When you look into the world of Christianity today, most of the statistics you will find are focused on the modern "church system'--the buildings, the people who come to them, the clergy, the denominational structures. Even with the "non-denominational" churches, the records and numbers all home in on the buildings and the staff and the people who go there.
But what if that traditional vibe is not what was originally intended? Here's something to think about:
If you go through the New Testament, obviously a lot of it is about the events: where Jesus went and what He did, what the apostles did after the Resurrection, the places Paul traveled to. But if you look into the things that Jesus and the apostles said and wrote, there is actually not that much about what goes on inside the gathering of believers on the first day of the week. If you took all the passages in the New Testament about what to do in a church gathering and strung them together, you would not even have a full page!
But throughout the New Testament, there is a lot of things said by Jesus, and said and written by the apostles, about how we should conduct our lives all week long. Does that give you any idea about what they considered important for Christians?
One of the books that started me on a lifelong journey away from tradition was "Brethren, Hang Loose" by Robert C. Girard. Girard was a Wesleyan pastor who had planted a new congregation in Scottsdale, AZ. The startup seemed to begin well, but then things stalled. And in trying to sort through what was going wrong, he began to look at his own approach, and was bothered by what he saw:
"I found myself measuring individual spiritual growth by some of the same outward standards I had deplored in the established churches:
--how they were picking up the "language"
--whether or not they would pray in public
--regularity of attendance
--how many of the church's activities they involved themselves in
--availability to the organization
--agreement with the pastor!
All the marks of a truly "involved" churchman."
That is actually fairly typical of a lot of churches--the ones I grew up in over fifty years ago, and even today. All too often the pastor evaluates people in his church by those standards--and has little to no idea what is going on in their lives outside the building. In the larger churches, there is no way one pastor can know much about that many people. Even in the smaller ones, the pastor usually doesn't know that much about any individual.
But there is another problem with that way of evaluating church attenders: if you think about it, every last one of those "standards" can be faked! People who are not believers can mimic those activities and pass themselves off as Christians even if they are not; once in a while such a person ends up in church leadership! There have been a few cases in the religious news of the past few years where pastors have admitted to being atheists and resigned their positions--and those are the honest ones!
When I was a teenager planning to go to Bible college and study for the ministry, all the college did to evaluate my character was to request a letter from one of my local church leaders. Think about that...in the light of that quote from Girard above.
There is a standard for local church leadership set out in the New Testament, mostly in Paul's epistles to Timothy and Titus. The picture he presented was of older men, men with families, men whose children showed signs of living by Christian values, and men who had a good reputation in the community outside the church. Taking young people and sending them to a college to teach them how to lead a church is the opposite of what Paul was teaching.
And while some denominations and individual churches do have "elders" supposedly working with the pastor, in the real world the pastor usually ends up the supreme authority. In the first place, he is respected as the Authority. He also has the free time and flexible schedule to end up doing most of what gets done. And he often has influence on who becomes an official "elder" or board member. And people who disagree or are just not "respectful" enough get sifted out. Sometimes they step down after a tiff, sometimes they are not re-elected.
I suspect that this non-Biblical church system is the real reason so many denominations and local churches are in decline. There is speculation that the Episcopal Church may nearly disappear in the next 20 years or so. All of the traditional "mainline" Protestant denominations have been shrinking for the last half-century and more. Many individual congregations, of all groups, are closing their doors.
But there is a growing group of Christians who are not tied into the old denominations and church structures. Some are part of "house churches" that do not have buildings and often no official pastors. Others are a group that was labeled "Dones" in the book "Church Refugees" by Josh Packard and Ashleigh Hope. https://www.amazon.com/Church-Refugees-Sociologists-reveal-people/dp/1470725924
They were writing about people who were often core members of their congregations, but left the system--without abandoning their faith. While their aim seems to have been to help the system sort out what they were doing wrong and win people back, I do not see much sign of that happening. The traditional churches are still declining.
I admit I am one of the leavers (some of us prefer the term "Free-Range Christian" to "Done"). I get together with brothers and sisters when I can, and also communicate with some online. But my energy and effort goes into how I live all week long, not just what goes on inside a building on Sunday morning.
