Phenomenon of the Dones

By Wayne Jacobsen in a continuing series on The Phenomenon of the Dones.  You can also read this blog in Spanish: Monetizando el Ministerio.

“Follow the Money!”

Since Watergate it has been the prevailing wisdom to ferret out excess and corruption in our treasured institutions. There is something about money, especially in huge amounts, that causes people to justify compromising their integrity by making personal gain more important than the Father’s purposes.

As an increasing number of people are disillusioned with the abuse and excesses of our religious institutions many also have a growing awareness that those same institutions have strayed from the purity and simplicity of devotion to Christ. Perhaps they need to look no further than how money and high finance have corrupted the authenticity of the Gospel. When someone or an institution makes their livelihood from the God’s things, it is easy to be seduced into thinking that serving their bottom line also serves the work of Christ.

And while I’m not suggesting it is wrong for people to make their living from their ministry I don’t think we are critical enough in assessing how often the best economic choices are at odds with how God works and thus end up distorting the Gospel even as we claim to follow it. Why have we committed the vitality of his kingdom to the same business models used by every other human enterprise in the world and what are the consequences of doing so?

Isn’t that why we have ended up with a plethora of religious institutions that are more often preoccupied with their own power and security than they are demonstrating Christ’s love in the world? Some would argue that the religious industry we created is just a natural extension of the things Jesus taught, and the way to get his message in the world. However, the excesses and distortions of our institutions say otherwise and many have grown unchecked for centuries. Is it just coincidence that our large institutions pay exorbitant salaries to those at the top or can justify harming others to protect themselves and their organization?

In my last article on this series I concluded that the reason we have more large-scale meetings about the life of Jesus when personal conversations can be far more fruitful, is because we don’t have a business model that undergirds more personal connections. We have an industry for teachers and writers that rewards those who are successful at leveraging the marketplace for money and influence. But not all that influence has reflected well the nature and message of Christ.

Jesus warned us that the reality of his kingdom would not mix well with the human thirst for money and power. The ability for any of us to believe something just because it is in our self-interest is well documented in psychological testing. I’m not talking here about people who deceive others for money, but our ability to convince ourselves something is true that isn’t, so long as we profit enough for doing so. And the more money involved, the easier it is to deceive ourselves and others around us. It’s called cognitive dissonance where we justify what we know is wrong because we feel as if we have to.

I used to teach tithing as a New Testament mandate. I grew up with that conviction and had no problem making that conclusion from Scripture when my salary was drawn from those to whom I taught it. Only when my income was no longer attached to other people’s tithes could I begin to see that God’s purpose in the new covenant was not the obligation of tithing but joy of generosity that would spill out of our hearts. Tithing is a cheap substitute in that light.

The Gospel as a Gift

Monetizing anything changes the nature of it. I’ve watched the apps on my smartphone or websites I frequent all become worse when the goal is to monetize it rather than provide the service for which it was originally intended. Who even remembers Facebook when it was just information about your friends rather than an endless string of advertisements and political posturing? Nothing is made better by monetizing it; in fact it often becomes twisted by benefiting the provider more than the one it was meant to serve. Nowhere is that more true than the Gospel.

When Lewis Hyde wrote about Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) in his classic book on creativity, The Gift, he pointed to one of its characteristics that has assured not only its effectiveness but also it’s longevity: participating is AA free, and it always has been. Nothing is bought or sold; no one makes his living from facilitating its meetings. “Local groups are autonomous and meet their minimal expenses—coffee, literature—through member contributions. Those grateful for the impact it has had on their lives, volunteer their time to help others. Hyde concluded, “AA probably wouldn’t be as effective, in fact, if the program was delivered through the machinery of the market, not because its lessons would have to change, but because the spirit behind them would be different.” He asserts that the gift may be the actual agent of change, and that selling a transformative gift falsifies the relationship between the two parties.

Do you hear Jesus’ words, “Freely you have received, freely give,” running through your mind? I do. What would the church of Jesus Christ be like today if it had followed AA’s model of generosity and volunteerism instead of McDonald’s model of franchise marketing? Even AA’s approach has been corrupted when congregations make it part of their ministry with a staff position and a line item in the budget. Though it starts out having a profound impact on lives, it often ends up an object of conflict and competition as people fight for position and ownership.

Part of the reason we have so many different religious institutions has to do with contest for money and power. The larger they grow the more demand there is to protect and provide for the machinery. Jealousies and power struggles are the natural result and the disaffected go off to start their own. We prove we’re businesses when we labor under the ultimatums of large donors, or force departing pastors to sign non-compete clauses to get their severance pay. Once someone has to be paid a salary, or buildings have to be provided, the decision-making revolves around economics and nothing distorts the life of Jesus more quickly than the business model, flow charts, and insatiable need for money. It is no longer a gift; it’s a big business with many depending on its sustenance and growth. Our entire religious system is built that way from seminaries, to churches and publishers.

Jesus said it was impossible to serve God and money. We think we can blend them without consequence but money always wins out, even among those that start out with the loftiest ideals. Money blinds us to the ways God works and the need for it pressures us to do what we wouldn’t otherwise freely choose to do. I know pastors who walk on eggshells each week, knowing they can’t honestly share their journey and not run into trouble with some faction in the church. I worked with a publisher that wanted me to change the content of He Loves Me so the freedom it espoused wouldn’t threaten pastors and they would be more inclined to read it from their pulpits and an editor that wouldn’t print an article I’d written even though he loved it because it might offend the subscriber base and they would cancel their subscriptions. We all know even a few percentage point decline in offerings or subscribers can mean spell a quick end to many of our institutions.

I know that’s hard to see from the inside. Everyone thinks they are doing God’s will as best they know how, rarely considering how much their need for income shapes their actions. I’ve told many a pastor who is critical of those who are done with their congregation, “If you could just step away from all of this for two years, you would be shocked at the things you’d discover when money no longer influences your ministry.” I had no idea myself how much the economic religious systems we’ve created blurred my vision until I found myself no longer dependent on it. What was scary at first turned out to be a great blessing.

In short we get the Gospel we pay for, or click on, and the cost of that means we’re losing the vitality of the life of Jesus. Those who would be leaders have to make it complicated so people will buy their books and attend their seminars. I heard one man say recently to a group of ministers wanting to enhance their income to take their best teaching and craft it into a set of principles. “If you can systematize it, you can monetize it.” Yes, he pinged my yuck meter, but it does explain why we have more five-point plans than we have people ready to equip others to follow Jesus.

Most ministries begin with the question of what has to be done to finance it. From the start money becomes the overriding consideration rather the content of the message they hope to convey. Most conscientious pastor I know would love to be independently wealthy and not be controlled by the boards and expectations of others. They recognize how much it encroaches on their liberty and influences their decisions. It’s not that money is intrinsically evil; it’s that the need for it is inherently deceptive.

“Full Time Ministry”

Yet “full-time” Christian ministry is the dream of so many people and that exists now almost exclusively inside a religious marketplace that generates hundreds of millions of dollars in sales and donations. For some they just hope to find a vocation in the religious industry either to work around Christians or in hopes of finding purpose and meaning. What many don’t realize is how much time you’ll spend managing people, fundraising, and program planning to keep the machinery running and how complicated it can be when other egos get involved.

Not all of this is bad, of course. While some of it genuinely supports God’s work in the world there’s a significant part of it works against him. Many Christian publishers are now publicly traded corporations, whose only purpose is to maximize profits for the shareholders. Other just trade in religious content to carve out a lucrative lifestyle. Is it any surprise that our religious industries function exactly like their worldly counterparts valuing the same things they do—size, influence, money, and notoriety? When that happens you can be sure that we’ve moved from the kingdom of God to a kingdom of our own making.  Jesus told us “what people value highly is detestable in God’s sight.” (Luke 16:15) We may still be talking about his kingdom, but we’ve long since ceased to serve it. His kingdom values obscurity over notoriety, serving others over being served, small and flexible over large and rigid, and following his leading whatever it risks instead of making the best business decision.

I’m not arguing that all publishing is evil or that selling a book or that all advertising on a website of itself dishonors the kingdom. This is a heavily nuanced consideration and one that I continue to wrestle with. I have worked for religious organizations, owned a publishing company, sold a lot of my own books all of which helped provide for my family.. That said, there can be great value in freeing up the time of more mature brothers and sisters to help others find their growth and freedom in Christ. That can be a great blessing even though the pitfalls are enormous and we don’t have the best track record over the last 2000 years proving any of us can resist those temptations.

Maybe Watchman Nee had it right in The Normal Christian Church Life, when he offered a different way of thinking for those who make their living by the Gospel: “Every worker, no matter what his ministry, must exercise faith for the meeting of all his personal needs and all the needs of his work. In God’s Word we read of no worker asking for, or receiving, a salary for his services. That God’s servants should look to human sources for the supply of their needs has no precedent in Scripture. No servant of God should look to any human agency, whether an individual or a society, for the meeting of his temporal needs. If they can be met by the labor of his own hands or from a private income, well and good. Otherwise he should be directly dependent on God alone for their supply, as were the early apostles. …If a man can trust God, let him go and work for Him. If not, let him stay at home, for he lacks the first qualification for the work.”

The first time I read that I felt sick. It’s what I’d always feared was true. Who could live that way? It was the stuff of Rees Howells, not Wayne Jacobsen. In the intervening years, however, I’ve been convinced otherwise. We were not given a message of love to turn it into an income stream. The Gospel was never meant to be someone’s source of living; it was meant to set a world free into the love of a Gracious Father.

It’s one thing to make a life or teaching available and live off the generosity that might come from that, and another thing to monetize the ministry, distort the Scriptures wittingly or unwittingly, and exploit people with guilt to increase the money flow. It’s less about where the money comes from than it is the dangers of distorting the Gospel when our livelihood is at stake. If our dependence is on him, there will be no reason to distort the message for personal gain, even if some of the mechanism includes books sales.

I have no problem with people deriving income from their craft, whether it is carpentry, car sales, writing or teaching. This is not an argument against people being in full time ministry. It is the consideration that when we seek to use the Gospel as our income stream we will unwittingly distort it. You’ll know them because maximizing sales is their goal, not helping others find their life and freedom in Jesus. Some can work inside that system as God gives opportunity, but won’t sell out to their ambitions.

It’s not an easy road to walk and I have plenty of regrets about past decisions I’ve made, but the more I’ve learned to trust Father for my resource and simply put things in the world to bless others, the easier it has been to follow my conscience and not financial expedience. Though I sell books, I also give them away and have free resources on my website to help others. I travel at my own expense and do not charge a fee for speaking. I’ve come to rely on God’s generosity and it has made all the difference.

It’s Not about Changing the System, It’s Letting God Change You

Is this article going to change our vast religious industry? No, and that’s not why I’m writing it.

How we navigate that space discerningly is critical to the future of God’s purpose in the world. For most these words will hold no more impact than spitting into gale-force winds, but I’m writing primarily for those who want to be a voice for God in the world, not those who simply want to make their living in the religious trade. I realize there are many writers, artists, pastors, and teachers who prefer to make their living in this industry and aren’t too worried about the larger issue as to how their institution expresses God’s character in the world. For those who care about God’s purpose in the word I hope it makes you wiser as you engage the religious marketplace and encourage you to live differently in the face of it.

When something in the religious marketplace doesn’t seem right to you, look to the financial demands behind it and sniff out whether it is influencing what is being said or done. How do you know? If it breeds an ongoing dependency on the person behind it, if the website is more about building a personal kingdom than God’s, or if it offers formulas and principles instead of Christ then don’t buy into it. They are really not that hard to spot when the website is so filled with ads it looks like a race car or if it promises something for free, but only in exchange for your email address. There’s a generosity inside God’s working that will prevent people from using the same conventions the world does to build up its businesses.

Recognize the difference between a gifted man or woman putting light and life into the world and those who are wrapped up in the machinery of the marketplace and are constantly trying to exploit their audience to maximize their income through sales, website clicks, or charging exorbitant fees for conferences or seminars. Does it look like they are maximizing their exposure and income, or genuinely looking for ways to build others up? Do they fall into the industry trap of producing a new book every year that doesn’t bring anything new to the table? Do they easily move between the “church world” and the business world offering the same wisdom be it in book sales, building your platform, or branding our message. Holding special workshops with their own in-house terminology, so they can train others to do it exactly the way we do it is a sure sign that someone is building their own empire rather than freely sharing their gift.

You can tell money has trapped you in ministry if you don’t have the freedom to follow your heart without risking your income. I know many pastors who stay in ministry admitting they are making the worst of a bad situation because they don’t think they are employable outside of it. If your need is to make a living or pay bills you will make an entirely different set of decisions than if you didn’t have to worry about money at all knowing God would take care of you. The world puts more of a premium on the job skills of those who’ve been in ministry more than the individual himself. Those who have led volunteer organizations, managed budgets, trained others, and can act responsibly are valuable assets in the business world. I’ve seen many former pastors go on to fruitful careers and more time for real ministry with others than they did hassling the politics of a religious institution. Don’t just bury your head and go along for fear God can’t take care of you. Find what he really has for you and as you blossom in it you’ll also find ministry more a joy when it is a gift than a means of income.

For those who want to share their gifts with the body of Christ beyond their personal connections, separate the gift from your income stream or else the lust for influence and security will shape the message in ways you won’t recognize. Let God teach you how he wants to be your provider, whether that’s by some tentmaking enterprise as Paul did, or employment that leaves you some free time to help others. If you can trust God to provide for you and make yourself available, do so. The proof will be in his provision. I’ve seen many go down that road to bankruptcy in presumption of a calling God had not given them. If you have to go into debt to follow him; it isn’t him. That doesn’t mean you have to give everything away.

I think a writer is worth his book sales, or a teacher worth his expenses, just make sure you’re not manipulating people to get what you want. However, if you’ve ever watched someone switch from offering their insights as a gift, to monetizing it every way they can, it is not a pretty sight and their message gets twisted. You can seek popularity or you can trade in the truth, but the don’t go hand-in-hand. Some even boast of making six figures from advertising on their ministry website and even spend time teaching others how to do it, but in doing so they’ve become less a gift to the body of Christ. For most people it doesn’t work anyway. It is not easy to make a living from your creative gifts be they in writing, speaking, video, music, or acting. The creative arts reward a select view obscenely and the rest meagerly. Everyone with a creative bent would love to make it their vocation rather than a hobby, but only very few find enough opportunity to do that. Make it your labor of love and let it grow organically rather than through false promotion and manipulation. If it generates enough opportunity and income to free up your time, be grateful to God but in the long run it isn’t your choice.

Don’t look for things to do to pay the bills. Do what you do because God asks and watch him provide in ways you can’t imagine. If you are more excited about helping others than being known, there is plenty of opportunity already around you. There is so much you can freely give away if you don’t have to worry about being compensated for it.

Let generosity grow. In time, those who’ve been touched by your life may want to help support you to share that same benefit with others. To me this is the best kind of giving, not from the people I’m with at the moment, but from others I touched in the past in gratitude for what God did in them. At financially critical times in my past we’d receive money from someone completely unsolicited who said they’d been touched by something I’d said or written and wanted to help us be able to share it with others. It’s amazing how God provides that way just at the right time and without having to make our need known. It’s a great way for people to help put the kingdom into the world.

And for those who have extra resources to help spread the kingdom support those you consider gifted at helping others in this journey, either by teaching or counseling and know them well enough to know they are living examples of a transformed life. And don’t think I’m not writing this for some hidden need at Lifestream. We honestly don’t need it, but it is a powerful way others can help put conversations that matter into the world without having to create ministries and churches that have expensive infrastructure and priorities other than participating in Jesus’ kingdom. Don’t wait until you’re asked, follow the Spirit as he guides you.

The freedom to give his life away is the heart of real ministry. Admittedly embracing that freedom is not easy and it has a long, steep growth curve. Trust without a relationship and without following his desires is merely presumption. You just can’t choose to trust more, it only grows out of a deepening relationship with him.  But where you learn to trust God with your provision you’ll be free from the demands of money that will shape you in the world’s image. Unfortunately institutions don’t reward that process and will usually hire men and women who trust the powers of their office more than the Father who loves them.

I was in vocational ministry from the moment I left college. It wasn’t until I was 42 that I had someone simply ask if they could get my help who didn’t feel as if I was getting paid to give it to them. The difference in that encounter from a thousand counseling appointments I had done in the twenty years previous was palpable and its fruitfulness was far greater than anything I had known. When he left, his gratitude was effusive, because he had received it as a gift, not fulfilled an expectation. That made the impact of our time all the greater for both of us. That moment started me down a different road than I’d known before. Serving others is a gift. There is no way to monetize it without tainting it, so give his life away and watch how his generosity will care for you.

Then you will no longer have to follow the money.  You’ll be free to follow the Lamb wherever he goes.

__________________

This is part 10 in a series on The Phenomenon of the Dones by Wayne Jacobsen who is the author of Finding Church and host of a podcast at TheGodJourney.com.  You can read the first half here and subsequent parts below:

• Part 8: Five Factors Contributing to the Decline in “Church Attendance”
• Part 9: An Invitation Not An Imposition
• Part 10: The Conversations that Matter Most

If you’d like to subscribe to this blog and receive future posts by email you can sign up at the top of the right-hand column.

Over thirty-five years ago I was with a group of pastors discussing where we felt most alive in “the ministry”. It didn’t take long for me to answer. It came in those moments when I stood on the edge of a stage, Bible in hand, expounding some Scripture with my voice raised, more words in my mouth than I could get out in a reasonable amount of time and holding the crowd in the palm of my hands as they hung on every word either laughing uproariously or moved to tears by some insight I was sharing.

But I was only in my mid-20s at the time so my ignorance can be excused. I wouldn’t give the same answer today. As I look back I now know how deeply that moment appealed to my own needs more than it served those listening to me. Now I find my greatest joy opening a door for someone to see into a bigger reality and watching the lights come on in their heart.

Look at the contrasting pictures above—one is of me speaking at a conference in Germany a few years ago, the other of me sharing in a home in Brazil around the same time. For most people drawn into “ministry” it would be the one on the left. It is so much easier to follow a pre-planned outline than to risk a free-flowing conversation with unforeseen struggles and difficult questions.

If you were going to be with someone you wanted to learn from, where would you rather be—part of a large audience or have a conversation over a meal? If I was invited to a golf lesson from a famous golf pro I would much prefer he and I alone on a driving range than being in a stadium watching him on a Jumbotron. And how different the lesson would be, too! For the stage he’d talk in generalities and everyone would have to try the same technique hours later when they got to a golf course when they no longer remember the lesson. If was just the two of us he could look at my swing, listen to the problems I’m having, and offer me solutions I could immediately try.

Over the past forty years, I’ve watched a lovely shift in my thinking about teaching and helping others on this journey. I’ve gone from thinking success and efficiency are found where I address a macro audience—a number of people I don’t know through sermons, podcasting, or publishing—to knowing that the most transformative moments come in conversations with people I’m getting to know.

My first wake-up call came over twenty years ago as I sat town for a Tuesday lunch with a close friend of mine. Before we even sat down he wanted to tell me how great my sermon had been Sunday morning. “That was the best sermon I ever heard and I’ll never be the same.” When I asked what had particularly touched him so, he got a lost look on his face as he tried to reach back in his memory. For the next five minutes I watched him squirm uncomfortably because he couldn’t remember one point of it, not even the text. He begged me to help but now I was intrigued to see why he was so excited about a sermon he couldn’t remember two days later. This was not a man given to empty flattery. It made me wonder how effective a lecture is as a teaching tool.

As I’ve traveled over the last twenty years, I’ve been particularly aware that the smaller and more interactive the conversations were, the more enduring fruit they produced. I now know that the engagements that happen before and after the meetings have the most impact on others. Riding in a car, sitting down to a meal, or just pausing to answer an individual question all have more impact. That’s why I prefer to stay in homes not hotels, and prefer conversations to speaking engagements.

As I read the Gospels now, it is easy to see that Jesus spent a lot more time in personal engagements than he did lecturing crowds. He talked with the Pharisees; he didn’t debate them. He was in their homes as well as those of his friends. He found a boat trip across Galilee a propitious place to share the reality of the kingdom as he did sitting beside a well in Samaria. He sought out Zaccheus for lunch when a large crowd was seeking his attention on the street.

Before you point out that Jesus also spoke to large crowds, I’m well aware of that. I am not suggesting that they are evil only that they aren’t the most effective way to help people embrace the life of his Father. It has caused me to think a lot about what I do in macro or micro engagements. Macro engagements include speaking to groups, publishing books or website content, or producing podcasts or other recordings. I do a lot of that because I enjoy it and feel called to but some information in the world that way. So I’m not against it but I am realizing how limited it is.

Though Jesus spoke to crowds, he didn’t seek them or gather them. He didn’t organize and promote any meeting; they found him. Even then, many in the crowds left confused and unengaged. It was the extra time he spent with his disciples and others that helped them get what they had missed earlier. The most formative moments in my journey have not come from lectures but personal engagements.

I’m not saying large crowds are evil and small crowds are good. This isn’t an either/or discussion. We can make room for both, even as we recognize that the reality of Jesus’ life passes on better in table-sized conversations than in large-scale meetings. What’s bothering me is that so many people, especially those who aspire to ministry pursue the macro engagements in speaking and publishing, spending more time trying to build an audience of strangers than grow in conversations with people they already know. So many are worried about expanding their influence, building their platform, fighting for speaking engagements, and pushing their books or podcasts hoping to gain traction as an expert, when the greatest opportunities to share the kingdom live in the relationships they already have. Everyone gets to participate there, not just gifted writers or eloquent speakers.

And unless our space in the macro world doesn’t grow out of our lives at a personal level, it can easily create an environment where the realities of the kingdom are easily distorted. The lure to have influence gratifies our ego if not our pocketbook. Dazzled by the lights and popularity of the stage many buy into the false notion that those who occupy it are significant people and their words reflect God’s heart. But do they really?

I’m not convinced. The macro conversation values the wrong realities—the youthful entertainer over the wise sage, the energetic entrepreneur over the servant, and the manipulation of crowd dynamics over the integrity of open and honest dialog. It prizes the well-crafted illusion for the depth of our character. Audiences really don’t know the speaker in front of them, only the illusion they want to create and there may be little connection between them.

We need to look no further than the allegations against Bill Cosby, who lived for decades as an admired man on the stage for his humor and insight and yet seems to have used that notoriety to exploit women who sought his help. The fact that we don’t know tells you everything we need to know about the stage and how little we know about the person on it. I met one popular Christian author who was sleeping with his girlfriend while he was going through a divorce. I asked him if he had any conflicts between his writings and his current lifestyle. “Oh, you think I’m trying to live what I write?” he said as if I was from another planet. “I’m not. I’m a writer to a Christian marketplace. This is how I make my living, I know how to write what they want to hear.”

How many times have you been disappointed to discover a person’s public persona was at odds with their private life? Anne Lamott wrote, “The most degraded and sometimes nearly evil men I have known were all writers who’d had bestsellers.” The most nonrelational people I’ve ever met have written books on relationships. Watching how someone treats their spouse, their staff, and others around them will tell you far more about them than anything they share on a stage.

Not everyone on the stage is a fraud, there are some who offer a genuine and compassionate voice, but they are few. The pursuit of the stage twists something in us, putting self-promotion above people and most become a caricature instead of a genuine person perfecting cute slogans and three easy steps that never work. To hold it you have to perpetuate the illusion and manipulate people around you. That’s why people on a stage act differently than anyone in real life, with the tones they use and the demeanor they display. They live in illusions creating fake communities to appeal to the need to belong, offer “special” wisdom and insight to put them above others, and convince people they’ve never met that they love and care about them. Why can’t we see through the fakery of it all?

Meanwhile people of profound wisdom live right down the street from us untapped. The men and women I’ve met on this journey who are the most Christlike and have impacted me the most don’t live on a stage or have a website. They are content to know their love for others and engagements with them are far more fruitful. So we must use the macro world advisedly. It is not evil, it just lends itself to honoring the wrong realities. Celebrity culture disfigures almost everyone who touches it. It is easier to be perceived as expert on a stage than live as a brother or sister on a journey. It allows you to pontificate unchallenged, and say things to people you wouldn’t have the courage to address face-to-face. How many sermons have you heard that were thinly veiled admonishments to someone who had offended the speaker? I’ve done it, too, to my regret but it’s a coward’s way out.

I wouldn’t discourage you from putting your voice out there however God gives you opportunity. I do all those things because I know it can help people I’ll never meet, but at the same time I know that those things are not the most significant things I do. Perhaps they should take about the same priority in our lives that we see in the gospel, about 80% of our time in the micro conversations that matter, and only 20% to faceless audiences as a way to plant seeds. And that 20% is best when the crowd is organic wanting to seek our help, not when it has been contrived through self-promotion.

Let’s value our personal engagements more highly. This has not been a philosophical shift for me; it was an experiential one first. I began to notice where the kingdom really thrives and it is rarely on a stage. That environment is too one-dimensional offering principles in a one-size fits all format, rather than helping someone make a next step in their journey. On a recent flight home I ended up in a conversation with a broken man that was far more powerful than any other conversation or presentation I had on the trip. It reminds me again that God really rescues one sheep at a time and the real power of his kingdom comes in a personal engagements and growing friendships rather than events, outreaches, or meetings. So look for the next conversation Jesus has for you, with an old friend on the phone, a stranger in line at the market, or a neighbor across the fence.  Nothing else offers more opportunity for people to engage God’s reality.

The “Dones” that I’ve met aren’t looking for a more engaging sermon, but a different environment where people learn through dialog, where they are not pressed for conformity of thought, but to explore their own transformation. This doesn’t minimize the gifts of teaching and encouragement, but reframes them in a different, and far more challenging environment where the quality of someone’s character is more important than their ability to turn a phrase.

Of course, the elephant in the living room we haven’t discussed yet is the business model that underlies these two conversations. It is easy to monetize the macro conversation. Our culture is set up for that. But it is impossible to monetize the micro conversation and for those who seek to make their living by the Gospel, that is a problem. Or is it? We’ll look at that in my next installment.

__________________

This is part 10 in a series on The Phenomenon of the Dones by Wayne Jacobsen who is the author of Finding Church and host of a podcast at TheGodJourney.com.  You can read the first half here and subsequent parts below:

• Part 8: Five Factors Contributing to the Decline in “Church Attendance”
• Part 9: An Invitation Not An Imposition

If you’d like to subscribe to this blog and receive future posts by email you can sign up at the top of the right-hand column.

This is part 9 in a series on The Phenomenon of the Dones

Last October I was invited to participate on a panel that presented the statistics of the “Dones” and share my experience of being with people who no longer see the church as an institution. “The Future of the Church Summit” was designed to help pastors wrestle with the fact that so many people are leaving traditional congregations and statistics showed there is little hope of getting them back. They question they hoped to answer was, “How do we keep the ones we have from leaving too?”

It was a courageous attempt, but sadly the focus was on fixing the program. They focused on making worship more sensory and interactive, preaching shorter sermons and involving more stories from others (video-taped so you can edit out the boring bits), and more streamlined decision-making.

There was even one session on innovative new programs to help the church go out where the people are instead of trying to get them to come to a building. That seemed promising. All five of the presenters started by telling a compelling story of how someone had a passion to reach people who had little desire for God. Each held that longing before God for a significant period of time, and then God gave them a task to do that proved wonderfully fruitful. You would think that would be a process worth encouraging. Instead, however, all of the presenters, after telling their story, tried to sell pastors on the program they created in its aftermath. Taking something lovely God had done, they systematized it into what they hoped would be a replicable program, put it in a book, and were peddling their new system, completely omitting how it had all begun.

Surprisingly not one session dared to ask if God were in this and if so, how we might celebrate and participate with him? All assumed that the “rise of the Dones” was bad news and it needed to be fixed by once again tweaking the program. My experience assures me that those who have given up on traditional congregations aren’t looking for a better program or system to implement. They have found them all to be short-lived, less fruitful than promised, and rather than leading to more authentic engagements with God and his church, actually produced systems needing continual maintenance and relationships that never reached beneath the surface.

Over the next few entries in this series I want to take a look at why our religious systems and programs are no longer satisfying people who’ve invested a lot of their lives and time in them and seek out the kind of changes that will allow the church to blossom with the glory that Christ intended. Instead of creating and seeking out new programs, we could instead answer the deeper cry of the heart that longs to know God and walk in his ways.

To that end, programs are part of the problem. They only prop up an otherwise thin reality… until they fail. Then what? Programs are an imposition. Someone sets up the doctrine we must believe, the rituals we must observe, or the curriculum we must follow and then seeks conform others to it, often with a system of rewards and punishments that manipulates people through obligation and guilt. No matter how well intentioned these systems are, they are still an attempt to force an outside, artificial construct on this amazing adventure of life. Instead of drawing people into God’s life, these only alienate them from it either because they don’t understand it or do not see the fruits they were promised.

Could this be why Jesus didn’t give his disciples with any list of doctrines, rituals, or discipleship workbooks to share with others? Instead he spoke of a better kingdom where God’s love and power works within them. He invited a handful of them into that same reality, both by modeling it for it and by showing them how they could participate in it too. He wasn’t imposing a system of living from the outside, but helping them rethink from the inside how it is to connect with God’s reality and to follow him freely. It took over three years to help them even begin to learn how to live in the Father’s love and freely share it with others.

Perhaps the greatest lesson here is that the life of God can’t be imposed; that’s the stuff of religion. You can get people to follow systems and confess true doctrines, but without a change in the heart they will never connect with him and find a trajectory that will lead them to increasing life and freedom. The Incarnation taught us that God doesn’t draw a line in the sand and tells us to cross it, but shows up where we actually are—lost in our doubts, our fears, and our lies—and invites us into a process of transformation as our relationship with him grows. Without that people will simply pretend as best they can until the frustration of their own emptiness wins out.

That’s what is happening with many who are giving up on religious systems today, while their hunger for God still grows. For years they did everything asked of them and still not finding the life in God they had been promised. They thought they were the only one struggling with the failures of this system and are only now finding out they are not. They know there is “something more” out there and have set out to find it and they are not hopeful that yet another program will do it.

That’s what the Dones are seeking and I applaud that passion. We’ve had enough of pre-packaged programs, cookie-cutter discipleship curriculum where one size-does not fit all. The congregations that will survive this season will not try to overhaul the program, but will find a more generous way to help people discover the reality behind our faith—God himself! They won’t look at the “Dones” as fallen brothers and sisters, but as colleagues in the faith setting out in uncharted waters to find a city whose architect and builder is God.

Discipleship can only work when it is an invitation to a hungry heart, not by imposing the way people should act or think from the outside. So instead of investing our time coming up with a new programs, writing yet another curriculum, or enforcing a ritual to follow, we would be better served to come alongside people who are hungry and help them discover how God is already at work in them. We can encourage them to recognize and to follow what he has already put in their heart. His life is a journey to discover, not a program to complete.

“Come to me,” Jesus offered. That’s the invitation. Come if you want; obligation won’t work here. Yield to a relationship with him that will re-order every thing you think and every way you respond to others in life. That takes time to grow in the heart so you’re not just following a list of good ideas, but actually living differently. Those who have met God in that way know there is no program that can replicate it. Life is too varied and our humanity too unique to convey to the rigidity of a program.

It’s something he wants to sort out in each heart and the best way we can help is not by organizing another seminar or summit, but by coming alongside people and help them see what Jesus has already begun in them.

People responding freely to that invitation will help shape the future of the church as she makes herself known in this generation.

This is part 8 in a series on The Phenomenon of the Dones by Wayne Jacobsen who is the author of Finding Church and host of a podcast at TheGodJourney.com.  You can read the previous seven parts here and Part 8 here.  If you’d like to subscribe to this blog and receive future posts by email you can sign up at the top of the right-hand column.

Part 8 in a series about the Phenomenon of the Dones.

According to sociologist, Josh Packard, thirty million people are no longer attend a local congregation but remain passionately engaged with their faith in Christ. That’s the same number of people who attend each weekend. Seven million of those are present in services “in body only” and will likely add to the number of those leaving soon.

What are we to make of all of this? Some pastors have suggested that those leaving are just being selfish at a time when the family needs them most. That’s not true of the ones I’ve met over the last twenty years. They didn’t leave out of selfishness, but in exasperation that their best attempts to inspire change in their congregation fell on deaf ears. They haven’t given up on the church, but are looking for more authentic expressions of her.

So why are so many people leaving now? I see five cultural factors that have converged in our time to contribute to this exodus:

The trend away from community. Fifty years ago most local churches were gathering places of a community that had been built over generations and acted as a large, extended family. The church growth movement of the 70s and 80s put a premium on size and with the advent of mega-churches real community was lost in the drive for bigger-is-better and most people found themselves sitting in a room full of strangers. Programming became more important than community and the relationships they did have were superficial at best.

The appeal to the casual attendee. In the drive for increased size, much of this program was designed to appeal not to the passionate Jesus follower, whom leaders assumed would come anyway, but to those less-engaged who needed more entertainment than substance during their once-a-week attendance. When the professional sports realized its economic growth lie in attracting the casual fan, they substantively changed the nature of their sport to make sure they were entertained. It worked. Viewership skyrocketed, but for many hard-core fans that ruined the game they’d fallen in love with. While that might work for football, it has not worked with the Gospel. The passionate followers of Jesus are leaving and many pastors are concerned that they are being left with those who only have a casual interest in spirituality.

The decline of cultural pressure. It used to be true that to have credibility as a Christian in the local community, or to at least be available to that market you needed a presence in a local fellowship. Those who didn’t were looked down upon. That isn’t true anymore and people have lots of options to fill their weekend. People no longer feel obligated by outward pressure and the stigma of not attending no longer exists outside the walls of a local fellowship.

The systematizing of spirituality that bypasses the heart in favor of the intellect. Seminaries prepared academics to instruct the faithful, but left out the heart connection that enlivens spirituality. God is knowable in the inner life of a person, not just through a sermon, a text or a Bible class. By not helping people connect more relationally with God they created a spiritual hunger in people that intellectual understanding alone couldn’t satisfy. Instead of engaging their passion, they settled for obligation and guilt as motivations of faith and have left people worn out, frustrated, and empty.

The availability of alternative views. It used to be that those who struggled with the program thought they were alone. That was easy to maintain as long as there were gatekeepers controlling the ideas people could engage. When distribution of material used to be expensive, it was impossible to literature challenging the status quo since most publishers thought pastor’s recommendations were critical to sales. Now anyone can publish a book, post articles on the Internet, or share a podcast with the world. People are finding out that they were not alone in their concerns about the impotence of the institutional program and their desire for a more vital spiritual life personally and a more engaging experience of community with others.

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That these factors would converge at this time in religious history may point to something far larger than selfish people leaving to pursue their own interests. This exodus may in fact be a move of the Spirit to revitalize Jesus’ church for the days to come. People are not abandoning the church, only those structures that no longer make room for her to thrive in their midst.

So while some look at thirty-one million people walking away as cause for alarm, I find it encouraging. People are taking their faith seriously and if the congregation they they attend isn’t expressing that journey, they are willing at great personal risk to look elsewhere, not just to another institution but to more relational ways to engage God and others. They are finding a more authentic spirituality that is allowing them to love more freely in the world.

This is an exciting time in church history. We are finding out what expressions the church can take when people deeply engaged with God find ways to connect and collaborate in the world without the rigors of institutionalism. I am hopeful that they will better express the nature of God in the world than our tired institutions are currently doing. This is a great time to be alive.

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This is part 8 in a series on The Phenomenon of the Dones by Wayne Jacobsen who is the author of Finding Church and host of a podcast at TheGodJourney.com.  You can read the previous seven parts here.  If you’d like to subscribe to this blog to receive future posts by email you can sign up at the top of the right-hand column.

A Thrival Guide for Those Who Find Themselves Outside of Conventional Congregations

According to the latest research people are leaving the local church congregation in droves. Many do so questioning whether God even exists, but many others continue to passionately follow Jesus convinced that the institution they belonged to was at odds with the spiritual passion growing in their heart. They may not have even understood why, but something inside continued to draw them toward a more authentic relationship with Jesus and a freer environment to share his life and love with others.

Many who have given up on the traditional congregation were once leaders, volunteers, and major contributors. They grew weary of the programs and expectations that neither encouraged their journey nor cultivated the kind of community they sought.  Leaving is never easy and most do it only when other options are exhausted.

Finding yourself outside the congregational model can be incredibly disorienting for a season.  Family and former friends question your faith or make you feel guilty with accusations of bitterness or selfishness.  All the markers you used to gauge your spiritual health no longer make sense. Some question their own sanity and even more so as they are increasingly isolated from the only friends they’ve ever had.

If you’ve left your congregation for similar reasons, what do you do now? As I’ve watched people go through this transition the ones who navigate it most freely begin to embrace a different set of realities, which not only allow them to survive outside a local congregation, but actually thrive in learning to follow him, in sharing fellowship with others, and in being part of God’s purpose in the world.

First, take your time. You’ve been invited on an amazing journey that will take years to sort out. Many people rush to join another congregation or start their own house group to fill the void but only end up recreating what they had left. Resist the urge to find another group right away or create one. This is a season to draw closer to God and let him fill the void. There will be time for more connections later when it’s not a response to a driven need, but a freedom to embrace the gift of community that God wants to give you.

Second, don’t force your journey on others.  You don’t have to tell people, “I’ve left the church” or judge as less spiritual those who still go. This isn’t about judging others or making outlandish conclusions about the future you can’t begin to sort out yet.  Simply follow Jesus however he leads you and be gently honest with those who ask you why you’re not doing the things you used to. Remember, you’re the one whose changed here, they are just doing the things you’ve always done, believing they are obligated to do so.  They will be threatened by the change you’re making, and you can help disarm that by letting them have their own journey. Don’t try to change them, or to fix them. You can’t until the Spirit awakens the same hunger in them that he has in you.

Third, lose your need to be validated by others. Religion works by establishing a set of expectations and rewarding those who conform and punishing those who do not. The greatest freedom in this journey is to let Jesus to break that cycle so that you can find your identity in his love for you. Trying to convince others how right you are will only harden them and destroy your friendship with them. Trying to justify yourself will not allow you to love others nor will it lead you to the freedom from the tyranny of other people’s opinions of you.  Be gracious to all and let his affirmation of your life and experience be all the validation you need.

Fourth, learn the beauty and rhythms of love.  Following ritual and rules that others demand of you is still following law, even if we call them “New Testament principles.” God doesn’t transform us through obligation or meeting the expectations of others. The reason why many of us grew frustrated in religious settings is because they made promises to us they couldn’t fulfill. The harder we tried the emptier we felt. God has been inviting you to live in a new creation where his love transforms us in the deepest part of our soul. Over this season you’ll learn to see through the manipulation of obligation, accountability, guilt, and fear and into a different rhythm that will allow you to live more at rest, aware of others, and free from the pressures of this age.  Instead of doing what others think you should do, you’ll be freer to discern his work in you and find yourself embracing the realities of grace, forgiveness, freedom, and generosity. It all begins as you ask him to show you how deeply loved by God you are, then let him show you. This is the trailhead that will lead you to greater freedom and fullness.

Fifth, watch your trust in him grow. Many are surprised to discover how much of their religious life was driven by fear—of God punishing them, of going astray, of what others will think, or of failure. As you are more in touch with his love and delight in you, even when you’re struggling or doubting, you’ll find that your trust in his goodness will begin to grow. You’ll realize he’s for you, not against you and that your own efforts were never going to produce his life in you. Now you’ll discover the joy of cooperating with his work in you and find yourself more relaxed, more aware of his nudges and insight, and less inclined toward destructive and hurtful actions. When Paul talked about the righteousness that comes from trust, this is what he was talking about. Where we trust him we won’t try to save ourselves or force our way. Now we can know what it is to be content in him whatever life brings to us because he is walking with us through it.

Sixth, cultivate friendships with others. God’s love working in you will free you to love each person God puts in front of you. Take an interest in them, whether they already know God or not, and watch as they begin to pen up with their concerns, struggles, and joys. Look for ways to encourage them as God gives you insight to do so. Get to know people you already know from work, school, or your neighborhood. Contact people in your address book and take them out to lunch. Where the relationship becomes relaxed, authentic and mutual, make time for those friendships to grow so his community can take shape around you.

Seventh, let God expand your view of his church. Most people think of the church as a specific group or meeting at a set time and place and if you’re not there you are not part of his church. They are made to feel guilty and isolated as others withdraw from them. It’s easy to feel as if you’re the only one weary of the religious institution. But you’re not. The latest research shows you are one in about 31 million adults in America who do not belong a local congregation but are still actively looking to follow Christ, which is about the same number of people who do belong. That means one in every seven adults are on a similar journey to yours and there are 7 million who are “almost dones” who still attend but are there in body only. Does that mean the church is failing?  Only if we look at our human attempts to manage it. What you’ll discover is that Jesus’ church was never meant to be an institution, but a growing family who are learning to walk with him and who are learning to share his life and love with others. Real community flows from friendships not meetings, which is why Jesus spent time with the people in his life in more informal settings. As we come to see his church as a reality outside of human control, then you can embrace her reality however she takes shape in the relationships and connections around you.

Learning to live in his freedom and joy is the fruit of a process that takes a significant period of time in our lives. Don’t rush the process.  Learn to embrace him and relax in the process and you will discover that “something more” that your heart has been seeking.  You’ll find yourself in meaningful conversations that will deepen your own faith and encourage others to find more reality in theirs.

It is my hope that those who are done with religious institutions, don’t go off and create their own, but learn to live differently in the world and then be able to see the church Jesus is building taking shape right around them.

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This is Part 7 in a series on The Phenomenon of the Dones by Wayne Jacobsen who is the author of Finding Church and host of a podcast at TheGodJourney.com

Previous Posts:

• Part 1:  The Secret Is Out
• Part 2:  The Labels that Divide Us
• Part 3:  Why People are leaving
• Part 4:  Stupid Things Said In the Name of Jesus
• Part 4:  Church Refugrees Could be a Game Changer
• Part 5:  I’m looking for 35 Million People

Nothing breaks my heart more than meeting someone who invested years of their life in religious service and for some reason never discovered how real God is and how deeply he loves them. 

The latest research by Josh Packard, author of Church Refugees, shows there are thirty-five million Americans who have left their religious institution and abandoned their belief in God at the same time. I’m fine with them leaving. Religious institutions can often impede our spiritual growth rather than encourage it. Nearly thirty-one million other Americans have left their religious institution and continued to explore what it means to know God and share his life in the world. 

But for those who left not knowing a God worth loving, my heart goes out to you.  That means despite all the all the meetings you attended, prayers you offered, and good deeds you have done, you never came face to face with the most endearing Presence in the universe. You never recognized his voice wooing you, or recognized his hand at work in your life. 

I understand why you would miss that. Insecure religious leaders who try to rule with an iron fist or simply don’t know him themselves, and legalistic religious traditions that substitute rules and rituals for helping connect people to the transcendent God, can be barriers to the very faith people want to explore.  Some say you can’t have God without religion; it’s a package deal. If you want to be one of his you have to jump through someone’s hoops to prove your sincerity.

But those who say so are usually trying to build or sustain an institution for their own purposes. It isn’t true. While some congregations can be very helpful in helping people discover God’s reality, many others are a deterrent. Jesus didn’t start an institution, or a religion, for that matter.  He came to reveal to us what it would be like to live in his Father’s reality—how his love would change us and how our loving others in the world would let his kingdom unfold around us.

That’s why the Apostle Paul didn’t try to win people with “wise and persuasive words”, because he didn’t want peoples faith to “rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.” If your spiritual passion was only based on following someone else’s teachings it wasn’t meant to last anyway. It was always going to fail you.

So I’m looking for those of you that it failed. Everything I’ve done for the past twenty years have sought to help people not become one of these thirty-five million people. Religion will fail us, but God never will. If I could sit down to lunch with any of these thirty-five million people, this is what I would want you to know: 

1. Realize religious obligation is a conformity-based system that operates by fear and manipulation and that’s why it could not promote the love of God growing in your heart. But don’t give up. Walking with God as he really is, is the greatest treasure life offers.
2. Separate the failures of religion and religious leaders from the reality of God. Jesus did. The Pharisees had God wrong, which is why they didn’t understand his love for sinners or his refusal to conform to their traditions. It is why they killed him. 
3. Consider the possibility that you were given a disfigured view of God especially if you’ve come to see him as an angry tyrant wanting to rule the world through terror. He is actually a gracious Father who loves you more than anyone else on this planet ever has or ever will. 
4. Recognize where God is already reaching out to you. That voice inside your head that invites you away from the anxieties of this life is his drawing you to himself. Those transcendent moments when you knew you were not alone in the universe and that Someone endearing holds you and this world in his hands were his doing, nudging you toward the relationship he desires with you.
5. Please know that God has not been the cause of your best friend dying, or financial difficulties, and your disappointments in life.  He wasn’t punishing you or them for some broken place in their lives. This world is out of sync with its Creator and the effects of that touch us all with sin, sickness, and pain.  God is not its cause. He’s the rescuer in the story, inviting us away from the mayhem and into the knowing of him.
6. What if you knew there has never been a day when God has been ashamed of you or disappointed in you as his child? He doesn’t love every choice you’ve ever made, but he’s always there to invite you to freedom and life in him.
7. Every morning when you wake up ask him to reveal himself to you and if need by to send you someone who can help you know him.

All that Jesus said was true. There is a place for you to be at home in God, and for God to be at home in you.

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If you don’t know a God of love and affection, you might enjoy Wayne’s book, He Loves Me.  If you want to consider other options for engaging the church Jesus is building in the world, you might find his Finding Church helpful. 

Fifth in a series by Wayne on the The Phenomenon of the Dones
Part 1 The Secret Is Out
Part 2  The Labels that Divide Us
Part 3  Why People Are Leaving    

Part 4  Church Refugrees Could be a Game Changer  

By Wayne Jacobsen

If you read one book about the church this year, you’ll want to read Church Refugees. Dr. Josh Packard and Ashleigh Hope are sociologists and while researching the current trends of people’s church attendance made a surprising and unexpected discovery.  They identified a significant number of Christians who no longer attend church services and yet are thriving in their spiritual life. They call them “the Dones” because they are done with the traditional congregation having felt it was stifling to their own spiritual journey.

To their surprise they discovered that most of them had not lost interest in their faith, faded out the back door, or preferred to watch football on Sundays.  Instead they discovered them to be high-capacity Christians who were committed givers and deeply involved in leadership. They didn’t leave quickly or easily, having spent years trying to encourage change or simply find a way to get along. They eventually left because in all conscience they conclude that the way things are being done in their congregation threatens to compromise their faith. They sought community over judgment, mission over machinery, rich conversation over pat answers, and meaningful engagement with the world beyond moral prescriptions. While leaving is not easy as they suffered the judgments of former friends and colleagues they soon discover that there are plenty of resources for growth, meaningful connections with others on a faith journey, and ways to touch the world beyond the congregational system.

This book is a game-changer for how we perceive the church and understand those who no longer find our institutions helpful to their journey. It has the potential to obliterate the myth that our local institutions are the only or even the best way to engage the life of Jesus and his mission in the world.  That’s not what the authors have in mind since they are both avid attenders themselves. They simply wanted to explore the phenomenon and seek to help congregations understand why these people are leaving and perhaps reconsider how to revitalize their institutions so they wouldn’t have to leave. 

This is a compelling read that is hard to put down. The researchers mix their findings with first-hand stories from their respondents that will challenge whatever view you hold of the church. No doubt many will find it difficult to admit that passionate followers of Jesus are thriving outside our institutions, preferring the narrative that you can’t be a true Christian if you are not connected to a local congregation. The hungers, however, are real and if they won’t be served by our existing congregations people will go looking elsewhere. Obligation alone will not save these institutions.

For those who have already left you’ll find encouragement that you’re not alone in your desire for a more vibrant experience with God and his church and that it is possible to fulfill it in other ways. However, the terminology the authors use will make you cringe at times. Even the title, Church Refugees, is more than a little condescending to those who are no longer part of a traditional church. Calling them “The Dones” or the “Dechurched” doesn’t help either and you’ll find that language on almost every page.  Just keep in mind this is a book by insiders, for insiders, about outsiders. It only uses “church” for institutional gatherings and posits those outside of such institutions as the “dechruched”. But it doesn’t dismiss them or the sincerity of their faith. I’ve not been an active participant in an institutional church for over 20 years, but I don’t consider myself a church refugee or that I am dechurched. I have never been more alive and engaged with the church Jesus is building in the world in so many expressions outside our traditional congregations. The church in Scripture was never a religious institution with weekend services and top-heavy bureaucracies. The church is the family Jesus is building in the earth and it cannot be contained or managed in any human organization. While it can take expression there, it can also take shape in many ways beyond it.

This may be the most important church book written in this decade. Whether you like what their research shows or not, Packard and Hope have done us all a service by giving us an accurate picture of the religious landscape rather than relying on our biases or experiences. What we do with them will have great impact on our engagement with the church.

If you share the hunger of the Dones but still hold hope for our Christian institutions, it will help you be a voice for change so those hungers can be served instead of frustrated. If you’ve found it necessary to leave you’ll find great encouragement in knowing there are others finding opportunities for growth, deep fellowship and mission beyond the programs of our congregations.

Hopefully it will help us all see the church as a bigger reality than our human conventions can contain, and affirm that what’s most important is whether or not people are following Jesus, not which building they go to on Sunday morning, or even if they go to one at all.

Church Refugees  •  143 pages in hardback, paper back or ebook.  Order from Amazon.com 

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Wayne Jacobsen is the author of Finding Church and host of The God Journey podcast, where he you’ll find his conversation with Dr. Packard about the Dones on May 1st and May 8th episodes.

By Wayne Jacobsen

I’m growing convinced that much of Christianity has become a human religion loosely based on the teachings of Jesus, while missing the point of them all.

Every week now I get links to blogs and articles of various pastors giving the 5, 8, or 12 reasons everyone needs to attend a local church each week. To prove their point, however, they have to make some of the most ridiculous statements that have absolutely no grounding in the life or character of Jesus. These conclusions are not just misguided, but actually destructive to people who want to grow in his life and joy.

This is not a personal judgment against them. I’m sure many of them are fine people, only trying to do what they feel called to. I also appreciate that this is a scary time for them as so-called church attendance is on the decline. The idea that someone can actually grow in their relationship with God, experience the life of the church, and share his mission in the world without being part of their congregation has to be a scary reality. Many don’t even want to acknowledge it is even possible, so they double down on the language of obligation and accountability. In doing so, however, they twist the Gospel so that it is no longer recognizable and all that’s left is for people to obey what they are told by leadership whose success and livelihood depend on that obedience.

There are many good reasons to gather regularly with other believers and share the journey of faith. It’s just that all those gatherings are not going on in Sunday morning services shackled by the bureaucracy of a religious system that often does more stifle spiritual growth rather than stimulate it. Many have found more engaging ways to share the life of the church beyond the walls of traditional congregations and telling them they must attend a normal service, falls on deaf ears once they’ve discovered that it isn’t true.

So if they hope guilt and obligation will win these people back or scare the ones they have into remaining, they are not only fighting a losing battle but disfiguring God and distorting the Gospel to do it. The life of the church is not found in obligation but in the joy of affection and transformation. Trying to discount the salvation of those who leave in hopes of reigning back in the faithful will continue backfire.

In the latest article I read Nathan Rose, a Missouri pastor in the Southern Baptist denomination says that skipping “church” meetings is dangerous to your health.  He gives five reasons why in a recent article he wrote, Five Spiritual Dangers of Skipping Church:

1. “You will miss out on God’s primary design for your spiritual growth and well-being.” What in the ministry of Jesus leads him to the conclusion that God’s primary means to grow to spiritual maturity is to attend a church service weekly, when he never conducted one himself, never taught his disciples how to do so, and assigned the task for our growth to the Holy Spirit who would dwell in us and guide us to all truth? When the Samaritan woman asked Jesus where she should worship, he made it clear that location is not the issue.  What matters is that we do so in spirit and in truth. Living in the Father’s affection and responding to his Spirit within us is God’s primary design for our growth and well-being, not sitting in a pew on Sunday morning.
2. “You disobey God.”  As many do, Rose pulls out Hebrews 10:24-25 saying that the counsel “not to neglect to meet together,” is a command that can only be fulfilled in a weekly church service.  It’s dishonest on the face of it. This is the only Scripture pastors have to seek to compel “church attendance” and it is misused at that. This passage wasn’t written to believers skipping out on church services, but to people under persecution who were wondering if avoiding association with each other would make it more difficult for the authorities to find them. The writer is telling them they have more to gain by the encouragement they have from each other than going it alone. Most Sunday services don’t even allow people to encourage each other, since the focus is on the platform. Hebrews 20 is not talking about attending a meeting; it is about staying connected to others and not trying to make it alone. Honestly many of our institutions today do more to inhibit that connection than encourage it.
3. “You make a statement to the world that God is not worthy of worship…, which is the attitude and conduct of unbelievers, not God’s people.” So if you don’t come to “worship” you are no longer one of God’s people. The judgment here is frightful. Worship is not a song service or a sermon, but a live lived in God’s reality and his affection. How we see him and how we love and respect others either brings glory to him or disfigures him. Sitting in a pew on Sunday morning is not a statement of how important worship is to you unless that’s the only way you understand worship and then you are spiritually impoverished the rest of the week. Our lives worship him whether we’re on the job, enjoying his creation, or serving someone in need.
4. “You can’t minister to anyone.” Really? All the ministry that God wants to do in the world can only happen under a steeple on Sunday morning? That would be laughable if it weren’t so tragic. Jesus never ministered in a “service,” but on the street where he encountered people. Real service is not sitting in a pew so others can hear you sing and you can show support for the pastor. Ministry is about loving and helping people you know or come across as you go through life. They can be in your neighborhood, at work, in school, or across the world.
5. “You skip out on a foretaste of heaven.” If Sunday morning services were really a foretaste of heaven, no one would want to miss them and you wouldn’t have to obligate them to be there. In many cases it’s just a repeated formula often laced with guilt and condemnation, as was the entire piece written by Rose.

What bothers me most is not that they want people to come to “their church”, but that they see obligation as the reason. They make the same mistake the Galatians made.  By turning the promise of God into an obligation they distort the gospel, twisting the joy of an invitation into God’s life into demands and threats. It has the underlying psychology of “misery loves company.”  We are not here because we enjoy it and God works in us, but because God says we have to.  Please!  The kingdom is the pearl of great price, not the castor oil of spiritual maturity.

Paul, the apostle, encourage us to live in freedom and let “no one” defraud us by telling us where we should go, what we should eat, or what we should wear. People who try to tell you what you should do, rather than equipping you to live fully and freely in Jesus, have lost connection with the Head.

I honestly feel sorry for those who can’t see the reality of Christ’s church beyond their own congregation or the congregational model itself. They would perhaps do better to take an honest look why people who were committed members of their congregation found it necessary to leave. Badgering them with accusations and demands will never fulfill the work of the kingdom. Maybe it is time for them to ask just how much their gatherings reflect God’s nature and reality. Those congregations who honestly seek to help people live in the reality of Jesus’ freedom and transformation need not be threatened that Jesus is also working outside their borders.

In fact if they put his kingdom first, they will rejoice that he does.

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Wayne Jacobsen is the author of Finding Church and host of a podcast at TheGodJourney.com.

By Wayne Jacobsen
Third in a series on the The Phenomenon of the Dones
(Read:  Part 1: The Secret is Out  •  Part 2:  The Labels That Divide Us)

What does it take for someone to leave a congregation of people they have loved and served alongside, often for decades?  Why would they suddenly break away from close friends and lifetime traditions to wander into a lonely and uncertain future only to be accused of being selfish, bitter, or rebellious?

Except that it generally isn’t sudden at all, and not at all what they had hoped for.  Yes, there came a time when they stopped attending, but none of “The Dones” I’ve met over the past twenty years left easily or suddenly.  In fact most have wrestled with the decision for years in the face of some concern or unmet hunger.  Initially they thought others around them would resonate with their passion, or be grateful if they identifie a problem that needed attention. To their shock, they found their repeated attempts to discuss their concerns or hopes fell on unsympathetic ears.

Try as they might to bring positive changes, they only meet resistance and eventually disrespect and frustration.  “That’s not the way we do things around here.”  Many give up trying to convince others, but their hunger continues to until sitting in the congregation becomes painful.  After years of struggle they finally feel they have no other choice but to follow their hunger instead of quietly going along.  As much as they want to stay with people they care so much about they find they can no longer participate in meetings that have become a detriment to their spiritual passions.

While the process is similar for most that I know, the reasons can be quite different.  Recently I asked people on my Facebook page what it was that finally made it clear that they needed to leave their congregation.  I got over a hundred responses from people that were consistent with the thousands of stories I have heard over the last two decades.

Forty-two percent said they were worn out by the machinery and the need to serve it.  Some of that is burn-out from having to do more than they had time or energy for, but for most it means that the cost it exacted wasn’t worth the fruit it produced. Rarely does anyone say the congregation was all bad except in the most abusive cases.  Mostly they say the demands of the congregation began to displace their passion for Jesus and that scared them.

Twenty-three percent said they no longer respected the leadership, either because they were dishonest, demanding or manipulative. This didn’t result from a bad confrontation or two, but a series of experiences that consistently eroded their trust and respect.

Twenty percent they simply hungered for more authentic relationships, feeling the ones they had were too superficial or governed by pat answers instead of people really getting to know them and wanting to walk alongside them in their joys and struggles.

Twelve percent wanted more of Jesus and his life than their congregation offered.  The focus seemed to be on things other than helping people learn to experience the fullness of life in him.

Three percent reported no dissatisfaction at all, but simply felt led by the Spirit to move onto a different stage of their journey.

Of course my pool of respondents did not include those gave up on God when they gave up on their church. Many do, seeing the failures of their institutions or its leaders as proof that God doesn’t exist, or if he does, at least isn’t engaged with them. It’s a tragic legacy of systems that often do more to perpetuate programs than demonstrate Father’s affection.

But for every person that has left, be they pastor or parishioner, there are dozens more who are thinking about it and second-guess that decision every time they sit through another meeting that doesn’t address their deepest hungers.  Many stay because of the relationships , others out of obligation no matter how painful it becomes. Actually they are “done” too, attending in body only and with decreasing frequency and it is only a matter of time before they stop as well.

Simply put, most of “The Dones” left because their spiritual passion could no longer be fulfilled where they were.  So what may look like someone just walked out one day isn’t true.  It is almost always a long, protracted process that even they resisted until they could do so no longer and still be true to the Spirit’s call inside them.

The process is hard on everyone. In the first few months many of those who leave are racked with guilt and second-guess their decision frequently especially if it is difficult to find others on the outside who share their hungers.  And it’s hard on those they leave behind, who often feel rejected by those who leave.  Harsh words and judgments are exchanged as each side seeks to convince themselves they are doing what’s right and want to convince the others for their own validation.  Nothing will destroy friendships faster and lead to animosity and hurt that will spread throughout the community.

Those who have left are not your enemy. If they were your friends before, wouldn’t they still be your friend now even if you think are concerned for them? Wouldn’t loving each other be vastly more important than how we gather or don’t gather on a Sunday morning?  Maybe if we were less threatened by their hunger we could celebrate their to find an environment more meaningful to their faith.

Certainly some who leave find their way back when they can’t find the community they are looking for.  Most, however, after a year or two begin to find themselves connecting to others who share their hunger for more authentic and generous community in small groups or growing friendships without the need or expense of sustaining the machinery. They spend more time in conversations that nurture their faith and less time planning meetings and maintaining structures.

People who lose hope that the institutional model can provide a lifetime environment for community and growth may not be the death knell for the vitality of the church; maybe they are the hope that there’s more than one way the church takes expression in the world.

For more information on “The Dones”, read Dr. Josh Packard’s research into this phenomenon in his new book Church Refugees.

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Wayne is the author of Finding Church and host of a podcast at TheGodJourney.com.

Second in a series on the The Phenomenon of the Dones
(Read Part 1, The Secret is Out)

In a study called Nones on the Rise, Pew Research put out their discovery a few years ago of a growing segment of the U.S. population that checks “none” as their religious preference instead of one of the historic faiths that people have identified with for centuries.

It was perhaps inevitable then that the rise of the “Nones” would give rise to the “Dones”, when it was discovered that there is a an increasing number of people living outside traditional “church” institutions who continue to grow in a relationship with Jesus and connect in meaningful ways with others.  The Dones is the most recent label attached to them.  They have been called revolutionaries, outside the box, free-range Christians, or the dechurched. Such labels serve the media’s need to talk about trends among specific groups and to market products inside those trends, but they really aren’t helpful to the work Jesus is doing in the world.

Our fallen nature constantly seeks to find identity and safety inside a tribe and labels are important to keep “my group” separate from “their group”.  It works for sports teams, gangs, and even religious groups. Labels so easily polarize humanity into adversarial groups and especially with religious ones where we conclude that our group is not just different, but better.

So it’s not surprising that labels either flatter or denigrate depending on which tribe is talking. Sadly, most of this conversation about the Dones is either insiders talking to insiders about outsiders or outsiders talking to outsiders about insiders.  For insiders terms like “dechurched”, or “church refugees” may seem fair but actually perpetuate the myth that religious institutions are the only reflection of Jesus’ church in the world. That is as unfortunate as it is untrue. Using “church” only for religious institutions is no minor slip. Most religious leaders want people to believe it so they won’t consider leaving too. Even many of the so-called Dones talk about having “left the church.”

Likewise those outside want to claim the titles that make them seem freer, more grace-based, or more powerful than their counterparts in more traditional settings.  After George Barna published Revolution in 2006, those outside of traditional structures quickly latched on to it as evidence that they were more spiritually committed, and instead of opening a dialog for the whole family it only expanded the divide. I’m afraid “The Dones” will do the same thing if people wear it as a merit badge of deeper spirituality while others us it to  question the sincerity of their faith.

Any title you wear be it pastor, best-selling author, or Done will do more to separate you from others, than it will help you recognize the incredible family that Jesus is building.  Claiming a label works against his prayer that his Father would make us one. The community of the new creation levels our humanity—from hierarchy and from our narcissistic notions of being in a better group than others.  We are all sons and daughters of a gracious Father and that’s all the identity we need. (Matt. 23)

But once again, we risk being divided into innies and outies as people and falling into the false dichotomy our flesh so craves.  Whether you go to “a church” or whether you don’t is a distinction without a difference.  What matters is whether people are following Jesus and being transformed by his love. What I hope comes out of this study of the Dones is those inside and those out recognize that the church is bigger than most of us would dare to believe and that his church takes expression wherever people engage each other with his love and purpose.

For those who claim that attendance at a local congregation is mandatory to be part of his church I hope they reconsider that false idea. Being part of his family is about following him not belonging to an institution. Over the last twenty years I’ve found incredible followers of Jesus both inside them and outside. I hope this research draws all those into a conversation where in and out becomes less important than loving and affirming his kingdom however it takes shape in the world.  But it will take a significant number of voices across the Christian landscape to fight for a better conversation that include those.

Imagine my joy last week when I met with 25 pastors in Riverside County who wanted to discuss my book, Finding Church, and Dr. Packard’s research about “The Dones,” which will be profiled in his book, Church Refugees.  Not only was I surprised that many were wiling to have the conversation, but also grateful everyone there approached it with graciousness and a desire to understand the trends we’re confronting today. There was no hostility for those differences, but a generosity to understand those who have left and appreciate their journeys as well.

I am convinced that people who truly know Jesus will want to reach across this divide, not exacerbate it. We don’t need identifying labels, especially ones that make us feels superior to others in the family. When Jesus becomes more important to us than finding identity in any particular tribe of it, then the conversations that most express his kingdom will grow in the world.  Instead of demanding that others conform to our view of the church we will recognize her in the most surprising places as we find connection and fellowship with those who know the Jesus we know, even if they don’t follow the rituals we follow.

Then we won’t need labels to divide us.  Brother, sister, and fellow saint will be more than enough and loving each other in a mutual celebration of Jesus himself will allow his church to flourish where we live.
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Wayne Jacobsen is the author of Finding Church and host of a podcast at TheGodJourney.com where he you’ll find his conversation with Dr. Packard about the Dones on May 1st and May 8th episodes.