all that stuff but people who benefit my life I make time for. And people who don't, who maybe I need to give them a hand up or a leg up or whatever. I don't have time for that. It's just not my responsibility. Someone else got to cover that. It really is part of that self-dominated way of living that love wins us out of. The love of God just allows us to do whatever he asks us to do with whomever he asks us to do it and we're not all that concerned with what can you add to my life. That's not the deal. The deal is can I help you? Can I give you a leg up? I met with a woman yesterday who had her 28-year-old son hit and killed by a train not quite a year ago out in this area. She's from back east. She came out. She wants to write a book about her son and we talked about it. I'm not sure where that's going with her. What was touching though was here was a mom and her son, an article she wrote about her son. At the age of 18, he's in a president's office at a major university on the east coast over art that he has done and this president has taken her son 18 years of age up into his private rooms to show some artwork that he had they thought his son would enjoy. He had scholarships to the finest universities and then he went down this track that they don't really have an understanding about. It involves some addictions. It involves some really bad choices. He ended up homeless out here in California and they hadn't been in touch with him much before they get information that he had been killed by this train. Police don't think it was suicide. I just think it was an accident. He walked on across the tracks and didn't see the AM track train coming. I'm sitting there with her and she was glad it was ruled an accident because the guilt was overwhelming and I say would it have been more guilt if there were a suicide? She looked up at me with these hollow eyes and I said right there that's what religion has done to destroy us. We've turned parenting into a competition sport. It's not about loving my child and maybe my child does make some bad choices and those parents need even more love. If you've got to deal with that, whether it's suicide, whether it was an accident, the whole guilt of if my child isn't living the way I should, it's my fault. And we had a bit of a conversation about that. Part of the lie behind that is there is the perfect parent out there and you weren't it. I was not the perfect parent. I'm grateful my kids are in seemingly wonderful places at the moment, but I don't feel like I did something better for my kids that that mom didn't do for hers. I just don't, I mean kids become adults, they make choices and I get a lot of email right now, a lot of conversation with people with those prodigal kids who are out there in the pig pen and they're desperate hope and prayer always that he would come back, that God would write to this ship, that this kid would be okay, that he would come back to his senses at some point and now he dies before that happens. So there's an anger at God that she's not quite dealing with, there's a sense of loss with her son, a sense of personal guilt about not raising him right. And my heart just goes out to people like that. We've done all the wrong things with religion. Instead of being with God rescuing people from that kind of pain, we actually in some circles want people to feel that kind of pain. Yep, you could have done better. And this let this be an encouragement to you other parents who aren't doing all you should be doing for your kids. And your kids can even, that's just crap talk. It really is horribly painful and just watch this life whom I'm only gonna run across for an hour. She's here for an hour and gone back east and hope that God would get some greater grace into that life because that's the message. Well, you know, I think so often times and we're perhaps well-meaning, I think we're trying to do the work of the Holy Spirit for him. And it doesn't mean that I don't love people and I'm not engaged with them, but I don't have to stand before the judgment seat of Christ and answer for anybody other than me. And there's a freedom in that if you can really love people without that agenda. Like, you know, do parents, do they want their kids to be a success so they feel affirmed? Part of it. Is that what's driving that? Absolutely. Cause if you can just love folks and just go, you know what, they're gonna do what they do until they recognize that doesn't work well. That doesn't turn out well. If they don't know that, trying to constrain and just, you know, control that isn't freedom. And it isn't a transformed heart. And you can't badger someone into a lifestyle change. You can't. No. But we can, and here's the deal. How do we love people that on the marginal edges of society? What I loved about her little article that she shared with me is we have a view of the homeless that you forget there's somebody's son, there's somebody's daughter, their life's gone off track. And you know, the old school evangelical philosophy I was raised in, well, they, and you hear from conservatives a lot, they get what they deserve. They should have made better choice. Where's the rescue in that? Where's the, I'm gonna go find you in your brokenness and help you find a way home to father. There isn't. Yeah, none at all. That's sad. Back to the finding community podcast. Jeff wrote this. I like it. Thanks again, Brad, and wait for this one. We had the same response to Dave Wilkerson's prophecy. Really, if we're living love, you can't be moved by these things, can we? Funny, I've got some stuff on that. I'll share with you after the podcast because I can't talk about it here. But anyway, we wonder what the purpose of such pronouncement is. Is it to scare all of us into being good? When go, is it to scare all of us into being good? Come on. When God is no longer scary, as you say, you just don't care about such talk. That's a wonderful statement. That's a big wow. When God's still the scary guy in judgment, if it is coming and let it come, my goodness, let God set things right. And if we go through a bigger economic turmoil, if our lives would just get back to the really important things, that's all that means. That means maybe my 42 inch plasma def gets, high def gets nothing on it because there's nothing to broadcast on it. And is my life ruined because of that? Not a bit. Not a bit and probably be even better. Anyway, he wrote this. We wonder if perhaps John should have written this. In the beginning was the church and the church was with God and the church was God. That's funny, but I do find that revolting. He says, we go into church because it was there before we were, it was always there. We did not dare to question it as it shaped and molded us to fit into it and maintain itself through us. We could do nothing without it. What joy there is in being free of it, yet being part of the body of Christ is more real than ever. This is what people don't get because when we talk about church as religious institutions and people being free of it, they're people that's bad, that's bad, can't be bad, you can't encourage that because then people don't have a love for the church. And they say, but yet being part of the body of Christ is more real than ever because we no longer sort others by which box they come from but love and accept on the witness of life within. See, isn't that beautiful? You know the whole passage where it talks about, there's a lot of sickness among you because you're not rightly discerning the body. We could go in a whole bunch of different directions but one of the real benefits of sort of dissing my club membership, so to speak, is the fact that I'm no longer looking at people in those stereotypes of who's in, who's out. They're all loved. Some of them know it, some of them don't. And I wouldn't say, well, they're all just children of God. Well, you know what? They're all created by him. Yeah, and I would say that- Some have relationship and some don't, some don't want it but I don't have to be the sorter of that population. I can be an instrument by which God can use to awaken them to the fact that he just might be real. Yeah, it seems like we only love the prodigal once he gets home. We don't love him when he's still out there. I'd love to put Jesus as the older brother in that prayer. Not that snively, ferocitic older brother that's in the parable, that's angry as brothers come home but the Jesus of the incarnation, who you would think would find his way down to that pig pen and find his brother saying, and not the mocking of, how's this working for you? Where do you know a church on Sunday? Or any of that riffraff, what'd he say is, you know what, brother? Yeah, there's not a day that goes by and my dad's not looking down the road for you. There's a robe and a ring and a sandal for you. Any day you want to come home. And if you want to come home, I'll walk you home. I mean, to me, that's the heart of the gospel right there. If you want to come home, I'll walk you home. And not making that distinction between who's knowing their love yet and who doesn't know their love yet. Because Paul even calls them the children of disobedience. He doesn't say they're not children. They're children of disobedience. And we're to be redeemers, rescuers in the world. How is it that I come alongside somebody and love them? I got an email this week from somebody said, do you know of a good piece of literature? All the tracks I have to give to people are all about guilt and punishment and sin and God bridging a gap. You gotta be able to close the sale. There's one mediator between God and man and that's the church. And he said, I really need something. I really want, do you know of anything I give to people? I wrote him back and I said, I don't know that tract. I don't know that it's been written. And I think the reason it hasn't been written is because God chose to put love into lives, not into tracts. And if you have the love of God living in your heart as you go through life, that's tract enough. That's better tract. That's what Jesus does when he goes to Jericho and leaves him with Zacchaeus, a transformed life. That's the idea that love is not something you put into a tract. Love is something people have to embrace. I love people's desire to make God known. I think that's fantastic. When it becomes notches on your belt, when it becomes sort of an achievement based pursuit, that seems pretty goofy. I love in First John where the disciples are talking, hey, what are eyes beheld? What are hands touch? We're talking to you about these things. There's no substitute for that kind of testimony that just says, you know what? I'm not giving you an argument. I'm giving you a reality that I know. You can't argue against it. You can say, well, I don't care. Right, or I don't believe you. But the reality is if that's real, that becomes some of the most compelling testimony that is attractive and wooing of others. Are you enjoying that relationship with God? Is God a security for you in the midst of all of this insecurity and instability? Am I freaking out like everyone else or do I have a sense of groundedness because I am loved? That, you can't put that in a tract. You can talk about that, but it's not compelling. What's compelling is when you see that stuff being worked out in someone's life and it's like, it's for real. Yeah, you can parse out the doctrine. But notice Jesus wasn't doing that. I don't understand why. Jesus didn't have a force spiritual laws thing that he was either saying or passing out. He didn't say the most important thing is to get this. You're a sinner, you're separated from God and now the cross will bring you back to him. He loved people. He loved broken lives. He expressed care and compassion for people and invited them to know his father. That's the essence of the gospel. Yeah, and he didn't, apparently, I can't find it in the gospels. I don't see a strategy for making sure that the kingdom was populated through the realms of Judea and Jerusalem and all that. I don't see a recipe that says, here's our strategy. Here's what we're gonna do. It seems to me that they believed that there was God with them and when he left, he said, you know what, little children, love one another. That was the proof of the pudding. They'll know all this is real if you guys are loving each other. And it's like, okay, I think we've tripped past that in all of our strategizing to take our cities, to do our, to change our culture, to win these wars. It's like, you know what? I think if they saw us genuinely caring for each other, that's profoundly attractive because that doesn't happen all over the place. No, it doesn't. And yet that's the one thing people are hungry for. People are hungry to be loved for somebody to care about them as people and introduce them to a reality that's greater than themselves. So many people struggle with that sense that God loves me and whether that means anything. And I sort of wonder, you know what? Probably the biggest help I can do is not try to counsel them about why that's true. It's just to love them. Yeah. I mean, how else are they gonna know what love is unless someone is actively doing that, caring for them, their life? That's how they're gonna know that love is real and perhaps that that is coming from the source God. Yeah, and it will come someday. Hopefully that's, I think what everyone needs is a revelation of God's love for them. I think we prime that by the way we love and treat and respect people around it. I think we prime that pump. We give them a portal by which they might be able to glimpse him. But in the end, that you are loved by God is not a propositional truth you must live with. It's the invitation into a reality that you get to know tangibly, to embrace, to live in, to wake up in and to know that the God of the ages loves me and is invested in my life and wants to walk me through a reality. That can't be known apart from a revelation of the spirit. And I tell people who don't know that yet and I meet him when I travel. I don't think I've ever known that. I've heard it. I don't think I know. I ask him, what's he gonna do? Father, give me a revelation of your love. I wanna know that you love me. I wanna know that that is not just something I'm supposed to believe up here in my head. But as Robert said with us that that's something you've already shed a broad in my heart by the Holy Spirit. And I live in that reality. And that, I guess, I still, I still am proud of who walked the interdaze. It looks like all the news magazines lately that I read anyway, the God is Dead movement was a big thing back in the 70s, the God is Dead thing. And that was proved not to be true wonderfully well. And that was kind of the organized religion church thing is dead. They've got an article in Newsweek Magazine, March 16th. Even with all the attendance swelling around where it is. Attendance is not swelling. Attendance is not. No, attendance is, we got stats on that too. I mean, 3,500 people left a day left the church last year. That's not like it's swelling. Well, right now the little present by lines are that, oh, churches are on the upswing. That's anecdotal. It'd be interesting how many of those. I mean, what's that saying is a few mega churches with high entertainment value are drawing more people into their services. Are they coming from some other building they've stopped attending? Have they freshly coming out of the world to find something? Is this an attempt by people to ingratiate themselves to the next success deity? Oh God, my 401k is down. I need God now. I don't know. I do think they'll find religion pretty empty. I think that's what's pretty guaranteed. You mentioned the big influx from 9-11. And the big outgo, the greater exit is that came after that. Yeah, and then everybody's fears go back down to a normal level and they exit. And this time they took some friends with them. So that's what's kind of leading to this. But this article, a Christian by any other name, talks about the reticence of people of faith now to identify themselves as Christian. Interesting. We talked about that a while back. We have talked about that. I was working on an article for the next body life that was talking about why I, when somebody asked me if I'm a Christian, my next response is, what do you mean by that? Because if you mean am I a good practitioner of a religion called Christianity, the answer is I'm not. If you mean do I really wanna follow Christ and be like him in the world, then that's where I'm at. And this article makes that exact point. They quote a guy who just says, I just call myself a follower of Jesus. Right now on Facebook, there's 900 groups use a variation of follower of Jesus rather than Christian in identifying themselves. And that people are, that Christian has got more identified with a political agenda and a religious institution than it's become identified with Jesus. And that's changed the landscape for a lot of people. Yeah, I think so much of the institutional lens is really looking at who's in and who's out. So much of that is. And that becomes a profound hindrance to a dialogue. Because you're starting with the premise of, is this person valid or not? It's like, how's a person not valid? How's their opinion? Not something to listen to. I don't agree with, but they get the right to have one. Yeah, they court Ward Brem and this article. We heard him speak at the National Prayer Breakfast last year and he's a businessman from Minneapolis and former chairman of the US Africa Development Foundation. And they're questioning him about, him being a follower of Jesus rather than identifying as a Christian. And he says, Brem admits guiltily that he left his longtime church five years ago and is still shopping. For the time being, he finds communion in regular meetings with fellow followers of Christ. That's real church. Accusations that he's letting identity politics overshadow Christian tradition. Brem delivers what he believes to be his knockout punch. Jesus after all said, follow me. I thought for Newsweek Magazine, that's an amazing article. Well, I think people are finding there is a genuine spiritual hunger there. Not for an agenda and not to purchase something, but there is a hunger. And so if you're not selling something, it's so oftentimes it's selling a membership at the local, it's like we're selling validation. You're valid and I'm valid. We'll be valid together. Well, I mean, I think it's trying to help people realize, oh, you're not feeling so good. Do these things, you'll feel better. And I don't think that's the gospel. I don't think that's Jesus' deal. I don't think that's what happens in life. No, and that's why people who leave it, their first fear they have to deal with is now, I suddenly feel invalidated as a person of faith because I can't answer the question, where do you go to church? And even finding my website, people are like, no, I'm not, no, it's not. Part of what that is is still finding a validation and something other. And I don't want to be that. I don't want the God's journey to be that. I don't want the fact that there's a lot of other people in the space where you are going, well, that gives me validation. I want your need to validation to die. That's what I want. It's enough that I'm a follower of Jesus. As unclear as that might be, as haltingly as I might do that, as unsuccessfully some days, as I am a follower of Jesus, and I'm learning to follow him. And if no one in my life understands that, that's okay. It doesn't change anything. That whole needing approval is what sucked us into religion in the first place. It's what Madison Avenue gets you to you to buy a new car, buy a new house, buy a whatever. It's the need to other people look on my life favorably because I derive my own sense of personal favor from the eyes of others, whether it's materially or spiritually. That is the problem. That's what God wants to deal with our. And that addiction is profound. I mean, think of how much of what governs so many people's lives. It really is in search of that. Am I okay? Yeah, and that's why when people contact me going, I'm finally found you and the podcast, whatever, I'm going, don't get your validation here either. That's the same problem just fixated somewhere else. And I love the fact that people get encouraged to know that what they've had in their heart is okay. I think what some of this stuff says to us that people have to know is that people's, you talked about that hunger. There is a spiritual hunger. That's profound hunger. But that spiritual hunger isn't being served by our religious climate today. The Christian religious climate, it's not being served by the politics of that. It's not being served by the institution and the gatherings of that. Some people enjoy all that stuff. They do. If 3,500 people a day are leaving, and I'm sure there's some of those people are leaving, I'm giving up, there is no reality to God. And I'm, but other people are leaving saying, this doesn't feed this hunger. And I think that's so different from 40, 50 years ago. People wouldn't. People would just live in it going, I guess I'm the big dummy that doesn't get it. Well, you know what? The one common denominator that doesn't change is that there's only one place that is in the shame removal business. And that's Jesus and what he did on the cross. And until that happens, religion will be have a great business that will continue to boom because they're in the business of managing people's shame. Yep. How do I help you feel better about that? The whole self-help realm does its own sort of ecclesiology of what it wants and has its precepts. Like at the end of the day, the only thing that finally brings rest to that is a knowledge that I'm loved not because of anything I do. Well, how, where do you get that? I don't get that from any of my relationships really. The truth is, is almost all of the relationships I've ever known. Yeah. If I do something nice, they love me. If I don't, they don't. Yeah. And back to that statistics we started with, this is how dysfunctional that system is. I mean, there are good flocks of people out there doing it well, but that's, those are rare. Even by the statistics of the Fuller Institute, George Barnett Pastral Care, Inc. 90% of pastors report working between 55 to 75 hours a week. Not necessarily because the church demands it. I know enough to know that's because inside, they've got to demand that to find their worth and to try to find some level of success. Yeah, I got to perform well. 80% believe pastoral ministry has negatively affected their families. I want to talk to the other 20. Yeah. I want to come and show you it's pretty good. I'm part of that 80, that's why I'm not doing that. People with big staff probably. 33% state that being in the ministry is an outright hazard to the family. 75% report a significant stress related crisis at least once in their ministry. 33% confess having involved in inappropriate sexual behavior with someone in the church. 50% have considered leaving the ministry in the last 12 months. 50% of ministers starting out today will not last five years. 94% of clergy families, they're more honest than the clergy. 94% of clergy families feel the pressure of the pastor's ministry. 66% of church members expect a pastor, a minister and family to live at a higher moral standard than themselves. And yet the profession of a pastor is near the bottom of the survey of the most respected professions. It's one above car salesman. Just want to stop there. Why do we expect the pastor guy as if this is supposed to be measured? Why is even the comparison says he's supposed to be the holy guy? Cause he's paid to be good and the rest of them are good for nothing. I haven't explained this to you before, I'm sure. But just even that concept is like, you know what? We're all supposed to be following Jesus. Well, don't you expect the president of your company to be better at business than you? Wouldn't you expect that? Yes. If you want the president of the CEO of AIG to actually know what to do with money, you would want that. Sure. And aren't you disappointed when it turns out they don't have a clue. They just do whatever they wanted for their online, their own pockets. But if I'm putting my money in that bank, then yes, that's what I want. If my money is my responsibility, then it doesn't matter as much. I have to be just as good at what I'm doing because it pertains to, I think so much of that is a relegating of responsibility as if, well, if my pastor's really good, then somehow if I'm related to that, then I must be okay. That's again, one of the many institutional thought from living this thing institutionally, instead of living it relationally. And I even tell you, even if you go to an institution and you kind of avoid all the political remit or all that stuff, still the life of the church is not founded by the fact that you're attached to an institution. It's gonna be found in the fact that you connect with people in that body who are part of your people that you know and are known by and pray for and care about. And live life with. Yeah, exactly. That's what it's all about. It's not the fact that I, there are a lot of lonely people sitting in those buildings on Sunday mornings and go home and go, I don't have a friend in this place. I've heard pastors' wives say that. I don't have a friend here because I'm on such a pedestal that no one knows me and no one cares about me. And it's so easy to just, you know, these pastors that are just loved so much by their people and they, you know, was it 1700 a month or terminated by their own fellowship and cease to be no more. It's just not a great way to, how did we get something so vital is the life of Christ and stick it in an institution and say that will be a great representation of this reality when it rarely is for any enduring length of time. I think it's that whole downshifting out of the direct face-to-face relationship. I think you see it in the Old Testament. Moses' job is to bring Israel out of captivity and to bring them all to Mount Sinai where God wants to talk to each one of them. They get there. God seems too scary. No, Moses, you do it. We'll do everything. We've been stuck in that wilderness forever. Yeah, and then they want a king and God gives them one. God chooses Saul. Yeah. But he warns them, don't you know what this is going to do to him? Yeah, but we want to be like everybody else. And that's a validation thing. It's not only, yeah it is, but it's not only what is he, what is this going to, it's going to turn Saul into a shell of his former self, but he's going to take it out on you and your children. And I see that play out over and over again. Our instinct, whether it's corporate, religious, whatever, our institutional mindset is to exalt people to a place where it destroys them. It destroys themselves. Because they're no longer the real human being they were when they, most pastors, get them away from the event. Take them out for lunch or golf or whatever. Great guys, I enjoy just about every pastor I've ever met putting inside that system as the one responsible to manage the lives of these people. And boy, they become people you don't want to know, be near, that's what I keep saying. The Catholics have it right. If you have a pope, you want one of them and you want him in Rome. I think, I think this from Michael Spencer, he's known as the internet monk. This is one of the 10 most red Christian blogs in the world. Come back from that. I'm sorry, that's funny. He's got a new blog out called The Coming Evangelical Collapse. Oh no! You ought to read this. I believe that we are on the verge within 10 years of a major collapse of evangelical Christianity, a collapse that will follow the deterioration of the mainline Protestant world and will fundamental alter the religious and cultural environment in the West. I believe this evangelical collapse will happen with astonishing statistical speed that within two generations of where we are now, evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its current occupants, leaving in its wake nothing that can revitalize evangelicals to their former glory. This collapse will, I believe, parallel the arrival of an anti-Christian chapter of the post-Christian West and will change the way tens of millions of people see the entire realm of religion. Intolerance of Christianity will rise to levels many of us have not believed possible in our lifetimes. Public policy will become particularly hostile towards evangelical Christianity, increasingly see it as the opponent of the good of individuals and society. I hope someone is going to start preparing for what is going to be an evangelical dark age. Who is this dude? The internet monk, Michael Spencer. He's well read, well listened to. And he bases these thoughts upon what? Oh, he's got a whole list of trends in evangelicalism. Again, how many people are leaving it? It's identified with the political movement that is quickly being discredited. It's presenting a view of God well beneath the God of the Bible. I read the first chapter of this and I'm going, hallelujah, we've done that before. Evangelicalism will collapse and I, evangelical, I think I'm in that theological camp. I'm not in that political camp. I'm not in that institutional camp. I don't find, I was reading another article this week and it was about political niceness and the title was to hell with niceness so you can Google that if you want to read the article. One of the things he talked about he says this whole compassion thing is the whole realm of the age now. If you're trying to increase somebody's pain or if you're not alleviating their suffering even if they bought a house they couldn't afford and then borrowed on it even more to go on vacations to Tahiti and now they can't afford their home. If you want their home foreclosed on, you're a bad person and compassion now is the coin of the realm and then he said, but doctrine is not character. Most people who say that again. Doctrine is not character. Most people who spout a compassionate message politically don't live a compassionate life. That's what he was saying. Ooh, baby. I wrote, well soon I heard I wrote down doctrine is not character. I haven't got a million emails from people who hate the shack sitting in my computer. And I'd like to send back to them, doctrine is not character. You can have all your doctrine in a row and these people because of the lies they'll tell and the anger they'll vent. And all guys, I come back to the same thing. Doctrine isn't character. Jesus came that we'd bear the fruit, the character of a kingdom by a transformed life. Not that we'd build big institutions that don't work. Not that we'd start political movements that fall into ruin, but that we would learn to live loved and love every day of our life. And if there would be enough reality and joy in that to fill lives with wonderful stuff. And I really don't know all this intolerance. He's saying, unfortunately, he's saying evangelicalism as the only valid expression of Christ in the earth. I think as evangelicalism collapses, I think what we're saying is people who are learning to live loved by God are gonna fill the void. And we're gonna have a different view of God. Our view of God is not gonna be the Jerry Falwells and Pat Robertsons. Our culture is gonna get to see a God of love and compassion and tenderness, a God who rescues the broken soul. I'm not thinking always other intolerance is gonna happen. The intolerance of the world toward Christians is because they have a political view that says, I will be served. Not because they're living in a world saying, how can I serve you? That's what gets marginalized. And I'm saying, you know, pass out the whistles and confetti in the party hat. I think if that kind of evangelicalism collapses, I'm having a party at my house. You're invited. I think the truth is, yeah, the institutional dynamics, they're not sustainable because you can't pretend that they don't have their agenda. And how's that any different than all the others? I think the one life that is not going to follow that is the life of genuineness that really is. I'm in a tractor beam of God's love and that's changing everything. It changes how I relate to people. It changes the way I even, you know, I'm not trying to climb up that ladder, trying to please him. This is what happens when you focus on movements instead of people. And that's what Christianity has done for too long. It's why it's being discredited in the world. But that just creates space for people who are living left to live in a world that disarms people. Yeah. And helps them see the reality. You can't stop that and that's not gonna stop. That's not gonna be in ruins. No, that part. That's gonna be fruitful and growing alongside all these other things that might be crumbling. It creates a great vacuum. It creates an article like we read about Walter Brem saying, Jesus said, follow him. He didn't say, change the world politically. He didn't say, build institutions and make people sit in them. He says, follow me. Keep traveling with us on The God Journey. 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