"I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm – neither hot or cold – I am about to spit you out of my mouth." (Revelation 3:15-16 NIV)
How committed to God are Americans? As The Barna Group found out, that depends on whom you ask. According to their results, there is a hug gap between the perception of Pastors and the reality of their congregation’s devotion to God. Without getting to deeply into the mind-numbing statistics, on average, pastors contend that 70% of the adults in their church consider their personal faith in God to transcend all other priorities. However, a sample of adults asked to identify their top priority in life provided a different outcome. Only one out of every seven adults put their faith in God at the top of their priority list. George Barna, president of the Barna Group, believes the discrepancy between the pastors' beliefs about congregates' priorities and the church members' actual priorities can easily be explained.
One problem, Barna says, is that too many pastors often use superficial measures such as church attendance to gauge commitment among their congregations. "Looking at attendance, it's good to fill up the church and to raise the money for the programs," he observes, "but the reality is, Jesus didn't die on the cross to fill church auditoriums."
According to the study, the typical pastor measures the spiritual health of congregates by considering one or two numbers (e.g. church and Sunday school attendance) and a handful of vague impressions (what did exit comments suggest about peoples reaction to the sermon; how widespread was peoples participation in the singing; and were there enough people who were sufficiently trained to enable the services to operate smoothly).
Disturbing, are the indicators not widely used by pastors to assess people’s spiritual health:
- Intensity of the commitment to loving and serving God and people.
- Nature of each congregants personal ministry.
- Breadth of congregational involvement in community service.
- Extents to which believers have some form of accountability for their spiritual development and lifestyle.
- Manner in which believers use their resources to advance the kingdom of God.
- How often people worship God during the week and do they feel they have experienced the presence of God.
- If and how faith is integrated into the family experience of those who are connected to the church.
Recently, I spent several hours with a Pastor and Ministry leader from a local church. We discussed an array of topics concerning the church and they graciously shared their vision for the future of their congregation. I am pleased to report that we all agreed with Barna, "There has never been a time," the researcher continued, "when American society was in more dire need of the Christian Church to provide a pathway to a better future. Given the voluminous stream of moral challenges, and the rampant spiritual hunger that defines our culture today, this should be the heyday for biblical ministry. As things stand now, we have become content with placating sinners and filling auditoriums as the marks of spiritual health."
Before we closed our meeting in prayer, we agreed that if we are going to overcome the movement of lukewarm Christianity that seems so popular in the church today, we have to get back to the basics of our faith.
"Everyday they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, Praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved." (Acts 2:46-47 NIV)
[Apostate Church]
