I hadn’t done it in about 10 years, but yesterday I did — I spent quite a bit of time taking in the ecclesiological landscape around me in my neck of the woods. I wanted to learn more about the churches near me, so I visited website after website, read page after page, and scrutinized statement of faith after statement of faith (if there were any at all).
Simply stated, I was discouraged about what I found in my own community.
Oh, is this the part where you bash other churches?
I’m not, in fact, going to spend any time criticizing other churches, at least not by name or denominational tradition, but I’m impelled to share with you some of my discoveries in hopes that you will understand the reasons for my sighing. I’m going to list these in a reverse order of importance.
First and most frequently (and, as stated above, of least importance), many of the websites were not designed well or maintained well. They were either disregarded and ignored, and some of them had the appearance of being hastily cobbled together by a novice web designer who took the money and ran. In addition to some of my concerns about the poor designs and upkeep, most of these websites were riddled throughout with spelling errors, redundant links, and obvious grammatical mistakes that poorly represented the intellectual prowess that once characterized Christianity.
Secondly: also of concern was the overly attractional aspect to many of these churches as presented by their websites. Now, granted, I think a website should assay to do exactly what it does best: raise awareness of the church while putting excellence on full display (in short, advertise). So I concede that there’s a certain component to a church website that is absolutely supposed to attract. But my concern surrounds what the “carrot” was at the end of the stick, so to speak — in other words, what was being presented as the main reasons you should visit?
I quickly deduced that the main feature for most of these churches was anything from their extravagant children’s programs to deluxe coffee bars to massive LED displays backdropping a large, oversized, lit stage. Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with any of these things, to be sure, but I found it peculiar (read: not good) that these churches were looking to produce a “wow” based on their amenities and programs rather than the essentials of what makes a church a church1 in any century.
Third: another interesting and unexpected observation was the very prominent mention of the Holy Spirit in most of these churches. But I shouldn’t stop at “mention.” It was more of an ownership, so to speak. Whether it was the Holy Spirit that tells you to go to their church instead of the other guys’, or the Holy Spirit that told the young 20-something couple to move from the Bible Belt to start their church, or the Holy Spirit that will be felt deeply in their (nearly-exclusively-female) worship band, or the Holy Spirit that’s present in their Celtic-style walking meditation Labyrinth (yes, really) outside the church, the Holy Spirit was everywhere and he was theirs. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that He wasn’t really in a lot of the places they insisted He was, and that they didn’t have as much of a monopoly on Him as they thought they did.
Are You Done, Or…?
Fourthly: I have noticed a very significant presence of egalitarianism in many of the churches around me. It stands to reason, I suppose: I live in New England. So where I live isn’t exactly the Bible Belt (for which I am actually quite thankful). But here’s my point: I suspect that many churches do not hold this view as a meaningful conviction to which they’ve arrived by way of rigorous study, but rather as a way to survive in a cultural climate like ours. I believe the same is true of the increasing number of churches affirming the LGBTQ+ lifestyle: it’s not that these pastors and churches are having deep, wrestled-over (and certainly not Scripture-led) changes of heart, but that they’re trying to make it to their next paycheck.
Fifth, I also noticed that there was a church or two that came right out of the gate a little bit angry at me for checking out their church online. I kid, of course, but a couple of churches near me were definitely the “fightin'” kind, and they weren’t about to compromise with no weak-bellied, yellow-livered, so-an’-so liberals. You want TV screens and NIVs? You git on down to the liberal church, you progressive democratic washout! Anyway, you get it. So while I was alarmed that a lot of these churches traded good doctrine and meaningful music for hugs and smiles, I was equally bothered by the fact that others surrendered Christ’s love to make a Nehushtan2 out of their hymnals and skirts and neckties.
Sixth (and remember, we’re increasing in importance as we go), there was the glaring absence of any sort of “what we believe” or “statement of faith” sections in some of these churches’ websites. Granted, I think there should be more to a church and their website than simply “what they believe,” but a vapid vacuum of nothingness in the place any sort of doctrinal positions was startling. I get it: we don’t want to sound like a systematic theology textbook on our websites. I really do get that. But there has to be something, anything that tells me at least a little bit of who you are, especially if you have one of those cool non-denominational names on the sign.
Conversely, there was also a church with a statement of faith so far-reaching and so trivial and so specific that unless you believe exactly as they do about everything from the Nephilim to the specific sequence of eschatological events to playing cards and watching Iron Man (ok, I’m exaggerating just a little bit), you don’t make the cut. How harmful and hubristic. But I digress.
Seventh, on a related note but worth its own point, I also noted the presence of what appears to be very pastoral/elder-centric convictions in the “what we believe” sections of websites. That is to say, when a lot of churches say “what we believe” on their websites or in their brochures, they unfortunately often actually mean “what our pastor(s) believe(s).” For instance, in many (most?) reformed or Calvinistic churches, the pastors fervently believe in the solas or TULIP or whatever other Reformation-era commodities they may hold, but the congregation has little to no clue what these are or what they mean. Worse yet, it’s certain that at least some of the congregants would leave if they did know, and the recently-departed John MacArthur3 said as much4 in a video clip that’s currently making the rounds on the internet. And he’s absolutely right.
In the same vein, I have also found that some pastors leave out some things they believe in the “what we believe” section of the website, things (like creeds or confessions) to which they require prospective members to assent if they wish to join but aren’t frontloaded into the expectations of beliefs for guests and would-be members. Listen, I don’t care if you believe a creed or a confession — I think that’s just fine — but why aren’t these (or at least their contents in brief) public on the “what we believe” page? If you require your parishioners to agree to them (though I suspect most simply scan the confession or creed and say “yep!” before returning to their rerun of Sanford and Son), why not say so right up front? See MacArthur above for what I suspect is the unpleasant answer.
Still Going? Yeah? Getting it all out of your system?
Ok, I saved my most arresting and alarming observation for last: Eighth: I am utterly dismayed and fully disheartened by the lack of Biblical literacy displayed in the posts, sermons, and other relevant features of many if not most of these churches’ websites. Whether it’s the “Contemporary Service at 9, Traditional Service at 10” ecclesiological non-sequitur, or some of the shallow, seemingly copy-and-pasted sermons and “words of encouragement,” shared for all to hear and read, I don’t know how to say it any clearer than this — as someone who professes to be serious about the Bible, tries to be biblically (and linguistically!) literate, and firmly believes in a strong, serious ecclesiology, I wouldn’t attend any of these churches. I couldn’t!
I feel the same way as any average surgeon would feel if he saw a room full of professing surgeons slinging saws and swinging scalpels indiscriminately: you’re going to hurt somebody. You need to step away until you learn some more. We need more pastors who make reading, praying, sermon preparation, and sermon delivery their main craft, their ultimate passion, their I-won’t-stop-until-it’s-perfect obsession. God deserves that, and so does His church.
Well, that’s what got me a bit down yesterday. Because I am either an ecclesiastical snob (I confess this exists at least to some degree) or I’m seeing some grave, dire issues present in the churches in my area. Probably both. And yes, on a pastoral note, I confess that it does indeed drive me absolutely nuts to see some of these other churches’ parking lots bursting at the seams every Sunday morning. I wish people just knew better. But they don’t, and they won’t as long as they’re not being fed the Scriptures instead of their preferred flavors of the week, whether that be the traditions of yesterday or the trends of tomorrow.
- Acts 2:42 gives us a hint of what should really be the main things, in my estimation. ↩︎
- This is a reference to Numbers 21:5-9 and the pursuant text, II Kings 18:4. ↩︎
- May he rest in peace with Christ until the Resurrection. I disagreed with him on a few things, some significant, but I am very thankful for his life and ministry in general. ↩︎
- About 13:15 into this video until the end. ↩︎
