Ten Reasons I Believe the Church is Failing to Fulfill Its Mission

The church in America is sputtering around rather impotent and listless. I would like to humbly suggest there are at least ten reasons for this lackluster presentation it is making to a lost world.

1. It is filled with luke warm people. I suggest it’s not appropriate to call these people disciples of Christ (aka true believers) because it seems Revelation 3:14-16 makes it clear God does not tolerate a lukewarm attitude when it comes to the things of the kingdom.

2. It is filled with people whose lives are out of balance. I have discovered in my 37 years as a Christian that most people’s lives are completely out of whack. People like Arnold S. spend way too much time lifting weights so their body becomes their idol. Actors spend enormous segments of time pretending to be something they are not, so they end up with an inability to deal with real life. Industrial moguls work twenty hours a day, so they have no private or family life. Entire families regularly miss bible studies and other important church activities when their children are involved in local sporting activities. Many professing believers get overly involved in non church activities so they stop growing spiritually. There’s nothing inherently wrong with lifting weights and exercising, being an actor, working hard at one’s job, or having a child in sports, but when any of those activities replace bible studies, worship times, personal devotional time, prayer time, church services, or congregational meetings, someone is too busy doing the wrong things.

3. Churches do not make it a condition of membership to be actively involved in ministry. There is no such thing as a born-again believer who doesn’t have a gift or several gifts. Thus, it is incongruous to allow members to be fed without working for their feed. Following Christ is work and the church that doesn’t teach and require its members to work in ministry is not being faithful to the clear teaching of scripture.

4. Churches tolerate known sin in their midst. I am currently working in a church that addresses this problem, but I believe we sometimes fail to follow through correctly. The lesson to Ai as recorded in Joshua 7 should cause us to sit up and take notice. Thirty-six people died unnecessarily because of the sin of one family in Israel. That incident teaches us the sin of one can drag any associated with that one into the consequences of that sin. That’s why it is critically important to promote ministries like small groups where brothers and sisters in Christ can be intimately acquainted with each other's needs and help when one or two get temporarily off track.

5. Pulpits across America are being filled by men and women who don’t have a clue what the bible says and they know even less about what it means. Some of the teaching I have heard spewed from these unregenerated heathen claiming to be Christians is almost unbelievable. The most significant example of utter foolishness I have ever heard came from two pastors who taught one can fast from such things as their favorite television program or their favorite dessert. Of course one can fast, in principle, from anything I suppose. Those two preachers just failed to point out that such fasts have absolutely no connection to the biblical reason for, or act of fasting.

6. There is no accountability. The church I currently attend has about 100 people attending each Sunday. Less than ten attend the midweek refresher bible study. There are four or five who attend my Monday night study off and on. When we have things like back yard bible clubs less than ten volunteers show up to help. The senior pastor mows the lawn because no one else is willing to take on the task.

7. Few preachers preach that one who is really saved will, because his spirit has been regenerated, produce fruit. In other words, if one’s life is fruitless, he is dead in his trespasses and sins; and unless he repents, he’ll spend eternity in hell.

8. Preaching is to often unsound biblically regarding Christian stewardship. I have written an entire book on this topic, so all I will say in a few words here is that tithing is an Old Testament practice intended for a nation that used the tithe to pay for its entire legal, medical, and religious operations. For Christians living in the church age, the bar is much higher. There is so little understanding about Christian stewardship today I’m amazed Churches function at all. Most of what must be done for the kingdom requires two things: 1. people committed to ministry; and 2. money for that ministry. In most churches one or the other, or both are scarce.

9. Ordaining of ungifted pastor/teachers is both a cause and an effect. Bible colleges and seminaries are graduating and ordaining thousands every year who have neither the gift nor the call to be pastor/teachers. The implications of this one are so far reaching it is impossible to calculate their impact.

10. The final and most significant problem with today’s churches is that they are spending millions of dollars on programs that are doing little to further the kingdom of God. Most churches in America are only interested in filling pews with tithers so they can make the church bigger so they can seat more tithers. The health, wealth, and prosperity preachers tell us if we give sacrificially to whatever it is they are doing, God will give us more things, keep us well, and make us happy as little bunny rabbits. "Buy a prayer cloth and you will be blessed." In contrast, the bible teaches one must carry his cross daily, expect to be persecuted and most often poor, our joy comes from a deep, personal commitment and relationship with our Lord, and that we are to rejoice when persecuted for our faith. "Whoopy ding!" you say. "I attend a church where 5,000 attend each Sunday morning and there are bible classes for every age group." God bless you brother. The next time you want to tell the world how holy your church is, check the statistics for the crime rate in your neighborhood. That just might wake you up to the possibility that the doors of your church aren’t open to the poor, orphans, widows, and aliens who are residing in your own community.

This list is certainly not exhaustive. I just picked the number ten because it’s a significant number and makes the point. The harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few. God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah because there weren’t ten righteous people in it. Some estimate it had about 120,000 residents. By extrapolation, one can surmise that America has about 330,000,000 citizens. If there aren’t at least 39, 600,000 born-again, bible thumping, turned on, God lovin’, sacrificial, cross bearing followers of Christ He may destroy these currently Un-United States like He did Sodom and Gomorrah. I think we would do well to ask if there are 40 million born-again disciples of Christ, would they be sitting around, letting this country sink into the dregs of the sin in which it currently resides? Sodom and Gomorrah’s sin pales when placed along side the sin of this country. We murder babies, promote freedom of speech and religion, hire aberrant sexual deviants to teach our children in the public school system, preach that drunks have an incurable sickness, grant licenses to strip clubs, gambling casinos, and businesses that serve nothing but alcohol whose sole reason for existence is to get people drunk and make a few bucks in the process. Murderers and rapists walk the streets, or spend their entire lives in prisons that are often more luxurious than many homes in America because we are fearful we might improperly convict one person out of a million. For decades we spent millions of dollars yearly taking illegal aliens back to Mexico while farmers, ranchers, and sweatshops spent millions bringing them back.

I fear if we don’t get the message soon, it will be too late. Nine-Eleven, Hurricane Katrina, floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, mines collapsing, volcanoes erupting, Iraq, Afghanistan, and rising, out of control, crime rate are all signs meant to call us to repentance; and so far they aren’t working. God’s patience is not endless. The land of Canaan (Gen. 15:16; Joshua), Pharaoh of Egypt (Ex. 7-14), and Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen.19) learned that lesson the hard way.

Thus says the Lord,
Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place—unless you repent.

Repent, or else I will come to you quickly and will fight against them with the sword of My mouth.

Indeed, I will cast her on into a sickbed, and those who commit adultery with her into great tribulation, unless they repent of their deeds. I will kill her children with death, and all the churches shall know that I am He who searches the minds and hearts. And I will give to you according to your works.

Remember therefore how you have received and heard; hold fast and repent.

Therefore if you will not watch, I will come upon you as a thief, and you will not know what hour I will come upon you.

So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will vomit you out of My mouth.