New Barna Report: Growing Number of Americans "Love Jesus" but Don't Go to Church
“Barna has released a report on the first of a two-part exploration of faith and spirituality outside the church, looking at the ‘fascinating segment of the American population who, as the saying goes, love Jesus but not the church.’”
If you don’t worship and serve the Lord with the Lord’s people, then you don’t love Jesus. If more people read Hebrews, they’d realize that strength in community is one antidote to apostasy.
Tyler is a pastor in Olympia, WA and works in State government.
…but one thing that strikes me is that I’ve rarely met a person who avoided church who was orthodox in his theology; the only example I can think of is the pastor who did my wedding, and he skipped out of church in the Civil Rights era South because every “fundagelical” church he visited was preaching segregation. Thankfully there are not too many churches like that anymore—at least not that do so openly.
Otherwise, in my 29 years as a Christian, what I’ve noticed is that non-attenders go well beyond denying Hebrews 10:24-5, and generally carry quite an animus against the writings of Paul, just as Peter predicted they would. However, if you dig deeper, excising the epistles from the Scripture wouldn’t do it for them, as the clear implications of the Gospels, Acts, the Prophets, history, and even Torah are foreign to them as well. Which is why Peter characterized them, I believe, as ignorant and unstable.
So while there are probably some Christians in the U.S. who genuinely cannot get to a decent, Bible-believing church, overall I’d guess that 99% or more of them simply don’t want to hear what Scripture says.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
Discussion