Is Everybody Happy?

The Church Relevance Blog (see sidebar) has a conversation going called “Boring Typical Church” where they point out that according to the Barna Group, “Half of Americans say they know a growing number of people who are tired of the usual type of church experience.” That is an oddly-stated statistic “half of Americans say they know a growing number….” but it appears to mean that at least half of the American population believes a growing number of people are dissatisfied with what is going on in church. And that number is growing.

Of course as we all know, one person’s “trash” is someone else’s “treasure.” One person’s boring or unsatisfactory church experience could be someone else’s dream church experience. What’s worse – these two people with their disparate experiences can be (and often are) sitting in the same church service just a few feet apart.

The responses to the Church Relevance blog post run the usual gamut from rants against the contemporary church with their loud music and mind-numbing media, to assaults on the traditional church with their high-brow services, huge buildings and big budgets while single moms are struggling to pay for diapers.

So what is the answer? How do we proceed? Is there a middle ground? If you were starting a church today, what should you aim to be? I am certainly no expert, but I believe there are a few principles to consider that might prove helpful.

First – whatever you do must be authentic. It must be “you.” We are all guilty of jumping on the latest, greatest bandwagon, regardless of whether what we are mimicking is really “us,” or not. While every church shares the Great Commission to “go and make disciples” each church must discover the distinct ways God is calling that particular congregation to do so.

Second – it must be biblical. Read the Book of Acts. The early church was on fire and everything the church did stemmed from the love of God and issued from dead center of God's will. The Spirit was palpable; there was life, excitement, joy and ministry all done in a spirit of "want to" and not "have to" or "ought to."

Third - the church must concentrate on building relationships. Study after study has shown that people today are searching for community, not another obligation to fulfill or another place to be. The basic principle of church life - the glue that holds churches together whether they are big churches or small ones - is relationships. That's also where smaller churches (like NewSong) have an advantage - if that's what people are searching for, we can do relationships better than the "big guys." What's more, relationships are also essential to effective evangelism.

Finally - and this is the tough one given what I have just said in #3, the church must be outward focused. The buzz word for this today is missional. A missional church is a community (relationships) of disciples (the product) in mission to their community and the world. The bane of every church seems to be that it starts with a passion to change the world by serving others and soon succumbs to an attitude of “serve me” or "it's all about us." The people in the early church did not need to be cajoled or coddled or catered to. There was no “club mentality,” no “what’s-in-it-for-me” mentality back then. Instead the church was a catalyst for change to the world around it. This disease of being excessively inward focused, dubbed koinonitis by C. Peter Wagner, has reached epidemic proportions today. When in doubt about the importance of being missional or outward focused, remember these famous words from Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Letters and Papers from Prison) who wrote, “The church is the church only when it exists for others."

I am sure you can think of other important principles. I suppose what I am trying to say is that the answer to the growing dissatisfaction with the church today is not to ask the question, "Is everybody happy?" Instead we should be asking questions like, "Is what we are doing 'us'?" (authentic). "Is what we are doing biblical?" And, "Are we growing closer to one another as we draw closer to God?" (relationships). And finally, "Would our church be missed if it did not exist?" (outward focused).

What do you think?