After a meeting at a coffee shop cancelled, I tried to make the best use of my time by sitting down for a
conversation with the manager. Managers
of locally owned shops like that tend to have a pretty good handle on the
heartbeat of a neighborhood. I learned a
lot from this manager, but her response to one of my questions I found
particularly interesting.
I asked her if she
thought that the city could use more churches.
She thought for a while and then said, “no, I don’t think so.” She proceeded to list off a number of
churches in that neighborhood citing their existence as evidence that the city
in general and that neighborhood in particular had plenty of churches. Her perception as to the number of churches
in Milwaukee is accurate. In a meeting
that I had with the president and the CEO of BASICS I was informed that in the
city of Milwaukee there are 1,200 churches and in the suburbs there are
1,300. That’s a lot of churches. But is it enough?
Even at that rate
alone, with a population of over 1,750,000 for the greater Milwaukee area, that
would mean that there is only one church for every 700 people. Beyond that, Thomas Rainer’s research indicates
that only 6% of churches in America are actually growing. 94% of churches in America are either
plateaued or declining. Applying that to
Milwaukee, that indicates that there are only 150 churches in Milwaukee that
are growing and 2350 that are declining.
And this is just
numbers. How many churches exist but
have lost sight of their mission? How
many people who are far from God would read these stats and cheer because they
only see churches as judgmental and archaic drains on society? How many people have no basis to agree with
me that the church is the hope of the world? In fact, I've asked this same question to a number of young African American men I've met and they've given me a similar response. They say there are plenty of churches, churches on every corner. When I've asked if there are any good ones, they've said "no, churches just want your money."
Too many churches see
themselves in competition with each other and have not understood what their
role ought to be in an America that is now post-Christian. You don’t have to go much further than The
Huffington Post to see that many churches and pastors have adopted a form of
Christianity that has been sucked into a vortex of political polarization,
moralism, and prosperity (among other things).
These stand in stark contrast to the church that Jesus gave up His life
to create.
If we’re honest, we
will have to admit that we are broken people living in the middle of a broken
world. I believe that all of the issues
that we see in our own lives and in our world stem from one core issue: a
broken relationship with God. From wars
and famines to lying and hording, all of these are symptoms of the one core
issue that has plagued human history. We
are broken people with a broken relationship with God who is the source of life. Therefore, when we choose anything other than
God, we choose death, and the evidence is all around us and even inside of
us.
This is why Jesus left
the perfection of the glory of heaven, to come into this sin infested planet,
to give up His life in our place that He could restore our relationship with
God, repair our broken hearts, and set us in right relationship with this
broken world, that is, to continue His work of serving broken people that all
may know that God loves them enough to die for them! This is the mission of the church.
It is my hope that God
would raise up a multitude of new churches in the city of Milwaukee and beyond
who are more concerned about serving than surviving. Jesus gave up His life that we might live. And He has told us that the only way we can
truly live is by dying to ourselves, by laying down our lives for the good of
people who don’t deserve it – just like Jesus did for me who doesn’t deserve
His grace. Milwaukee may not need more
“churches,” but it certainly needs the Church to be the Church for the glory of
God and the good of all people.
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