Jeremy L. Berg

I was blessed to have met a new friend in Nashville recently at a church planting assessment center.  Tim Morey is a humble, thoughtful pastor and leader with keen insights into what it looks like for the church to reach the 21st century culture.  He is a church planting pastor and the author of “Embodying Our Faith”, which I have heard great things about and can’t wait to read myself.

His new blog is worthy of your time as well, and today points us to two good insights from Skye Jethani on the so-called “dechurched” camp:

Check out part 2 of Skye Jethani’s article on the dechurched.  Some great insights on two reasons so many end up in the dechurched camp (or lack thereof).  First, the strong presence of a consumer mindset in 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 . . .”

And second, the effect of structural preservation overshadowing love for and formation of the people:

“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 . . . 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.”

Do you agree with Jethani’s two observations?