In a recent conversation with an acquaintance of mine, he told me that he was planning to leave the church. When he explained why, I realized that they were the same reasons that I had been struggling with spiritually during my years at Southern.
In an effort to make the church more relevant to millennials, we have made our faith unpalatable in general. We seek to entertain, but the world beats us every time. We sing Hillsong mantras about hurricanes and trees. We preach the gospel with the offense of the cross taken out, and we wonder why people get bored. In short, we are inundated with a feeling-based faith that does little to help us practically.
Our weakness is that we have forgotten the biblical focus on overcoming sin. Instead of wanting God’s power to save us from ourselves, we want something that can save us from everything else. Despite the fact that the Bible consistently reminds us that our hearts are deceitful, we consistently base spiritual decisions on how we feel.
When the sum of people in our religion is trying to look cool and not offend everyone or attempting to make everyone feel good, we fail at appealing to people who want something that can change their lives.
You see, so many people in the world are looking for a way to stop falling into the temptations that they struggle with. Christians have the key—we may not think it’s possible, but if we believe God’s promises, He can help us stop sinning here and now. But we desperately try to hide what will attract people to the church because we’re afraid someone will call us legalists.
If Southern started to preach that we can overcome sin like Jesus did and emphasize Christian standards, maybe the people that I deeply care about would start to see the attractiveness of the gospel. I have struggled myself as, after feeling-based services, I’ve wondered what Christianity has to offer for me.
Instead of continuing this trend, we should start encouraging people to preach something with the power to change lives.