This is part of why I am not in a church.

Text of forwarded message follows:

>Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2006 15:07:23 -0500
>From:  "a pastor"
>To: Tom Lamb <mailto:[log in to unmask]><[log in to unmask]>
>
>Tom,
>
>Thanks for the article and your willingness to share it with me. I 
>also went to your website and read some of your other articles. I 
>agree with your observations about the state of the modern 
>institutionalized church. If you would be so kind as to indulge me 
>for a moment, I'd like to make a few observations of my own about 
>the "system" as you call it.
>
>First, let me confess that I am a pastor (I pastor a Baptist church 
>in the Midwestern region of the USA). Let me also say that I am not 
>apposed to the idea of church. It is the body of Christ and the 
>bride of Christ. He loved her and shed His blood for her. I 
>especially love the people God has entrusted to my care; they are 
>wonderful; I have no gripes with them personally. What I am 
>frustrated with is what the church has become. It has gone from 
>being a vibrant, home-based, interpersonal, life-giving body (New 
>Testament church), to an exhausting, often lifeless, 
>institution-based, impersonal organization (today).
>
>I am not saying that nothing worthwhile ever happens in local 
>churches; that would be an inaccurate statement. I have been blessed 
>in many ways over the years through local church involvement. I just 
>have many questions and frustrations about the way church is done, 
>especially here in America today. I detect from your articles that 
>organized churches in your country suffer from similar maladies. 
>Anyway, here are the gut-level honest frustrations of an 
>institutional insider: (note: from here on I will refer to the 
>church as the "institution')
>
>    * As a pastor I often feel like the guardian of an institution 
> rather than a participant in a revolution. The advancement of the 
> kingdom of God, the spreading of the gospel, and the making of true 
> disciples is often lost behind the seemingly endless busy work that 
> must be done in order for the institution to continue to function. 
> Everything gets bogged down in red tape and institutional 
> bureaucracy. Rather than being on mission with Christ, the 
> institution spends most of its time, energy, and resources 
> promoting and preserving itself; i.e., keeping the "machine" oiled 
> and running. I often wonder how many poor, oppressed, and 
> spiritually lost people we could help in Jesus' name; how much 
> human suffering we could alleviate; how many missionary endeavors 
> we could undertake; and ultimately how many disciples of Jesus we 
> could make around the world if we moved our gatherings back into 
> homes, fired all the professional staff, sold all our institutional 
> buildings, and pooled the proceeds together. (Shhhh..don't tell 
> anyone that the pastor was actually thinking something like that)!
>
>    * As a pastor I am expected to be a fund raiser, vision caster, 
> motivator, organizer, and administrator. It recently occurred to 
> me: "I am not a shepherd, I am the CEO of a corporation called 
> 'church." And my success as a CEO is often measured by how large my 
> congregation is, how fast it is growing, how much money we have, 
> and how fast we are building new buildings. Unfortunately none of 
> these things are within my control, so you can imagine the 
> frustration. And of course within the congregation there are the 
> whiners, complainers, critics, and pathological antagonizers who 
> love to torment institutional leaders. Oh, and don't forget the 
> church politics, unresolved interpersonal conflicts, and 
> denominational garbage that goes on. By the way, I read last week 
> that 20,000 pastors leave the ministry forever every month in the 
> USA! I wonder why? Hmmm.....
>
>    * As a pastor I am weary of continually trying to motivate 
> spiritually lethargic, apathetic (and probably lost) people, to no 
> avail. I'm convinced that our churches are literally filled with 
> deceived people who equate being a Christian with institutional 
> involvement, i.e, "I am a good Christian because I am active in the 
> institution." There is no real life transformation going on; no 
> submission to God; no being conformed to the image of Christ; no 
> daily spiritual disciplines; no exercising on one's spiritual 
> gifts; just attendance at the institution (and sometimes nominal 
> attendance at that). And because of the way the institution is 
> structured there is no accountability mechanism in place to address 
> the issue with them. This is nothing but deception from the enemy. 
> Jesus said that many faithful churchgoers are going to wind up in 
> hell, much to their shock and dismay (Matthew 7:21-23). It saddens 
> me more than you know. People say they love Jesus yet deny Him with 
> their lifestyles. The hypocrisy is unnerving. They want to call 
> themselves followers of Christ, they just don't want to do what He 
> said (Luke 6:46). I'm really not trying to be self-righteous (I'm 
> not perfect either). It's just that, as a pastor, it breaks my 
> heart when people live under a deception that brings reproach on 
> the name of Christ, destroys their lives, and jeopardizes their 
> eternal destiny. How did we get here? One problem I see it that 
> this modern-day monolithic institution called "church" has all but 
> lost the ability to get people together regularly in small 
> fellowships in intimate settings, where they gather around the 
> Scriptures, encourage one another, pray for one another, and hold 
> one another accountable. It seems to me it would be very difficult 
> to live a double life and be a hypocrit in such an intimate setting.
>
>    * In many American "institutions" Sunday worship services have 
> degenerated into little more than slick, high-tech entertainment 
> designed to manipulate the emotions. The "auditorium" is 
> constructed so that the audience (congregation) can sit and be 
> entertained by the professional performers (singers, dancers, 
> actors, and speaker) up on the "stage" or platform. Preaching in 
> many of these places has reduced the Almighty to a Genie in a 
> bottle and a cosmic therapist. The focus is man-centered (give 
> sinners whatever they want so they will like us and hopefully 
> accept Jesus). If I read my Bible correctly trying to make sinners 
> like us is both unrealistic and futile (See Matthew 10:22; John 
> 15:18-19; 2 Timothy 3:12). When God instructed the Hebrews 
> concerning how His tabernacle was to be constructed He did not say 
> to them, "Go survey the Philistines and Jebusites and find out what 
> they would like in a tabernacle and then build it that way." No. 
> Because He is holy, He gave them strict instructions as to how HE 
> wanted the tabernacle to be built and to function. When the early 
> church was forming they did not survey the Greeks, Romans, pagans, 
> or Gnostics to find out what they might like in a church. No. They 
> were consumed with radically loving God, radically loving one 
> another, and walking in the power of the Holy Spirit. They were too 
> busy being the church to worry about how to do church. It was about 
> substance, not style. They had no institutions, no buildings and no 
> bureaucracy. They had no professional church growth consultants or 
> mega church growth conferences or marketing strategies or 
> seeker-sensitive services, yet somehow God added to their number 
> daily those who were being saved (Acts 2:47). What a shock by 
> today's standards! What can we learn from this?
>
>    * It seems to me that after 2,000 years of church history we 
> have shaped, organized, and structured the church and its practices 
> according to the traditions of men rather than the Word of God. So 
> much of who we are and what we do is not prescribed in Scripture. I 
> understand that as cultures change the church has to adapt in some 
> ways. But we've become something I can't imagine God intended. How 
> did we get here? As Greco-Roman culture overtook the early church, 
> and as Constantine later united church and state (leading to what 
> would eventually become the Roman Catholic church), we lost much of 
> what early believers understood about what it meant to be the 
> church. Regular gatherings of believers were moved from the homes 
> to the cathedral; ministry was taken away from the common man as a 
> sharp distinction was made between laity and clergy; an complex 
> ecclesiastical hierarchy was instituted; the Bible was taken out of 
> the hands of the common man and entrusted to the priest. All this 
> had devastating ramifications. And the Protestant Reformation did 
> not restore what was lost. We've never recovered. Unfortunately, we 
> are what we are. And there doesn't seem to be much freedom to fix 
> this. If you start trying to color outside the lines of tradition 
> you are labeled a nut, a heretic, a troublemaker, or a cultist. As 
> you well know, the Radical Pilgrim pays dearly for departing from 
> the status quo.
>
>I could go on, but I will spare you. All I'm saying is, I 
>wholeheartedly agree that the modern institutionalized, westernized, 
>monolithic, materialistic, consumeristic church has evolved into 
>something that is incapable of being what Jesus called His body to 
>be. And frankly, I don't see the situation changing. I have recently 
>had a rather sinister thought, however. Intolerance for Christians 
>is increasing at a rapid pace in the USA as American culture has 
>succumb to postmodernism (this represents persecution from within). 
>Radical Islam is trying with all its might to take over the world. 
>These nut cases want to kill everyone on the planet who does not 
>embrace Islam, especially Jews and Christians. They have now 
>declared Jihad against the "West" on every continent on earth (this 
>represents persecution from without). If the persecution against 
>Christians in America got severe enough at some time in the future, 
>might this force the church back into a 1st century kind of 
>situation? Would we have to abandon our buildings and structures and 
>go underground, meeting once again in homes? I pray fervently that 
>it doesn't come to this...
>
>Please don't interpret my words as those of an angry, embittered 
>pastor. As I said, I love the church (Jesus loved the church and it 
>seems to me that if I love Him I will love what He loves). I don't 
>mean to insult His bride. I just think we could do church a better 
>way. >From reading your articles it sounds like you guys have 
>discovered one way to do it better. Thank you for your time.
>
>Blessings!
>
>A Radical Pilgrim wannabe
>
>
><http://beyondcamp.net>http://beyondcamp.net
>
>
>
End of forwarded message text:


John