Have you ever felt compelled to write something that you didn’t really want to? I find myself at such a crossroads at the moment. I have been pondering something for quite a long time and it feels like now is the right time to put fingers to the keyboard. Over the last few weeks, I have been sharing my musings with a few close friends over coffee because I couldn’t keep them contained anymore. I must confess that I was a bit nervous about opening up and sharing something that might be initially perceived as negative.  Most of us don’t like forced change and often we get angry when driven to it. Yet, there I was with everything inside me crying out that great change is coming! Thankfully, I have wonderful friends who have heard me out and are now seriously considering what I had to share. I’d like to take the next few paragraphs to try and put into written words a summary of what I’m feeling and pondering these days.

I have had a strong sense for the last few years that God has wanted to bring some significant changes to the lifestyle and expression of the Christian community in the West and in particular, the US. While many of us assume and others would argue vehemently that our churches are “New Testament” expressions, we would be hard pressed to actually find much of how we express our faith daily, recorded in the New Testament. The way we live, the way we relate to those outside our community and the way we view ministry are all very different from our first century brothers and sisters.  That doesn’t necessarily make it wrong, but it is dissimilar from the lifestyle and motivations of our forefathers. Why is that? Whether we care to admit it or not, the influence of the larger secular culture affects us more than we would like to acknowledge. When you look at the expressions of Christianity in places like China, the Middle East or Africa, why do they look so different than those in the US? While there a number of reasons, I would like to focus on two that I think are very significant.

First, is that we are blessed with the political freedom to express our faith in our society without persecution from the government or our fellow citizens. The very founding of our nation was laid on the colossal pillar of freedom of religious expression. We are free to worship in whatever manner we want without fear of being thrown into prison or losing our lives. In fact this freedom is so taken for granted that we just assume that it is the status quo, the expected way of life. Since it would be cultural and political suicide to attack this foundational pillar with a full frontal public assault, those that have wanted to quiet the voice of the Christian community and nullify its influence, are slowly and discreetly eroding away at the base of the pillar. When you look back over the last 40 years you will see that little by little public displays of Christian expression are disappearing from our culture. Christians and Christian principles are being driven out of our public life in the arenas of government, education, media and business.  Christian thought and discourse is being confined to restricted areas like churches and religious institutions. Frankly, our influence is slowly becoming non-existent in the public sector being replaced by humanism which believes that the goodness of mankind will save us. At the moment Christians are seen as irritating and culturally irrelevant. If this trend continues (and I don’t see it changing) we will reach the tipping point where society will see Christians as “the problem.” Study your history as this has happened before. Should that pillar of religious freedom ever suddenly collapse, how and with whom we express our faith would change drastically. The fox keeps visiting the hen house but only killing one hen at a time. One day soon we may wake up and find our brood is completely gone and we never noticed it slowly shrinking!

The second great pillar that our current church culture is built upon is economic prosperity. The most common question I get from my friends visiting from overseas is “how come there are so many churches in America?” There are a number of reasons why that is but the most straightforward one is because we can afford it! We have lived in a culture that affords us the opportunity to subdivide the Christian community into many subsets each with its own place of worship. It has also allowed us to build massive church buildings, TV Networks, Radio Stations, and Universities etc. In summary, the Christian community is really big business, a multi-billion dollar industry!

What has captured my attention lately, is watching the developments of the last few months.  Many elements of the Christian community here in the US are in as deep financial trouble as many of the major corporations. Hummm… There is not a day that goes by that I don’t get an email from some ministry or religious organization that is in deep financial trouble. I have wondered how the New Testament church would have dealt with this. Oh yeah, I don’t ever recall the Apostle Paul having a budget crisis and laying off staff members. I do realize that the world we live in is a vastly different one from the 1^st Century. My point is that while we say we are a New Testament expression, that church was actually born and developed in a culture that was extremely hostile to Christianity! Being a Christian cost you something. Believing in the teachings of Jesus was a tangible life and death issue. Ones faith was forged in the furnace of affliction and was tested daily.

 I have asked myself of late, “What if God wanted to strengthen the soul of the western Church or change its expression of Christianity? Why couldn’t He just raise up prophetic voices to turn us down a new path?” Sure, and He has done that before but we Christians have a nasty habit of killing them! Historically, the Christian community tends to not reform itself from within. Most reform is inflicted on Christianity by external forces such as political, economic, religious, social and environmental oppression. This might come as a shock to many, but missiologists (those that study church growth) tell us that the church grows when it’s persecuted! In fact, the fastest growing Christian communities today are in places where there is no political freedom or financial prosperity for Christians! In the natural world we know that resistance builds strength. It seems that this same principle applies in the spiritual world as well.

 This is a hard question to ask ones self, but what if we who think that we are strong are really weak. What if we have been seduced into believing that because we have such wonderful large churches with such wonderful programs and big budgets we are the strong Christians? There is no doubt that the Christian community in America and the UK has been by far the most influential force for global evangelization in the last 150 years. One significant development though that I see, is that our motivations have changed significantly over that time. Our great-great grandparents saw their “calling” very different than we do today. They saw themselves as bond-servants whose lives were not their own. They were willing to lose them for the sake of the Kingdom of God. They were selfless in their pursuits and their creed was “Thy Will Be Done.”

The current view of the vast majority of western Christians is that church is there to serve me while our forefathers saw church as the place we serve others. Churches today are designed to be smorgasbords of programs all designed to fulfill “my needs" and make me feel better about myself. We go shopping for churches to find the one that best suits our needs. Go to any Christian bookstore and look at the bestseller display, it will make my point for me. If you haven't realized it, it’s all about me! We’ve developed our own self-help industry. We live in a church culture in America that the early church fathers would not even recognize. In many ways it’s the antithesis of everything that drove them to lay down their lives for us. They looked for opportunities to be “poured out” and we look to be “poured into.” They saw themselves as "living sacrifices  and bond-servants" to the will of God. We see the will of God as predetermined to meet all my needs and wants.

What most of us don’t realize is how close we are to the tipping point and how fast things can deteriorate once that happens. Study history, the unexpected comes quickly. Cultures, people groups and Christian communities have had to adapt very quickly to sudden and dramatic change that forces radical lifestyle changes and new expressions of community. The amazing thing that always happens is that the Christian community emerges, stronger, more vibrant and practically powerful. Years ago I owned a remodeling business and learned that most times you have to teardown before you can build up. While the season ahead is daunting and will force us out of our comfort zone, there is a huge opportunity in front of us if we will look for it.

 “In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.” –Eric Hoffer