Why the way we do church in America is broken

The church has a mission. Simply stated, the mission is to make disciples. This is the primary purpose of the church. It is the reason that God built his church on earth. We exist to make disciples.

I would like to contend that the way we do church here in America does not work. Why do I say that? Primarily because we do a poor job of fulfilling our mission. By the way as I use the word ‘church’ in this article I am referring to the local church in America.

Not only are we doing a horrible job at making disciples but many of us don’t really care that we are doing so poorly. Let me give you some staggering statistics to prove my point.
1% of all churches in America are growing through conversion growth. This means that out of 100 churches, only 1 church is actually growing because they are making disciples. If that doesn’t convince you that something is wrong with the church in America then check this out. Only two countries in the world have more nonbelievers than the US. Those countries are India and China. This means that the US is the third largest mission field in the world. In 1991 church attendance hovered around 49% in North America. Now, church attendance is right around 18%. Only 18 % of people in North America attend church!

If we look at what this means in terms of disciple making we find out that it actually takes 85 Christians working over an entire year to produce one convert. Go ahead and say it … OUCH!
Approximately 2400 more churches a year are closed than are opened. I am not making up these statistics. Feel free to check the validity and accuracy of these. You can find them at http://www.joelcomiskeygroup.com/articles/churchLeaders/stateofNorthAmericanChurch.htm

Are you convinced? Even if you were skeptical about the statistics you have to admit by simple observation that the way we do church here in America is broken. It is broken because we are not making disciples. Churches in other countries such as Asia are exploding with growth. In fact the church overseas now sends out more long term missionaries to the US than we send out to them.

So how do we fix the church? What hope is there that the church can again be what Christ calls us to be—disciple makers? Well, first it takes people who care and fortunately for us God has raised up some of those people. Next it takes strong leadership, a mentality change, and a personal revival of God’s people. If we are content to just come to church one hour a week and let that be the best of our spirituality then we might as well give up right now. Church is not the Sunday morning worship service. That may be a small piece of church but church is God’s people doing God’s work (together) in the community.

Fulfilling our mission together means that we have to be together like a family. Obviously we can’t all be together all the time. However groups of people can be together a lot of the time. Groups of people can meet together to, apply God’s Word, do outreach (evangelize), pray, care for one another, and develop leadership so that ministry can multiply and grow.
If we get serious about fulfilling our mission together there is indeed hope for the church in America—for Otterbein. Let's get our hearts right with God, seek him and work on fixing what is broken. It will take effort and you bet it won’t always be easy but if we're truly Christ’s, then we have a mission to fulfill.

Are you willing to do what it takes or do you prefer the status quo—business as usual routine of church life? You should suspect that you’ll hear more about fulfilling our mission together as the year progresses!