I introduced the topic of the need for change in the western church in my first post of this series. I began this series with my early observations of what was happening at Asbury. Asbury is a good trigger for this series because I believe real change can only originate from the Lord Himself. Outpourings like I hope Asbury represents should lead to personal repentance if its truly of God. Maybe that would extend to a more corporate reflection by church leaders about church structure and priorities as we move forward into these interesting times of seeing the fulfillment of biblical prophecy.

I’ll try to describe the state of the church as best I can, mainly from my own observations and experiences as a bible believing Christian for 30 years, having lived in several places around the USA and having been a member of a variety of different churches including Roman Catholicism, Pentecostal, Charismatic, and non Charismatic expressions of the church.

The church is a complex topic so this is going to be somewhat focused on some of the larger muscle movements in the church today, and what I see as the most concerning trends. The next post will address some of my thoughts on what the church should be for the rest of our time here on the earth.

Bottom Line Up Front

I believe the structure and priorities of the western church must change quickly given the trajectory of the culture as it aligns with biblical prophecy. Two things are coming soon for the true church (those who are saved): 1) persecution and 2) the rapture. It is quite possible the true, biblical church will be subjected to a time of persecution prior to rapture.

We must assume we are going to be here awhile, anticipate what’s coming and prepare, rather than falling back into the western church status quo rut. Its a mistake to sit around and wait for rapture, a mistake made too many times in the past. I also think returning to “business as usual” is a mistake. The need for change exists regardless of where you stand on the rapture or end times in general. The changes I recommend in the next post are for the sake of the mission of the church.

General Observations

There are many good, bible believing, smaller congregations trying to remain steadfast in biblical faith and ministry. But sadly, these churches are increasingly hard to find. I have been searching myself for a good church for 6 months after having moved to a new city that is one of the most churched cities in America, home to many parachurch ministries. In all of that, you would think it would be easy to find a good, bible believing church that is focused on the mission. Its not.

The few good churches I’ve found have a lot of gray hair in them – both in the pulpit as well as in the congregations. I look around and see very few young people, particularly in the 18-35 age range. What the church is becoming or maybe has already become, is very concerning to me. The bible believing church will only last as long as the next generation.

And the Lord said…now, will not God bring about justice for His elect who cry to Him day and night, and will He delay long over them? I tell you that He will bring about justice for them quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?

Luke 18:6-8

When the Lord returns, I hope He does find biblical faith and ministry active on the earth. I think He will because He loves His church and occasionally its manifested in outpourings like I am hoping Asbury is. But are we crying out to the Lord day and night that he might bring about Justice for us?

I am confident the real church will always step-up to what God calls us to, but it sure would be profitable to prayerfully evaluate what we are now as the church, and what we need to become in the very near future. That should have happened in 2020 during the COVID pandemic, but it didn’t. The western church was challenged during COVID. The church I attended split in half over the issue of masks and in-person services.

A lot of churches struggled because the status quo – how we have come to understand and practice “church” was put to the test. A lot of churches, rather than looking at the pandemic as an opportunity, instead fought hard to maintain business as usual in a world that experienced profound change. Some churches properly discerned the sweeping changes in the culture and adapted. They made drastic adjustments in structure and practice.

Other big, prominent churches chose to fight government policies, winning court battles but alienating government officials who tend to keep score on such things. Fighting spiritual battles with temporal approaches is unwise and often will achieve unintended results. I am not sure the legal approach yielded good wins for the church. As a result, maybe all of the biblical church now has a big target on its back.

It wasn’t wrong to fight for our rights as citizens to continue to meet as normal but was it the wise thing to do? In my opinion, it wasn’t wise to make a frontal legal assault on our government officials regarding the COVID mandates as some churches did. We could have been much shrewder about how we handled the situation. It could have been an opportunity to think outside the box about what’s coming in the future and how to prepare.

Since 2020, most of the church continues to push hard to get back to pre-COVID routine, as if nothing changed. Well, things did change. As a culture, we have entered into a new phase with dark, unseen forces working against biblical faith with increased intensity.

Churches need to take a good, long look in the mirror of Gods Word and prayerfully consider what changes need to be made to more effectively execute the mission in these last days. Ephesians 6:10-20 is still the supernatural reality the church must recognize. The supernatural fight requires supernatural weapons and strategies as depicted in this passage of scripture. Legal battles are not the answer.

Western Church Doctrine and Structure

I will offer additional observations from two perspectives: doctrine and practice, and church structure.

Doctrine and Practice: Christian churches in the West fall into three broad categories: 1) professional “clean room” Christianity where core doctrines are measured with a micrometer and the experience of God emotionally or any indication of the supernatural activity of the Holy Spirit is discouraged and even suppressed or 2) false, woke Christianity that rejects the Word of God and bows down to the wicked culture, and 3) biblically compliant Christianity that not only upholds God’s Word but lives it with a sense of urgency about the times in which we live, an expectancy about the imminent return of the Lord, and an active focus on the mission of the church as a first priority.

Christian practice in regards to the mission is almost absent. Many churches are pretty good internally at taking care of their members but not so good in reaching the lost or engaging effectively in the spiritual battle. The mission of preaching the gospel and making disciples is an illusion in most churches. I think many bible believing churches desire to preach the gospel and see people saved, but its just not a priority and/or they don’t know how. Preaching the gospel is largely left to the pastor who will occasionally do that on Sunday morning but in terms of outreach and taking the message to the streets where the unsaved are, there is just not enough of it.

Most churches are somewhat pastoral centric, leaving any significant ministry to the professionals. I really value the pastors who are more engaged with equipping the saints for most of the heavy lifting ministry instead of trying to do it all themselves. We need more equipping pastors. More about equipping and training later.

Church Structure: western churches are growing larger with fewer pastors having more influence, power, and control over many more people. The “Mega Church” is increasingly becoming the dominant model. Mega churches can fit into any of the doctrinal categories identified above. I am going to expand on this topic because I do think its a concerning trend and has some unintended and unbiblical consequences.

The Mega Church

The mission of mega churches seems focused on growing numbers in attendance, not through preaching the gospel, but by attracting people with facility and comfort amenities. This kind of makes sense because of the need for enormous amounts of money required to keep facilities and payroll going. Mega churches tend to become an end unto themselves – money machines with a never ending appetite for cash. Whatever it takes for the cashflow to continue is what becomes the priority. Is this survivable in the future?

One thing COVID and the financial crisis of 2008 showed is a money driven church may not be survivable when hard times hit. I attended a mega church back during the 2008 financial crisis and it really struggled. The pastor kept squeezing the congregation for more money the people just didn’t have. It was hard enough for people to take care of their families and many had to cut back on church giving. The money machine grinded to a halt in a church that was heavily in debt due to dubious investments in real estate and facility.

Success in the mega church model is defined by statistics, campus size, and revenue. Its characterized by book sales, conferences, satellite campuses, branding initiatives, corporate symbols, and speaking engagements by the same mutually affirming crowd of mega income pastors, self anointed apostles, and false prophets. Mega churches continue to proliferate in affluent parts of town, swallowing smaller bible churches and leaving many communities without their own options to meet the needs of their immediate neighborhoods.

Resources that could support smaller bible churches dispersed into neighborhoods where they are much more relevant to local needs are instead sucked into the mega churches. These huge organizations are more monolithic, generic, and centralized. Most people who attend them have very little understanding of the Word of God or the gospel.

The bigger mega churches become, the more lonely, insignificant, and isolated people feel. I would also maintain that the bigger a church becomes, the more beholding to the government it becomes. So it will be increasingly more difficult to stand firmly on the truth of God’s Word as the wicked continue to consolidate their grip on society. The day is coming in which very difficult choices by churches must be made: stand firmly on the entire Word of God, or kowtow to the demands of the wicked. The bigger a church is, the more difficult this choice becomes. How many churches have effectively tailored out Romans 1 and Genesis 19?

Big churches have become personality cults centered around six figure pastors who pursue better facility and bigger congregations. The latest trends leverage satellite technology to expand the influence of a single pastor to multiple campuses spread across wider areas. Pastors who are supposed to equip the saints and plant churches with other people called to be pastors in a more local context instead multiply their own influence and income streams. They become increasingly isolated and unavailable behind their camera crews and security teams as they function more like CEOs and motivational speakers rather than men and women humbly equipping the saints for the work of the ministry. I wonder if Paul had a security team. Probably not given the abuse he took for the sake of the gospel.

Many big name pastors have fallen into sexual immorality. Its sad because thousands of people in their congregations revere them. They are supposed to set the example for faithful, pure living. Thankfully, I think most of them are removed from ministry but great damage was done.

The mega church has also given us aberrant and even heretical people and organizations such as: the Kansas City prophets (Mike Bickle), the International House of Prayer (IHOP) (Mike Bickle), the so called New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), and the “seeker sensitive” movement. We have very large churches with enormous influence such as Saddleback (Rick Warren), Lakewood (Joel Osteen), Willow Creek (Bill Hybels), Bethel Church of Redding, CA (Bill Johnson), Hillsong (Brian Houston), etc. The influence often becomes more humanistic and less biblical. Training people to preach the gospel is replaced by secular leadership summits beamed across the world to hundreds of locations at the cost of hundreds of dollars per person. And what about the money machine of Christian worship music. Tens of millions of dollars into the coffers of these greedy, worldly people who see themselves as in charge of Christianity. They see it as their personal responsibility to take over the world so that the Lord can then establish His Kingdom. The hubris of this is staggering.

If I drive around the city where I live, it is replete with mega churches that look more like corporate headquarters than churches. Many of these churches are greatly influenced by some of the aberrant organizations and people listed above. An example is Hillsong. There are many problems with this church and its philosophies and doctrine and yet they have successfully spread their “system” around the world.

Mega churches today represent comfort Christianity at its best with on-campus gourmet coffee and pastries, sofas in the sanctuaries, and feel-good sermons that are more concerned with affirming the wicked than adhering to the Word of God. These churches are defined by superficial, woke compliant bible teaching, technology, large conferences, eastern mysticism, cozy agreements with Islam, and multi-media worship performances. Looks and talent are preferred over calling and commitment to the Lord and the Word of God. Unfortunately, the big church model has become the goal for many congregations.

Because you say, “I am rich and have acquired great wealth, and need nothing,” but do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked.”

Revelation 3:17

What motivates pastors to pursue this unbiblical model? Maybe church leaders believe bigger has more impact for the gospel or that excellence in facility is what honors God. When I read John chapter 4, facility doesn’t seem to be important to God. Nonetheless, most of the leadership bandwidth, time, and effort are devoted to the next facility pitch to the congregation, the next fundraiser, and the next construction project. It takes years, every ounce of energy a pastoral staff can muster, and a lot of resources that most people don’t have. Conversely, there is little bandwidth, time, and effort carved out for taking the gospel to the streets or building up home churches to take people deeper in their faith, tapping into their spiritual gifts for the betterment of the church, and greater understanding of the Word of God.

The Lack of Mission Results

Even among people who identify themselves as Christian, understanding and believing the most basic fundamentals of biblical faith are at an all time low. Most Christians today could not explain the gospel if their life depended on it because there is no priority to train people in how to effectively share the gospel message. Pulpit evangelism is ineffective because 1) its literally preaching to the choir, and 2) most pastors don’t know how to effectively preach the gospel either. I have often seen a rush to the altar call and the “sinner’s prayer” without the message of the cross having been preached. “Asking Jesus into your heart” is not the gospel.

For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

1 Corinthians 1:17-18

The Christian gospel is absent from the streets while Mormons and Jehovah Witnesses work hard to preach their own false doctrines, winning many new converts to their cults. Many churches even reject the bible as the inerrant Word of God and tolerate the infiltration of their churches by eastern mysticism, and the sexually deviant community. The wicked state of the culture around us today is a testimony of the ineffective model of Christianity in the West. Its a disaster.

The mega church model continues to puff up a few at the expense of the many and has failed the mission of the gospel.

Will the Church Change?

Much of the western church has become the Laodicean church with the Lord outside a closed church door. Now that I think about it, a lot of other people are outside that same door with Him. But He stands there knocking. Maybe with an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the church will repent and open the door to the Lord and to all those people once again.

Listen! I am standing at the door and knocking! If anyone hears my voice and opens the door I will come into his home and share a meal with him, and he with me.

Revelation 3:20

Will the western church change? Can it? I think it would absolutely take an outpouring of the Holy Spirit to make desperately needed changes. Go Asbury!

Root Cause

In my opinion, the root cause of a failing western church is the model that has emerged in the last 50 years. Its the wrong model, and relative to the mission we were given, it does not work.

What should the church become for these last days? If these are indeed the last days then should we, the church that remains, change our priorities and our structure? We need to quickly become more survivable as a church and return to our God given mandate from Jesus Christ.

In the next post I will give my thoughts on where we go from here. It has nothing to do with the current model. With the rapid advancement of paganism, we must prepare for an environment that is similar to the pagan environment of the first century. I hope Christian leaders will break the western church paradigm and return to the first century church model.