Every Day

I started writing this blog over 10 years ago (1/2/2012). I have not been very consistent with my posts, at times writing weekly or more often. Other times, I would go for months without writing. I’ve written around 140 posts since I began, covering my faith and my family. A variety of posts on a variety of topics, mostly centered around living our faith every day of the week. I wanted to take some time to go back to why I started all of this and what has driven me to continue writing.

What is Six and a Half Days about?

It is pretty clear that the American culture is moving away from being a Godly nation. The percentage of people who attend church regularly and live Christ-centered lives is decreasing rapidly. I can cite many examples and possible causes for this, but the point is that our nation and most of the world are moving further away from following Christ and living a Biblical lifestyle. One statistic I read that 40% of Americans claim to go to church regularly, but the attendance numbers would indicate that number is closer to 20%. Perhaps the other 20% attend online, watch it on TV, or some other alternative form of attendance.

We have been continually looking for solutions to solve our moral decline, and one after another fails to bring results. With all of our efforts to solve our moral dilemmas failing, we are now declaring that what we had called a “moral decline” is now an acceptable alternative lifestyle that should be celebrated. After all, if it can’t be fixed, maybe it wasn’t broken to begin with.

We look to everything except God to solve our issues. If we only had the right person in office or could pass the right laws. If we would just be nice to everyone. If you would just leave me alone and you do you and let me do me, that would solve all of the problems. We have quit looking to God because the popular American church culture does not look any different from the culture outside of the church. We have a growing number of people who attend church once a week, either in person or online, and then go about the rest of the week living lives that look no different than everybody else. Six and a Half Days is about living our lives every day full of faith, family, and fun. It is about living a Christ-centered life in everything we do.

The other half day

America has ceased to be a “Christian nation” many years ago. We have moved farther and farther away from a nation that was largely built on Biblical principles. I believe one of the biggest driving factors has been the failure of our churches. It is easy to point an accusatory finger at our government, our school systems, or any number of other entities that are making decisions for how we can and should live our lives, but the truth is that each of these entities is made up of people who are making these decisions based on their own moral compass. Our modern American church culture has failed to provide a solid Biblical foundation on which that compass is placed, leading to many guiding thoughts that sound good in theory but are not Biblically founded. Our society, particularly our American culture, seems to have forgotten what church is supposed to be.

The American churches have changed their focus to “saving the lost”. I hear you asking, “But, isn’t that what we are supposed to be doing? I thought that was the purpose of churches.” Not exactly. In the mid-1990s, there was a growing push to change how we do church, and we moved toward a “seeker sensitive” church model. After all, the purpose of the Sunday morning service is to “seek and save the lost”, right? I read articles that talked about the biggest “competition” the churches had was the entertainment industry. We should change our Sunday morning services to be entertainment driven and produce services that rival the biggest tours and draw as many people as possible into the church. But when we did get them to church, we did not want to scare them away by teaching anything that could possibly be considered offensive, like “you are a sinner.” We began to develop church models based on some of the churches that had experienced phenomenal growth. There were a few popular church models amongst church leaders, and we began teaching and adopting these models in our churches, expecting the same phenomenal results that these other churches experienced.

But, is the purpose of the church really to “save the lost?” One thing we need to clear up here is a definition of terms. The word church has many broad meanings. The two predominant meanings are the church as the local congregation that meets together and the church as all of the Christians everywhere. So, I will try to distinguish between the two as I write, but unless I specify otherwise, I am referring to the church as the local congregation of believers.

The purpose of the larger church, all Christians everywhere, is defined in what is called “the great commission.” Jesus clearly tells us to go into all the world and teach the good news of Jesus Christ. That is our mission as believers in Christ Jesus. But the purpose of the local congregations is quite a bit different. The purpose of the local congregation is to educate, encourage, and build each other up. The purpose of the Sunday morning church is really designed to be more internal. The local church is designed to build relationships, encourage and lift up, and support each other in times of need. We have exchanged the deep, meaningful Bible teachings with “feel-good”, uplifting and non-offensive teachings.

We set aside a couple of hours each week and build buildings and programs designed to attract the unchurched people to this one-hour time slot in the week and hope they will come to us. Sunday morning services have become outwardly focused, and the deep foundations are fading away. In an effort to not offend people so they will keep coming back, we have stopped teaching deep, hard truths. The church of the New Testament was not afraid to offend people by teaching truth. They met together every day to eat together, study, and pray so they could become stronger Christians and grow in their faith and knowledge of the scriptures. We have turned away from a life that revolved around church to a life where we fit church in whenever it is convenient. If the church is outwardly focused, then for the Christians it becomes another job. It becomes something we do every week. If the church is inwardly focused and is about fellowship and building each other up, then church is something we get to do and look forward to. As Christians, our lives should revolve around church.

As church has become less important, that time has been filled with other activities. When I was a kid, we did not have Wednesday night activities at school or sports activities so people could be free to go to church. There were no sports activities on Sunday because people would be at church. Today, the baseball and soccer fields are full on Sunday, and there are so many activities that church activities and even Sunday worship are relegated to the “off-season” when we have a free day.

The Rebellion

I am seeing a movement of people beginning to rebel against the new church model. As the American church becomes more and more focused on the “entertainment” model, we have begun to lose the relationships at church and it is just one more thing on our already busy calendar. People long for relationship and are not finding it at church.

People are beginning to rebel against the church. As they begin to see that the church is not what it is supposed to be they, unfortunately, are not rebelling against the church model, they are rebelling against God. They are not leaving the church to find another solution. They are leaving God. In an effort to “save the lost”, we changed what church was supposed to be and created an entity that is now generating an even larger pool of “lost” to try to save. We have created the opposite of what we were trying to accomplish. Our solution has been to do more of what we were doing to create the problem. More, bigger, and shinier programs. More dynamic speakers and better worship teams. We seem to have forgotten the purpose of church, the local body of believers, meeting to encourage, study, and grow.

In our attempts to make Christianity attractive, we have tried to make it more palatable, more fun and entertaining, and less “offensive”. We have focused on love, and grace, and mercy so much that the “fear of the Lord” does not even exist. The “fear of the Lord” we have decided is not really fear but a “healthy respect” of the Lord. We stopped talking about hell and decided that maybe hell doesn’t even exist. After all, how can a loving God do something like that to his own creation? We have begun to redefine the scriptures and soften them up. We go to Church on Sunday and sing songs and pray and listen to a motivating lesson. We participate in programs at the church that are designed to attract as many people as possible and get them into the building. Then we leave Sunday morning and go about our daily lives, living a life that is no different than those we are trying to “save”. What are we doing? This is not what God has called us to do.

The “Christian life” has begun to look no different than the non-Christian life. We watch the same movies, listen to the same music, use the same language, go to the same clubs, and our lives look no different than those around us. We say, “We need to fit in and be more like the unchurched so we can reach more.” After all, Paul said, “I became like those around me so I can win as many as possible”. But that is not what Paul was talking about. He did not sin so that he could reach sinners. “But Jesus associated and even ate with sinners.” Yes, but he did not become like the sinners to “fit in”.

There is a growing movement in the American churches that teach the Bible as relative. It is not literal. It is even being taught in our churches and Christian colleges that Jesus’ teachings were suggestions, a goal to reach, not a command on how we should live our lives.

I have been writing for a long time about this, and I’m excited that people are beginning to see that the American church culture is not Biblical. I am excited that more people are seeing that something needs to change. My prayer is that, instead of leaving God, we begin to work to change the culture in the church, the culture that men have created. The church that you don’t like is not God. It is man-made, and some of the church leaders who created those models have either left God completely or begun to live lives that are apart from God’s teachings and calling it acceptable. The American church culture has become so focused on how to save the lost that we have lost sight of God.

It was never the job of the church to save the lost. It is the job of Christians to live lives that reflect the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ. It is the job of the churches, the local church congregations, to teach the Bible and to encourage and build each other up. It is the job of the churches to strengthen our faith. We do not need more Christians, we need better Christians. When those who call themselves Christians and proclaim the name of Christ begin to live lives that reflect Christ rather than lives that reflect the world, then the churches will begin to grow again, and that is how we will save the world.