One reason there is such a dissonance between the church and the culture in the United States is because the church has gotten lazy.
In the early days of my time in Abilene, Texas, at Crescent Heights Baptist Church, Hardin-Simmons University offered a generous scholarship program for children of Southern Baptist missionaries. As a result, our small missionary residence often was booked. It was a small, three-bedroom, one-bath home, but our church generously made it available to missionary families on their furlough. These families were an amazing addition to our church family for the time they were in the residence.
Michael Chancellor
However, some students of missionaries struggled with the comfort of the American church. Some of those children (we call them MKs) were disillusioned with the “opulence” of the congregations they visited. Over my years of mission trips, I came to understand a little of their criticism.
One of my most memorable experiences was my first trip to Brazil in a rural village called Lemon. We went to worship with a congregation in a cane field which was being harvested and some of that consisted of burning the fields. Our visit was one evening in a small church, uncomfortable slatted pews, open windows without screens, little ventilation, packed with folks, people crowding around the windows.
Not all the churches we visited were like this, but at that time in 1980, Brazil had a lot of poverty. When our family returned in 1992, the economy was some better but we were in some very poor neighborhoods. When missionary families came to the States, for some it was a culture shock. As teens and young adults, they saw the scarcity in their field of service and the abundance at home.
Climate-controlled auditoriums, padded pews, carpet and expansive buildings, paved lots and multi-staff congregations. It was a little much for them.
However, there is a laziness that comes with comfort, with supportive communities and governments. More than that, there is a narrowness of focus a church can get because its neighborhood does not struggle.
“There is a laziness that comes with comfort, with supportive communities and governments.”
Because of that, we get slack, we get comfortable, we get careless, we get selfish and slowly find ourselves complacent.
Where our culture has moved to, in my mind, is simply because God’s people have neglected the opportunity and calling intrinsic to our faith. We can blame the slide on the culture, but the simple reality is as one man observed, “The lost act like the lost.”
Such is simple, but the flip side also is, “Christians don’t live like Christians.” Rather they live like religious people and, sadly, that is not the same thing. In fact, being “religious” is a world apart from being a Christian.
Being a Christian is more than just getting to church on most Sundays.
The most revolutionary statement I have heard in my adult life came from Dallas Willard. In a conference, he shared with us his definition of discipleship: “I am learning to lead my life like Jesus would lead my life if he were me.”
The culture of Jesus was a religious culture. However, it missed the point with every word Jesus shared. Rarely, if ever, will we encounter a culture without some kind of religious context. However, as in the time of Jesus, those cultures can be without compassion, kindness or empathy.
Today is no different. There are convenience stores on most corners and churches on most corners. Yet for all that, there is an aching absence of compassion, kindness and empathy.
We want to rail against a secular culture because they are lost, drifting, without hope in this world. Within the walls of many churches, marriages are crashing at alarming rates, pew sitters are present but leave the way they came in. Children and teens are struggling.
That’s the problem. Until the church hears with eager heart, “If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face, then I will hear from heaven, forgive their sin, and heal their land.”
Then we must reset our lives to embrace the Jesus life, as if Jesus is guiding us in word, interaction, choices, conversations, inclusion, compassion and care.
Michael Chancellor served 33 years as pastor of four Baptist churches in Texas, six years as a mental health manager in a maximum-security Texas prison before becoming a therapist in private practice in Round Rock, Texas. He now lives in Taylor, Texas.