Yesterday I met with a friend and ministry colleague at yet another Starbucks. We have had such meetings in various cities around the country as he and I both spend a lot of time on the road. The main topic of conversation, as always, was our ministries and those occasions when our ministries overlap and we work together, but this discussion took on a different flavor. It wasn’t so much about the nuts and bolts of what we will develop in the way of training curriculum and when and where we would present this training, but it was more about what we were seeing in God’s movement in our time and pertinent biblical and theological connections.
He shared an appalling statistic that had been shared with him at a recent meeting of leaders from his denominational tribe. Consider this:
65% of Builders attend church.
45% of Boomers attend church
15% of Generation Xers attend church
4% of Millennials attend church
Christianity has moved in two generations from being central to being marginal to being virtually non-existent, and Christians are viewed with more and more hostility as we fade to the edges of culture.
My friend has been spending the past few months restudying the Lord’s Prayer, and he explained how impacted he has been by the power and implications of the supplication, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” He and I talked about how the Christian church in the U.S. has become a religious institution over the years and has drifted further and further away from God’s campaign of the coming kingdom.
In years gone by he and I have worked in many settings that highlighted the need for Christian leaders to be kingdom-minded. Kingdom-mindedness is often cited as a value by leaders being trained for church planting. I wonder if we really know what that means.
I’ve had a day to mull this over so I want to share a very simple thought that has been bouncing around in my head and perhaps in my heart. We in the church keep thinking that the problem is that people, especially young people, are not coming to church. We should be realizing that the true problem is that the kingdom is not coming on earth as it is in heaven. Why? Because we are not taking the kingdom to the lost. We’re hoping that the lost will come to church. We’re not moving out with the gospel but are waiting for those who need the gospel to come to us.
Christianity is not identified with Christ or His kingdom in our culture. Christianity is identified with conservatism, narrow-mindedness, intolerance, politics, and, in far too many cases, grievous sins such as sexual child abuse. Whose fault is that?
For the kingdom to come through our church and to the world, it must come in our individual lives. We must become Kingdom-Comers. Maybe I’ll spend some time praying and thinking this through. How about you?
