All in Why is the Church Sick?
Significant to our culture's secular quality has been the presence and role of feminism. I offer a historical overview of family-and-public life, noting how the Industrial Revolution did things to women, men, and the family that the Feminist movement was right to protest and critique. Along the way I also note some of the shortcomings of the Feminist critique. At the show's beginning I reflect on the legalization of drugs in the state wherein I grew up: Oregon. Come laugh and think with me.
In this conversation with my son, John, we explore the topics of money and cultural relevance. Low churches face the conundrum of needing large donors but not wanting to be controlled by those same donors. How should they go about walking that dicey tightrope? And then, everyone wants to be culturally relevant, so how might Low churches seek relevancy without losing their souls, on the one hand, or seeming like cloistered cults, on the other? Tough questions that deserve our consideration.
What might be the concerns of millennials regarding the state of the Church? I have a running conversation with my son, John, about the importance of preaching and teaching to mature believers. We also discuss the role and place of small groups in today's Low churches.
Western society is infatuated with the new: trends, fads, products, things. We love the new! Unfortunately, this infatuation is infecting the Church. And if the Gallup Polling agency is accurate, new is not helping church growth. What are some answers? How might we mitigate the damage that the new can do? What steps can we take to help our pastors, our pastoral staffs, and our own selves? What did Jesus model for us that is helpful on this challenge?
Low churches do things that end up causing unnecessary problems. Why is that? Life is weird. And? "Sometimes when you win you lose." The Low church lowest common denominator approach of "appeal to the most possible without causing offense" isn't working. People are not hungry for vanilla. Gallup Poll says more people are leaving Church than ever before. In this fifth episode in my series I tell some personal stories and suggest some possible remedies.
Where our treasure is there is our heart. What we worship makes evident what we believe. The Low churches have, unintentionally, turned worship into a private experience, something not unlike what we enjoy at the mall or the theater. We can have private experiences even when we're in a crowd. And all this? Precisely when people are starving for community and so leaving the Church. I probe some painful lines of inquiry and make some simple curative suggestions.
The quest for market relevance has produced a vacuum, a black hole, that is now confronting the Low churches. Will we continue to drift inside that hole or make the much needed turn back to the character of God? In this episode I explore the beauty, need, and relevance of God's holiness. I also offer 5 practical steps to touch upon God's holiness.
Why is the Church sick? Because in different ways we get distracted with the values of the age, something I call "Lord Zeitgeist." And the wild thing is? It doesn't even need to involve moral decay, it can just involve a mis-directed focus. We can fail to target what Jesus exhorted us to target. Come and think through some hard questions and lines of inquiry with me.
The Gallup Poll reports that church membership is notably down from just two decades ago. Why? What is going on inside the church to cause this decline? As a remedy, if not only as ballast, to what did Jesus call us? What kinds of things are distracting and side-lining the Church today? Come and think both critically and constructively with me.
