The Casual Christian

Modern church practices are more a product of postmodern culture than biblical mandates. They are based more on man made methodologies than the work of the Holy Spirit. Ministry is mostly didactic and disconnected from everyday life. Although the earliest believers worked out their faith within the bonds of Christian community, spiritual growth today is based primarily on the individual believer’s personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Christian community is superficial because believers leave the care of the body to religious professionals rather than engaging in mutual ministry, sharing one another’s joys and bearing one another’s burdens.

Because of their focus on size, pastors and their staffs have packaged ministry into programs based on affinity or age groups. Success is measured by the number of participants and their participation rates, not genuine spiritual growth. For the most part, these programs are conducted on the church premises and under the church’s auspices instead of reaching out into the community where their members live, work and play.

Unaccountable Leaders

Today most church leaders are a law unto themselves and accountable to no independent authority. They avoid dealing with controversial or potentially offensive topics for fear of alienating church members or forfeiting their tax exemptions. In order to make it more palatable, the faith they offer is filled with promise and pleasure and nearly devoid of the convicting power of the Holy Spirit.

Seekers rarely come to Christ in church, reflecting the paucity of personal witness by both clergy and laity. Believers who do engage in personal witness often use cookie cutter gospel presentations that do not connect with the postmodern mind and heart.

Obfuscation of the Gospel

Systematic theology and propositional truth have replaced the parables, object lessons, and rhetorical questions characteristic of the narrative style of Jesus.  Sermonizing has replaced the interactive teaching and lifestyle evangelism Jesus employed as He walked from place to place around Palestine.  An “inside baseball” lingo known as Christian jargon or Christianese has obscured the gospel message for the uninitiated.  Rather than contextualize the gospel for the listener, evangelists expect potential converts to embrace all the trappings of the Christian subculture along with salvation.

Recommendations for Renewal

The final chapters of the book explore ways in which the modern church can recapture some of the vitality of the early church. The first prerequisite is revival. There hasn’t been a national revival since the Great Revival, over 150 years ago. Professionalism, performance and an over-emphasis on human leadership and achievement have supplanted reliance on the Holy Spirit and the unadulterated Word of God. Religious leaders regard revival as a repudiation of their church growth strategies.

The solution is to empower believers to minister to one another, replace spiritual hierarchies with consensual governance, make the locus of ministry the body of believers rather than a church program or property, and involve the entire church community in incarnational witness.

The Casual Christian pp. xiii-xv