The Oprah Winfrey Show
Oprah's Best Life Series
Harpo Films
For One More Day
The Great Debaters
O, The Oprah Magazine
Subscribe Today
Oprah Radio
Oprah's Angel Network
Oprah's Book Club
Posted on Jun 7, 2009 6:58 AM
Most of the blogging provided same old answers as to why churches declining. Here's my take on it...
The Failure of Christianity: This I have observed in the Christian religion.
Instead of helping people know God, many churches and church leaders are obsessed with achieving the status of being the biggest church with the largest crowds and the most elaborate campuses. They measure spiritual progress in terms of the number of attendees, the size of their annual income, and the square footage of their facilities. Furthermore, virtually every Christian conference on church leadership will showcase the largest of these churches, as well as their leaders, as if they were the role models for other churches. Over the years, a cult-like following has even developed around some of these churches and church leaders. They are viewed as Christianity's Hollywood celebrities.
Instead of showing people how to live a Christ-conscious life, however, most likely because they do not know themselves, many church leaders saddle their followers with a catalogue of "do's" and "don'ts" as cumbersome as a proverbial Sears catalogue. They are told what to think, how to believe, and the way they are supposed to live. Furthermore, most leaders conveniently disregard the fact that their founder repudiated the Scribes and Pharisees for doing this very thing to the followers of Judaism.
"Instead of giving you God's law," Jesus charged, "as food and drink by which you can banquet on God, they package it in bundles of rules, loading you down like pack animals."[1] Is this not similar to the insanity in most churches today? The irony is, the insanity has become so commonplace, virtually everyone thinks it is normal. Has it ever occurred to you that the one and only time Jesus ever became angry enough to lose his temper was the day he entered the Temple? I sometimes wonder what his reaction would be were he to walk into most any church in America?
What about the "circus of endless activity?" Have you been in a church lately? Were it not for the cross atop the building, you might get confused and think you'd just stepped into a Barnum-and-Bailey circus. There's little to connect you to God, but fret not. There's plenty with which to occupy yourself. In most churches, it's not just a circus of activity, it's a kind of Piccadilly buffet line from which to select any number of diversions from God.
When religion moves away from its shared purpose with all other religions, it gives secondary matters a place of superior importance. This is precisely what's happening in most churches today. For example, the crusaders who have been advocating for change will readily tell you that religious belief has supplanted a relationship to God. To know God, as well as how to live one's life in the presence of Being itself, has been relegated to a place of secondary importance. Or, to put it another way, knowing about God is regarded today as equal in importance as knowing God.
Across all denominational lines, the church has become narrower and narrower in its thinking. It is judgmental of virtually anyone who disagrees with its beliefs and values and has sought to use whatever means necessary, including the legislative branch of U.S. government, to impose its moral agenda on others. More and more, the church has become isolated from the real world itself and has created a make-believe world that has little or no connection to life on this planet.
If the declines experienced in most churches today were the medical case history of a patient in a hospital, the diagnoses would read, "Chronically ill; resistant to change; on life-support; likely terminal." The church itself is the one institution most in need of the very thing it proclaims to the world--salvation. It boasts of knowing God. But, by the sheer numbers who have given up on the church already, it is reasonable to question whether the church knows God at all.
[1] Matthew 23:4
