Why are Christians leaving church? According to Mere Churchianity written by the late Michael Spencer (known to the blogosphere as The Internet Monk) it’s often because they’re seeking an authentic spirituality in pursuit of a Jesus who isn’t found in the institutional church anymore. If those who leave have any hope of finding Jesus again “they know it will have to happen somewhere other than church.” And Spencer freely admits that he has no agenda of trying to get those who have left to return. In fact, he seems to be encouraging more folks to try leaving.
Michael presents a picture of churches as organizations who have largely adopted messages of prosperity and politics and left Jesus out in the cold. Those who wish to have a “Jesus-shaped spirituality” must first begin their journey by leaving behind the false advertising of churches whose signs claim that Jesus is inside when in fact those inside would be hard pressed to find him in the songs, the sermons, or the litany of programs and ministries. The church is no longer a dependable guide to Jesus. In fact, there is “conspiracy among successful pastors to keep displaying only the tame parts of the Bible on the overhead screen.”
This, of course, necessitates our asking where a dependable guide may be found. For Spencer, the answer comes in the form of reading the Bible on your own and trusting the Holy Spirit to interpret it for you correctly. If this creates conflicts in interpretation between Christians, then that’s a risk we should be willing to take. Furthermore, Jesus-shaped Christians should seek out “mentors” and be part of “intentional communities” that are “authentic” for their fellowship. Finally, they should be involved in living lives that are focused on what Jesus would do in everything from the tips they leave to the good works they do in their communities.
It’s hard not be engaged by Spencer’s writing style. He uses personal illustrations and conversational language that draws in the reader as if you were sitting down with him and having a friendly discussion over coffee. Unfortunately, that personable style also masks that even as he chides mainline pastors for lacking sufficient Scriptural support in their sermons, his writing seems to fall into the same trap.
As a person who has struggled with a relationship with finding a place in the institutional church, it was nice to be affirmed in my personal observations on how much wrong there is with churches today. But the alternatives that Spencer gives are often nebulous and hard to translate into practical actions. Read the Bible? Check. Do more for the community? I guess I could. Find a Jesus-shaped person to be a mentor and then join an intentional community of some indiscriminate type? Maybe a little more complicated to actually pull off since I wouldn’t even know where to start looking for either of those things.
With apologies to Michael Spencer, at the end of it all, the call to ecclesia reformata semper reformanda still rings more true to me than the idea of abandoning church-as-institution all together — even while finding one to call home continues to present an ongoing personal struggle.
I received this book for free from WaterBrookMultnomah Publishing Group for this review. All opinions, however, are from the spectacular machinations of my own hyperactive mind.
