Jennifer Taylor has confessed her sin publicly: she’s bored at church. But unlike many people, she’s not interested in a more whizz-bang service with hipper music or preaching. “I’m not looking for a slicker sermon series or a faux-hawked worship leader or designer coffee in the back lobby.” And she’s not about to leave her church to find a different mountain to climb:

“I also believe you make a commitment to one local church and invest in community with those believers long-term, I’m not going to start shopping for a new church. Besides, all those churches would also have long sermons and rambling prayers and worship leaders in skinny jeans. That’s the problem.”

So what is she bored with? What is she looking for? Taylor cites an article by Brett McCracken in The Wall Street Journal. McCracken, author of the new book Hipster Christianity, addresses why 70 percent of adults 18-22 leave the church. He writes:

“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.”

The comments to Jennifer Taylor’s post also contain some surprising confessions. One commenter says:

“I have been in the church all of my seventy year life and I have been bored for most of it. The trouble is that even though we are looking for a relationship with God, most church leaders/preachers interpret that to mean a relationship with a church.”

Another named Diane says:

“The routine isn’t what bothers me. What I want is depth to the routine. I want our attention to rivet on God at the start-a true call to worship, not necessarily a song. I want prayer…I want Scripture read, a lot of Scripture…I want time for confession and for assurance of forgiveness…. I want to be reminded, every week, of who God is and who I am in Christ.”

There is also the confession of a pastor:

“I’m the senior- minister-preacher-worship-minister for our congregation. I’m the guy who is in charge of making it all happen each week. And much of the time, I MYSELF am bored senseless with what we do. I have a masters degree in worship ministry, from a program full of very hip California-types, who are all about “engaging worship” and such. And yet I experienced the same boredom in so many places where I’ve visited, from coast to coast.”

Taken together these confessions are a sample of things I’ve been hearing for a while. And it’s not just from young people-people in my parents’ generation and even pastors are confessing their frustrations. I hear it at my church as well, from folks in the class I’ve taught, and from the college students I meet with regularly. And, yes, I too share the feeling expressed by Jennifer Taylor and many others.

At the end of her post, Taylor says, “I’m sincerely unsure of the solution.” Again, I really applaud her honesty. Well, I don’t have a solution for you, Jennifer. But I think there are a few things we all would be wise to remember.

1. Don’t expect from a worship gathering what can only be found in communion with Christ. I wrote a post about this earlier, but many of us exchange an internal communion with God through the Spirit with an external communion via increasingly elaborate worship experiences.

2. Brett McCracken is right-we’re longing for what’s real not what’s entertaining. I’d put it another way: we longing for the transcendent. This is likely what’s behind, in part, the movement of many evangelicals toward high-church traditions and liturgy. They’re hungry from something beyond culturally-familiar or Christianized versions of pop trends. I don’t think this hunger for transcendence can only be satisfied with high liturgy. Others discover it in nature, in art, in contemplative prayer, and in the reflective reading of Scripture.

3. Our boredom isn’t with Christ or even his Church, but with the institutional trappings of the 501c3 organizations we call “the church.” When serving full-time on the pastoral staff of my church, I often failed to distinguish between these two things. The organization (programs, structures, budgets, staff) and the church (the community of disciples seeking Christ) were synonymous in my mind. When this happens we begin to believe that what is good for the organization is also good for the church and God’s mission. And a vision of life with God is slowly overshadowed by a life for the organization. When this seeps into our worship gatherings, and a vision for the church rather than Christ is what fuels the time, we shouldn’t be surprised when people become “bored.”

What do you think? Are you bored with church? And what’s at the heart of it. I’m not interested in debating worship styles or preaching themes. And I’m not eager to talk about how the proverbial church-down-the-street is doing it. Let’s dig deeper.

Thank you, Jennifer, for your honest confession and for jump starting this conversation.  And I also appreciate you’re ability to discuss your feelings without falling into consumerist language about the church. We need more voices like yours.

Last week I shaved off my goatee. When I emerged with only eye brows and lashes growing from my otherwise perfectly bald head, my 2-year-old daughter Lucy approached me cautiously. “Daddy…is that you?” she asked.Change is disorientating, and when it comes unexpectedly it can be scary.

Facial hair isn’t the only change in my life, and I want to update everyone on new developments in my work and ministry. Scary? Maybe. Disorientating? Definitely. But I’m also looking forward to what’s around the corner.

At the end of August I will be leaving my role as the managing editor of Leadership Journal to pursue a more independent career. I’ve been in this post for almost 3 years and spent 3 years before that as Leadership’s associate editor in a part-time capacity. I’ve grown enormously at Christianity Today International (Leadership’s parent company) and owe much to Marshall Shelley, my boss and Leadership’s editor-in-chief. He’s been a great encouragement and has helped me develop as a writer and editor.

SENIOR EDITOR

Thankfully my connection with Leadership will continue in a different capacity. I will maintain my oversight of Out of Ur (Leadership’s blog), Catalyst Leadership (our digital magazine published in partnership with the Catalyst Conference), and portions of the print journal. My new outside role as “senior editor” will also allow me to speak to and network with church leaders from around the world on behalf of Leadership. I believe strongly that a resource like Leadership, which has focused on providing wisdom and encouragement to pastors for over 30 years, is what the church needs. I’m blessed to be a part of this work.

My decision to leave my staff role at Christianity Today International will provide more time and flexibility to pursue a few new projects that I am very excited about.

TWO NEW BOOKS

I’m in the process of writing two books to be published by Thomas Nelson. The first book, a project currently titled With, explores the central calling of Christianity-to live with God rather than over, under, or even for him. It’s a message I’ve taken to numerous churches and conferences in recent years. The response has been strong, and I think it’s worth the time and energy a book requires from me. The second book has yet to be determined-but I’ve got a lot of ideas in my journal.

THE THIRD POST

The other major project I’ll be devoting myself to is The Third Post. I publically unveiled the project at the Q conference in April. The Third Post (T3P) is a non-profit website that will aggregate content from around the globe for those seeking a Christian worldview. With commentary from global Christian leaders on world events and resources from respected ministries, T3P will defy the conventional polarization in the media today-conservative versus liberal; right versus left-by offering a third lens through which to see current events.

We are assembling a great team to build, finance, launch, and oversee The Third Post. You can stay up to date on the project at ThirdPost.org.

SPEAKING, WRITING, & CONSULTING

Finally, in the last few years I’ve done more speaking at churches, colleges, and conferences. That will continue as will opportunities to be a Christian voice in secular media outlets like The Huffington Post and Chicago Public Radio. I also look forward to furthering my consulting roles with ministries like Lausanne and contributing to the important work of inter-faith cooperation.

Of course being independent, while a bit more demanding, also means greater flexibility to spend time with Amanda and our kids. My new office, located in downtown Wheaton, will allow me to zip home or pick up the kids from school for a lunchtime run to Taco Bell.

So, that’s what happening. It’s a bit more than just shaving off my facial hair, but as I told Lucy, “No worries. I’m still me.”

Governmental, religious, and cultural leaders on all sides have already spoken, written, or tweeted about the proposed Islamic cultural center near the World Trade Center site in Manhattan. So when my friend Eboo Patel asked me to add my voice to the noise, I wasn’t sure what new perspective I could offer.

An expert in constitutional law might see the Cordoba House controversy as a First Amendment issue and demand that the Muslim-Americans organizing the project be allowed to proceed without impediment. A politico might see the matter as an opportunity to score easy points with constituents (right or left) by supporting or denouncing the “Ground Zero mosque.” And a member of the media might see the issue as a powder keg guaranteed to draw an audience and therefore pursue whatever means to keep the controversy alive. But I’m not a lawyer, a politician, or a journalist. I’m a pastor. And when I look at the matter it isn’t the legal or political arguments that get my attention–it’s the fear.

Some with objections about the Cordoba House say it would be disrespectful to the 9/11 victim’s families and stand as an insensitive reminder of the religious intolerance that motivated the attacks. Certainly no one wishes to add any burden to the unimaginable pain already carried by these families. And although I do not know the organizers of the Cordoba House, I trust they share this sentiment as numerous Muslims were among the innocent victims on 9/11.

But objections to the Islamic center in Lower Manhattan have gone far beyond sensitivity to victims’ families. Some are saying the Cordoba House represents a “beachhead for Shariah” in the United States. In his article opposing the project, Newt Gingrich wrote, “America is experiencing an Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization.” And a self-identified “Christian” website has been launched to fight the project. It calls upon other concerned Christians to take a “stand against evil” by donating to the site.

These examples, and there are many others, reveal how fear is being used to foment anger and political zealotry. Somehow we are to believe that the construction of a 15-story Islamic community center in New York City will be a tipping point leading to the decline of American civilization, the dissolution of Christian faith, and the reversal of hundreds of years of western legal precedent. Amid the panic, opponents of the Cordoba House might be shocked to discover that a mosque has been meeting in the same neighborhood, two blocks from the proposed Cordoba House and four blocks from Ground Zero, for the last 30 years. One wonders how our republic has survived? (Pardon my sarcasm, but sometimes humor is the best way to defuse irrational fears.)

Sadly the fear-mongering demonstrated by some opponents of the Cordoba House has become commonplace in our partisan society. Fear has proven to be a very effective political tactic for both conservatives and liberals, and it’s also a guaranteed way for Christian ministries and non-profit groups to grow their lists and fill their coffers. This is what concerns me most about the present controversy–not the possibility of a Muslim community center near Ground Zero, but how many within my evangelical community are responding from the most un-Christian of motives: fear.

Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Mount are some of the most familiar, beautiful, and radical ideas found in the Bible (Matthew chapters 5, 6, and 7). He calls his followers to give generously, put aside anger, vengeance, and greed, live without worry, and even love their enemies. Many read Jesus’ instructions and admire their beauty but scoff at their impracticality. “In this world it makes no sense to love your enemies,” is what I hear from Christians and non-Christians alike. And they are right. In a dangerous, chaotic, and threatening world where self-preservation is the highest goal, these teachings defy logic. This is why Henri Nouwen wrote, “Fear engenders fear. It never gives birth to love.”

As long as we primarily view the world is a dangerous place, we will never find the power to obey Jesus’ teachings. This is why he begins his Sermon on the Mount with a new vision of the world as a perfectly safe place for those who entrust themselves to Christ. He presents a world in which the poor, the forgotten, the mourning, and the meek are blessed by God; and a world where death itself is overcome. Only when we see this as a God-with-us world in which our lives and wellbeing are eternally in his care can we abandon fear and answer, by faith, the dangerous and irrational call to love. Perhaps this is why one of the most common commands in the Bible is “do not be afraid.” Fear, not doubt, is the great enemy of faith.

So when I see leaders, both political and religious, stoking the fears of Christians regarding the Cordoba House project, it strikes me as profoundly un-Christ-like. Despite their stated intentions, those seeking to inflate your fears about the presence of Islam in America are not inspiring you to be more Christian, but less. They are not leading us toward faith in Christ, but away from him. Because where the raging fires of fear and anger are fed, the inviting glow of Christ-centered faith and love cannot long endure. And such provocations are not leading us to love our Muslim neighbors as ourselves, but instead causing us to believe that our wellbeing necessitates their misfortune. And such “us versus them” conceptions are antithetical to everything Jesus taught and modeled. It is not Christian faith.

Rather than seeing the growing visibility of Islam in the United States, whether through the construction of the Cordoba House or any number of mosques around the country, as a threat to Christianity and reacting out of fear, we can choose to seize this as a new opportunity to reaffirm our trust in Jesus Christ, love our Muslim neighbors, and seek what is good for them as a true incarnation of Christian faith.

I do hope the organizers of the Cordoba House project will proceed with great sensitivity to the victims’ families, and will seek to increase their efforts to communicate how the facility and the programming it contains will honor the memory and sacrifices of those lost on 9/11. And whether or not the Islamic community center is built near Ground Zero, I can offer my Christian sisters and brothers this good word: Be not afraid.

The frenzy created every time Apple releases a new product highlights a growing but under-reported phenomenon: the power of consumer brands to supplant traditional religions in peoples’ lives. Many Christians believe the greatest threat to the church today is postmodernity. Others zero in on relativism. Some believe the enemy is secular humanism. Others think it’s Islam. I disagree with all of these. In my view, the greatest challenge facing the contemporary church is consumerism. By that I do not mean consumption. It’s not wrong to consume things. In fact, as contingent beings we’ve been designed to consume for survival. The only human that doesn’t consume is one that has reached room temperature, in which case they are now being consumed. (Do I hear “The Circle of Life” in the background?)

The consumerism I’m concerned with is the kind that functions as a worldview. It forms the uncontested assumptions of our lives, and when it intersects with faith our perceptions of worship, mission, community, belief, and even God are fundamentally altered. These are all subject I tackle in my book, The Divine Commodity (Zondervan, 2009).

One aspect of consumerism that is particularly powerful is branding. (Add to it commoditization and alienation and you’ve got the unholy trinity of consumerism.)

Douglas Atkins, author of The Culting of Brands: Turn Your Customers Into True Believers, says, “Brands are the new religion … They supply our modern metaphysics, imbuing the world with significance … Brands function as complete meaning systems.”

Without question one of the most potent brands in America today is Apple, and new research has shown that Apple has achieved the same impact on the human brain as religion.

Martin Lindstrom is the author of Buyology. He says:

Apple is (as we’ve proven using neuroscience) … a religion. Not only that — it is a religion based on its communities. Without its core communities, Apple would die — it is already facing strong pressure as the brand simply is becoming too broad (losing) its magic. What’s holding it all together is the hundreds if not thousands of communities across the world spreading the passion and creating the myths.

Adding to the evidence that Apple is actually a religion, psychologist David Levine, a self-identified Mac nut, says:

For many Mac people, I think [the Mac community] has a religious feeling to it. For a lot of people who are not comfortable with religion, it provides a community and a common heritage. I think Mac users have a certain common way of thinking, a way of doing things, a certain mindset. People say they are a Buddhist or a Catholic. We say we’re Mac users, and that means we have similar values.

For more about the religious (even cultic) power of Apple, I suggest reading this article in “Wired” that details the messianic characteristics of Steve Jobs. There is also a documentary on the subject called “Macheads.” In the trailer the film declares, “It’s more than a computer, it’s a way of life.”

The identity-forming power of brands like Apple means the act of shopping has immense significance in a consumer culture. As Benjamin Barber writes, “If brand name can shape or even stand in for identity, then to figure out ‘who you are’ you must decide where (and for what) you shop.” This may explain why shopping is now the number one leisure activity for Americans. As we peruse the shopping mall or stand in line at the Apple Store, we are not simply looking for an MP3 player, a computer, or a phone — we are looking for ourselves. Shopping occupies a role in society that once belonged only to religion: the power to give meaning and construct identity. “To shop,” Pete Ward observes, “is to seek for something beyond ourselves,” and this desire “indicates a spiritual inclination in many of the everyday activities of shopping.”

One question I pose in The Divine Commodity is this: If brands have become religions, is the opposite also true? Have religions been reduced to brands? I believe the evidence suggests they have. Researchers like Barna, Gallop, and others are finding it increasingly difficult to differentiate the behaviors and values of self-identified Christians from non-Christians with one exception: what they buy. Total sales of religious goods in America is nearly $7 billion annually. That is a whole lot of “Tommy Hellfighter” t-shirts, “Jesus Is My Homeboy” underwear, and “Fruit of the Spirit” energy drinks. One church leader has linked the merchandising with our new understanding of conversion: “Conversion in the U.S. seems to mean we’ve exchanged some of our shopping at Wal-Mart, Blockbuster, and Borders for the Christian Bookstore down the street. We’ve taken our lack of purchasing control to God’s store, where we buy our office supplies in Jesus’ name.”

What does this mean for the future of the church in America? I hear a lot on Christian radio and see a lot of Christian books fighting against postmodernism, relativism, and secularism. But if people, including Christians, are constructing their identities and lives around consumer brands like Apple, is the church fighting the wrong battle? And perhaps more disturbing, are we unknowingly contributing to the problem by encouraging Christians to construct and express their identities via Christ-branded merchandise rather than through characters transformed to reflect the values of Christ himself?

Pixar Studio deserves the avalanche of awards it has won. Every time I think they’re about to blow it with an impossible story (a French rat in a five-star restaurant, a nearly silent film about robots in love) they manage to prove me wrong. Toy Story 3 was no exception. I was worried that they were pushing the franchise too far. The first two films were fantastic, but a third? Surely they’re going to “jump the shark” this time. Wrong again. It was brilliant…the best of the bunch.

There is plenty to praise about the movie, but I want to focus on just one thing—the monkey. The hideous, hilarious, and haunting monkey! For those who have not yet seen the film, the monkey monitors the video surveillance system at Sunnyside Daycare—the veritable prison from which the toys attempt to escape.

Every good story needs a villain, and many of the best villains come in two forms. First, there is the unexpected villain—the gentle, caring, lovable grandmother who pulls out a shotgun from under her skirt. Lotso plays this role in Toy Story 3. He’s a soft purple teddy bear who appears to be welcoming and kind. In truth he’s a conniving, cold-hearted thug.

The other is the archetypal villain—the ugly, cruel monster whose vile character is matched by his appearance. Think of Tolkein’s orcs or Harry Potter’s Voldemort. The surveillance monkey in Toy Story 3 is a perfect embodiment of evil in the story. And this may explain the audience’s burst-out-load reaction to him in the theater. Consider three elements of the monkey:

Unblinking Eyes—Those lidless yellow and red eyes starring ceaselessly at the monitors. They reminded me of the Eye of Sauron from The Lord of the Rings. He’s always watching; never sleeping. The eyes embody our fear that our wrong deeds will not go unnoticed. We will be caught. And when the monkey spots you his eyeballs bulge from his head like they want to reach out and grab you themselves. 

Clinched Teeth—Like a shark his mouth is permanently menacing. He’s ready to bite; ready to rip flesh. In Peter Jackson’s version of The Return of the King, the mouth of Sauron character was depicted with a helmet covering his eyes, and a huge mouth with jagged, bloody teeth too large for his lips to conceal. The unblinking eyes are there to catch you, and the teeth exist to punish you.

Piercing Scream—But apprehension and punishment are not the full extent of our fear. We also dread our crimes being announced. That is what the monkey’s scream represents. The blood-curdling sound that we’ve been found out; that everyone knows what we’ve done. Again, Lord of the Rings comes to mind—the screech of the nazgul when they’ve uncovered their prey.

Being seen. Being punished. Being exposed. This is what the monkey represents, and it’s a primal fear we all carry.

Okay, are you ready for the theological leap? Here we go…

These same elements can be found in the character known as ha-satan in the Old Testament, or simply Satan in the New. The Hebrew title ha-satan means “the accuser” and is found in the Book of Job. He stands before the Lord to accuse human beings of wrong. He exposes and announces their wickedness before the heavenly court. And he is an instrument of pain. Job’s suffering is executed by ha-satan.

My point is not to develop a biblical theology around Satan, and it’s worth noting that the character is depicted somewhat differently in various parts of the Bible and has taken on many qualities throughout history not found in either the Hebrew or Christian scriptures (horns and pitch fork, for example).

Rather I think it’s interesting that the most vivid depictions of evil, from the ancient Hebrew Bible, to The Lord of the Rings, to an animated children’s film like Toy Story 3 contain amazingly similar elements. And these elements correlate with three of our deepest human fears—the fear of being seen, the fear of being punished, and the fear of being exposed. 

Thanks, Pixar, for another brilliant film, another wonderful story, and for another vision of evil. Now when I imagine the wardens of Hades, perched beside Satan and Sauron will be the Sunnyside Daycare surveillance monkey.

Below I’ve also included a number of quotes cited in the message:

The older brother: “All these years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command. Yet you never gave me a young goat that I might celebrate with my friends.” -Luke 15:29

The father: “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.” -Luke 15:31

“There truly is no division between sacred and secular except what we have created.  And that is why the division of the legitimate roles and functions of human life into the sacred and secular does incalculable damage to our individual lives and the cause of Christ.  Holy people must stop going into ‘church work’ as their natural course of action and take up holy orders in farming, industry, law, education, banking, and journalism with the same zeal previously given to evangelism or to pastoral and missionary work.” -Dallas Willard

“We need a witness to our lives. There’s a billion people on the planet… I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you’re promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things… all of it, all of the time, every day. You’re saying ‘Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness’.” -from the film Shall We Dance (2004)

There is a way of ordering our mental life on more than one level at once. On one level we may be thinking, discussing, seeing, calculating, meeting all the demands of external affairs. But deep within, behind the scenes, at a profounder level, we may also be in prayer and adoration, song and worship and a gentle receptiveness to divine breathings. The secular world of today values and cultivates only the first level believing this is where the real business of mankind is done…. But we know that the deep level of prayer is the most important thing in the world. It is at this deep level that the real business of life is determined.” -Thomas Kelly, A Testament of Devotion, page 9.

“And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.’” -Revelations 21:3

40 years ago the Boeing 747 entered commercial service on route between New York and London. While the spectators marveled at the technological achievement-no one had seen 700,000 pounds of aluminum fly before-no one in the crowd realized that they were also witnessing a sociological revolution-no one except Juan Trippe. Trippe was president of PanAm, the first airline to purchase the massive new Boeing. The visionary businessman knew the huge plane would change air travel, but he predicted much more. Before the plane had even left the drawing board, Trippe said that the 747 would be “…a great weapon for peace, competing with intercontinental missiles for mankind’s destiny.” His remarks may have been interpreted as hyperbole in 1970, but most now agree that the Boeing 747 has been a significant catalyst of globalization. The Jumbo Jet, as it was affectionately nicknamed, represented a huge increase in passenger capacity compared with earlier airliners which in turn lowered the cost of flying. As a result the 747 made long-range, intercontinental travel accessible to millions of people for the first time. To use Thomas Friedman’s phrase, the Jumbo Jet was instrumental in making the world flat.

Since the 747’s debut a generation ago, more than 3.5 billion people have flown on the plane-more than half of the world’s population. The airliner has facilitated the intermingling and redistribution of people on a scale unprecedented in history. The fact that more immigrants have arrived in the United States through JFK, LAX, and Miami International airports than through Ellis Island verifies the world-changing impact of Boeing’s “queen of the skies.”

I am intrigued by the 747 because I owe a great debt to the airplane. As a young woman with little money, my mother was able to travel to India in the early 1970s thanks to the falling cost of international travel inaugurated by the 747. While in Bombay she began a relationship with my father who later immigrated to Chicago on a 747. My family could not have been formed, and I could not have been born, in a world prior to the Jumbo Jet. Intercontinental travel has also scattered my extended family across the globe-from Hong Kong to Houston, and Sydney to Spain. My first flight on a Jumbo Jet occurred when I was just two-years-old, and before graduating high school I had already visited nearly 30 foreign countries.

While not every child born since 1969 owes their existence to Boeing, and few kids traveled as extensively as I did, even my suburban-bound peers did not escape the 747’s impact. Our public school saw a steady influx of immigrants from South Asia, refugees from Vietnam and Cambodia, and kids whose parents’ careers brought them to suburban Chicago from Korea, South Africa, or Germany. The same Jumbo Jets that distributed and united my family around the world also brought the world to my neighborhood, classroom, and playground.

Of course globalization cannot be credited to the 747 alone. But the plane’s launch 40 years ago does represent the start of a rapid acceleration of technological advancements that have made the world smaller. Just as the Jumbo Jet made physical connections across the planet possible, advances in satellite and telecom technology beginning in the 1970s made instant global communication a reality. Live international news meant we were the first generation to watch world history unfold live on our televisions. We saw hostages being released in Iran. We watched the Space Shuttle Challenger explode on the TVs in our classrooms. And I recall my Saturday morning cartoons being interrupted by Chinese students protesting in Tiananmen Square.

And while my parents’ generation may have experienced The British Invasion, global themes within pop culture had become normative by the 1980s. Michael Jackson led a pantheon of pop deities in singing “We Are the World.” Live Aid, a rock concert to help the victims of famine in Ethiopia, was a simultaneous event held in the United Stated, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Australia. Over 400 million people watched in 60 countries making it one of the largest live broadcasts in history. And who can forget Coca-Cola’s “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing” commercial? The spot featuring an international cast of young people on a grassy hillside was declared by Campaign magazine to be “one of the best-loved and most influential ads in TV history.”

The spread of globalization inaugurated by the Boeing 747, accelerated by telecommunications, and brought to full maturity by the World Wide Web, has transformed the world more than even Juan Trippe predicted 40 years ago. And those of us born after 1970 have been shaped and influenced by these world-flattening forces. We have grown up in a context of greater diversity, cultural awareness, and global accessibility. We have seen more of the world on our televisions, visited more of the world thanks to affordable intercontinental travel, and welcomed more of the world into our communities than any other generation in history. We are the Jumbo Jet Generation.

The impact of globalization on my generation helps explain why the North American church is now witnessing a surge in popularity around issues of global justice. For example last October I attended a ministry conference with 12,000 other church leaders. The event was held in a sports arena and featured the usual arsenal of multi-media wizardry along with popular Christian bands, high-profile pastors, and marketplace gurus. But what differentiated this conference from a similar event 10 years ago was the pervasive presence of justice issues. Compassion International and a film about human trafficking were given significant time from the platform. A popular comedian spoke to the church leaders about his time visiting orphans in Africa, and there were endless plugs to donate old cars, shoes, or other items to help the poor or to fund the digging of wells for clean water. Surrounding the arena were also dozens of booths populated by ministries advocating free-trade products, the alleviation of third-world debt, children’s health, human rights, or the distribution of mosquito nets to prevent malaria.

This sudden popularity of global justice has caught some older evangelicals off guard. They are concerned that the under-40 crowd is abandoning conservative theology in favor of a social gospel often associated with Mainline and liberal denominations. What they fail to realize is that my generation is not rejecting orthodoxy. We are rejecting the false dichotomy that the American church has perpetuated for the last century. We refuse to believe that the gospel is either social or spiritual, eternal or temporal. Earlier generations of evangelicals were more interested in saving souls than seeking justice because a cup of cold water would be little comfort in the flames of hell. But my generation cannot shake the global perspective imprinted on our minds from our childhoods. The gospel, we believe, must have relevance for this world and not simply the next.

Obviously the Jumbo Jet Generation isn’t the first in the church to care about poverty, injustice, and global matters. Earlier eras have included Christians who also rejected the social/spiritual dichotomy. And there are prominent evangelical Baby Boomers, like Rick Warren, who have discovered the wider mission of the gospel and are advocating for the social and physical dimensions of the church’s mission. But what sets the younger generation apart is the scope of this awareness. Most of us didn’t need to be convinced that justice matters. We can’t recall having an “Ah ha!” moment like Rick Warren did when God’s concern for the poor suddenly jumped out at him from the pages of Scripture. Justice is native to our understanding of God and the world.

The rapid globalization of culture that has marked the four decades since the 747’s first flight helps explain why global justice is dominating the conversation among my generation in the church. But looking more carefully at how the Jumbo Jet Generation is pursuing justice reveals there may be turbulence ahead.

Let’s start with the false gospel side. As Matt Chandler explained, these de-churched are fed, knowingly or unknowingly, a false gospel of morality. They believe that if they just follow God’s rules he will bless their lives. When things fail to work out as promised, they bail on the church. Christian Smith, a sociologist of religion, has called this belief MTD-moralistic therapeutic deism. I prefer a more sinister and downright damnable name: Moralistic Divination-the belief that one can control and manipulate God’s actions through moral behaviors.

While there are many churches that promote this sort of false thinking, including those within the prosperity gospel crowd, I believe most do not. So why do so many Christians, particularly the young, carry these beliefs? In most cases the problem isn’t what the church is preaching, but in what it is assuming.

For example, the popular summarization of the gospel known as “The Four Spiritual Laws” begins with the statement, “God love you and has a wonderful plan for your life.” This idea, drawn from scripture and rooted in orthodoxy, may be faithfully preached in your church. But how is it received? How does a person formed and hardened for decades in the furnaces of consumerism hear this statement?

The biblical understanding of a “wonderful life” looks dramatically different than the consumer culture’s definition of a “wonderful life.” If this assumption is never identified, named, and deconstructed, a person may hear “God love you and has a wonderful plan for your life” very differently than we intend. This is the problem we must begin to address if we hope to slow the exodus of people from the church. It’s not that we are failing to preach the gospel, but that we are failing to deconstruct the consumer filter through which people twist and receive it. The result is a hybrid consumer gospel in which God exists to serve me and accomplish my desires in exchange for my obedience-voila, Moralistic Divination.

When this consumer gospel fails to deliver on its assumed promises, as it inevitably does, frustration, disappointment, and disillusionment quickly follow. And the pool of the de-churched gains another swimmer.

But what about the other side of the de-churched demographic-those who’ve left the church because they’ve found more meaningful relationships, mission, and transformation outside the parameters of the local church? They force us to examine a different issue-structure.

The recent book by Colin Marshall and Tony Payne, The Trellis and the Vine, illustrates the dilemma. In David Mathis’ review of the book he summarizes it’s core metaphor:

The vine of Christian ministry is people; the trellis is the various organizational structures that exist for the health of the vine. So vine work is “the work of watering and planting and helping people to grow in Christ”, while trellis work has to do with “rosters, property and building issues, committees, finances, budgets, overseeing the church office, planning and running events” (p. 9). The warning the authors offer repeatedly is that our tendency in Christian ministry is to let the trellis work take over the vine work (p. 9).

In other words, the structures and programs of the church exist to establish and equip the people. People do not exist to support and advance the structures and programs. Or as I put it in The Divine Commodity: “Every relational community, like a family, needs structure. But the goal of any structure should be strengthening, not replacing, human relationships which are the medium God uses to carryout his transforming work. The Holy Spirit inhabits human beings not institutions.”

When the church loses sight of this and begins seeing people as a means of bolstering the institution, it breeds cynicism. The faithful begin to feel like cogs in a machine, a means of production, human commodities. They don’t feel valued for who they are, but for what they can do, give, or contribute. And to be fair, this confusion between means and ends can happen in both large and small churches, in a megachurch or a house church.

The call then is too investigate anew our ecclesiology-both on the level of theory and practice. What do we really believe about the church? What is the proper role for structures and programs? What do we believe about God’s intention for his people and the role of spiritual leadership? And do our beliefs align with the structures we create and sustain?

My hunch is that where people feel like the priority, and where love rather than efficiency is the operating value, we will see far fewer people being de-churched. Unfortunately for the last few decades, our ecclesiology in North America has been heavily influenced by the values of secular corporations. And I can’t think of a profitable corporation that has achieved success by promoting love above efficiency.

Consider this excerpt from Dallas Willard in the spring issue of Leadership (What!? You’re not a subscriber! What are you waiting for?):

[Pastors] need to have a vision of success rooted in spiritual terms, determined by the vitality of a pastor’s own spiritual life and his capacity to pass that on to others. When pastors don’t have rich spiritual lives with Christ, they become victimized by other models of success-models conveyed to them by their training, by their experience in the church, or just by our culture. They begin to think their job is managing a set of ministry activities and success is about getting more people to engage those activities. Pastors, and those they lead, need to be set free from that belief.

What should we do about the de-churched? Clearly I’ve not answered that question entirely, but I hope these reflections provide some ideas to kick start your own thinking. For those leaving because they’ve held a false gospel of Moralistic Divination, we need to put on our prophetic camel hair coats and start deconstructing their consumer assumptions. For those leaving in search of a more authentic life with Christ, we need to turn those prophetic pronouncements upon ourselves and examine our own assumptions about the way we lead and minister. Taking either approach seriously may result in fewer de-churched Christians…or your head on a platter.

The shift from “evangelizing non-Christians” to “reaching the unchurched” was perceived as benign at the time, but it represented an important shift in our understanding of mission. The church was no longer just a means by which Christ’s mission would advance in the world, it was also the end of that mission. The goal wasn’t simply to introduce the unchurched to Christ, but—as the term reveals—to engage them in a relationship with the institutional church. This paved the way for the ubiquitous (but flawed) belief today that “mission” is synonymous with “church growth.” (Another post for another day.)

Well, another new term is on the rise and gaining attention among evangelicals in North America. Those without a past relationship to the church are called unchurched, but there are many with significant past church involvement who are exiting. They are the de-churched.

Matt Chandler, pastor of The Village Church near Dallas, explains the de-churched phenomenon in this short video.

The problem arises when God’s blessing doesn’t come—or doesn’t come in the form we want. Divorce, illness, poor grades, failed relationship—virtually any hardship has the potential to destroy one’s faith in Christ and the church that represents him. So, according to Chandler, people walk away. They enter the ranks of the de-churched.

I think Chandler is right—but only half.

There is another group within the de-churched population that has not held to a false gospel of morality, and they haven’t walked away from faith in Christ. These Christians have simply lost confidence in the institutional structures and programmatic trappings of the church. For them the institutional church is not an aid in their faith and mission. Rather it’s become a drain on time, resources, and energy. It feels like a black hole with a gravitation pull so strong that not even the light of the gospel can escape its organizational appetite.

As I’ve traveled and encountered de-churched Christians, including some friends, I’ve found they tend to fall into three categories. (These are generalizations, as all categories are, but they may prove helpful.)

1. The Relationally De-Churched

These Christians have come to recognize that human beings are the vessels of God’s Spirit and not organizations. They may have first engaged the institutional church because they longed for meaningful relationships with other followers of Christ. They may have joined a small group or found a tight network of friends through whom they lived out the “one another” commands in Scripture.

But over time it dawned on them—This small group is really my church. These are the people I am living out the gospel with. Why do we need the big institution? Ironically, a number of house churches have started as megachurch-spawned small groups—a trend even documented by Time magazine back in 2006 and currently seen in the “Organic Church” movement.

Ultimately the relationally de-churched leave the institution because the programs proved less effective at fostering faith and love than relationships with actual people. And the authenticity they crave and experience in their small group eclipses the relative shallowness of the wider church. Let’s face it—authenticity becomes more difficult the larger a group becomes. But it’s worth noting that these folks haven’t abandoned the church theologically, they’ve just redefined it apart from the 501c3 organization we culturally identity as a “church.”

2. The Missionally De-Churched

“If the church were doing the work God appointed it to do, there would be no parachurch organizations.” Have you heard that one before? It’s a popular defense I heard many times while serving with a campus ministry in college—and there is some truth to it despite the self-righteous cheekiness.

If the relationally de-churched abandon the institutional church because they desire authenticity, the missionally de-churched leave because they are die-hard activists. They are driven to see the world impacted by the gospel whether via evangelism, compassion, justice, or other facet of God’s restorative work. They may become frustrated that the institutional church spends enormous amounts of energy and resources maintaining itself rather than advancing the mission.

I’ve had a few friends deeply involved in such parachurch groups confess that “even though we don’t take communion or baptize, in every other regard the ministry functions as my church.”

3. The Transformationally De-Churched

Last spring we published an issue of Leadership Journal which included an article by John Burke, pastor of Gateway Church in Austin. Gateway is comprised of many recovering addicts, and as a result the church has incorporated a lot of recovery group values into its community—rigorous honesty, acceptance, dependency on God, and grace. But Gateway is an exception. Many churches give these values lip-service, but few are able to instill them into the culture.

In that same issue of Leadership, Matt Russell wrote about the year he spent interviewing de-churched people in his community. He wrote:

Most people left church not because they had a deep theological problem with something like the virgin birth or the resurrection of Christ. They left because people in the church have the tendency to be small and mean and couldn’t deal honestly with their own sins or the sin of others. As one man put it, “People in the church were more invested in the process of being right than in the process of being honest.”

Russell spent a lot of time with de-churched people in recovery from drugs, alcohol, sex addiction, eating disorders, and gambling. The level of healing and transformation many of them experienced in their recovery groups was far greater than what they ever knew in the church. I’ve spoken with a number of men who have experienced significant life transformation via a parachurch men’s ministry in my area. They’ve expressed to me “that this is what the church is supposed to be doing.” When deep life change happen outside the church, it can make you second guess the church’s vital role and, like Matt Russell’s interviewees, drop out altogether.

So, where does this leave us? On one side the de-churched are leaving because they’ve received a false gospel that made promises God has failed to fulfill. On the other side are deeply committed Christians who are finding more meaningful authenticity, mission, and transformation outside the institutional structures of the church. What is the church supposed to do?

That’s the question I’ll address in Part 2. Until then, you’ll want to check out this video about the “Why Church?” contest we’re holding as part of the 12 Cities 12 Conversations tour in partnership with the Lausanne Movement: