Is This What Jesus Had In Mind?

Everyone should read the comment "Swimmin' Upstream" wrote in response to my last post. It expresses where far too many people are within established Christian congregations and organized religious expressions. This may be where some Jesus-followers and people living far from God have some common territory. Perhaps they share a mutual discouragement with organized religion as an institution.

There has been much buzz this week around a headline article that appeared in USA Today on Monday, March 9. Under the headline, "Almost all denominations losing ground, survey finds," Cathy Lynn Grossman noted that the percentage of people in the United States who call themselves some type of Christian has dropped 11% in 18 years. In addition, the researched revealed that the number of Americans who claim no religion at all has risen from 8% in 1990 to 15% currently. A lot of hand-wringing and teeth-gnashing seems to be taking place over all this, especially in mainline denominations.

It's interesting that other sources keep telling us that openness to things spiritual is relatively high now, particularly among younger generations. It might be the case that people are at least willing to consider the possibility of a connection with Something or Someone beyond them, if they're not in fact hungry for such. However, they have little to no confidence in organized, institutional expressions of faith. This may not be fair, and, in fact, it may be downright offensive to many church people. But it is what it is...

We who are church folks need to ask at least two tough questions of ourselves. First, we should introspectively ask, "Why would people want to become like us?" In addition, we should ask a painful but necessary question, suggested by Rob Bell. Looking at how we do church - where we put our time, focus, energy, and resources - and ask, "Is this really what Jesus had in mind?"

Those are two tough questions to ask...maybe too tough. I'll see you around the next bend in the river.