The Casual Christian

Many secular institutions provide avenues for their employees to openly express disagreements in a constructive way. For example, my wife's company does an anonymous online survey every year that gives employees a chance to offer constructive criticism of the organization. Most church leaders would be horrified at the prospect of an anonymous review. They would view it as insubordination. The majority of companies conduct an exit interview with departing employees to determine their reasons for leaving. Few churches even notice when people leave much less hold an exit interview.  The church is one of a very few institutions that still provide no avenue for constructive feedback. You will never find an op-ed page in its newsletter.

I have told a number of church leaders about my disappointments with the church. One accused me of 'church bashing.'  When I told another that the church was due for revival, he said he didn't like the word, 'revival.' His comment made no sense to me. After all, the word  just means to 'revitalize' or bring back to life. And to argue that the spiritual condition of the church is just fine when many of the same problems that plague society also trouble the church, is a tough sell. Then it occurred to me. To say the church needs revival would mean that he and his seminary brethren were guilty of mismanagement!  Although I am sure he wouldn't admit it, he considered the church a work of his hands rather than a product of the Holy Spirit. Another budding young pastor told me I had to take down one of my posts because it was critical of a pastor who had deeply wounded me with his unkind words. I wonder if he would consider censorship in any other context.

I have never belonged to a church that had a mechanism for providing feedback to leadership. So leaders have no idea whether their ministries are achieving their objectives. Without regular feedback, what would stop errant leadership from continuing to stray? But voicing a difference of opinion with church leadership is generally frowned upon.

Where does this 'brook no dissent' mentality come from? I believe it comes from the mistaken notion that leadership is ordained by God and their words are gospel. So anyone who disagrees is challenging the will of God. That would be a legitimate viewpoint if human beings were guided by wholly altruistic motives. But the fact  is that  we all have hidden agendas and promote our own self interests.

Take for instance the leadership of the mission that covered up the molestation of my son. When I asked for help in bearing the enormous costs of rehabilitation and boarding school, they refused saying what happened was not their fault. Yet they later tightened up their candidate screening process to weed out any potential pedophiles, an admission that they could have been more careful in candidate selection.

In the same letter, they said they truly mourned for the victims. How  could they mourn for the victims and refuse to help any of them at the same time? Even if they bore no fault, nothing kept them from bearing their brothers' burdens. That voice they heard telling them 'no' was probably not the voice of God, but their own instinct for self preservation. That is why we need to hear different viewpoints. Proverbs 15:21 says, "Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed." Leaders must be willing to hear all sides of an issue.

Unike secular organizations, there are no licensing boards or regulatory agencies that provide oversight for the church. Although I looked far and wide for an organization that could bring some pressure to bear on the leadership of the mission, I could only find one group. All they did was  write standards. They had no enforcement authority at all and they didn't even answer my inquiry.  This lack of accountability has enabled the mission to escape any scrutiny of their behavior.

There hasn't been a nationwide revival in the United States since before the Civil War. By the time the Third Great Awakening had run its course, it had spread from coast to coast producing over 50,000 converts per week and a total of over one million new believers. Nationwide, the population of the churches increased by ten percent. There was a return to public morality as taverns were closed and businessmen paid off their debts. Charities and volunteers multiplied as faith found expression in humanitarian work.

Why don't we see this kind of outpouring of the Holy Spirit today? It is because church leaders have replaced reliance on the Holy Spirit with human methods such as  church growth and management techniques. Christian leaders have produced a type of synthetic growth characterized by a church full of opportunists who seek the blessings of belief but are not prepared to sacrifice in service to Christ. Furthermore, there is no self correcting mechanism since Christian leaders regard even the most impartial scrutiny as church bashing or spiritual insubordination.

The church has a tendency to drift. If there are no shoals to avoid, no currents to fight, and no winds to harness, the natural course is to go with the flow. We haven’t seen a nationwide revival in America since the Civil War. That is over 150 years ago! Dare we presume that during this long interval the church hasn’t wandered off course?