Patient Reform vs. Impatient Rejection
Change is slow, and it sucks.
Change takes time, whether we are trying to change ourselves, our organizations, or anything else.
Changing our hearts and character takes time. We may come a long way, experience a trigger, and revert ten steps.
Change is a slow fermentation. Cabbage does not become kimchi or sauerkraut overnight. It takes time.
We do not become who we will ultimately be overnight. Sanctification is progressive.
Patient Reform vs. Impatient Rejection
If change takes time, it requires patience. People and institutions rarely break overnight. Usually, it’s a slow descent until one day, you wake up and wonder how you got there. While working through that change, we will find ourselves falling backward more often than we would like.
God is remarkably clear in how he deals with us in those moments:
Exodus 34:6: The Lord passed in front of him and proclaimed: The Lord—the Lord is a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in faithful love and truth
2 Peter 3:9: The Lord does not delay his promise, as some understand delay, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish but all to come to repentance.
This is God. So deeply patient with us. Patient in ways we don’t even think to be with each other. Loving us so much, he sent his Son for us.
In my last subscriber-exclusive post, I discussed mercy as a core attribute of God. Jesus is the grand culmination of that.
So where are we?
The State of the Church
I lead with the question: are we any better than 1517? When Martin Luther nailed those 95 theses on the church door in Wittenburg, Germany, it was because things had gone bad, big bad.
They were selling indulgences, meaning they made people pay to get forgiveness. The Bible had become inaccessible to the ordinary person, the Pope had way too much power, the Priests weren’t well educated, and they were teaching a works-based salvation.
It’s 2025, what’s our version of this?
A watered-down gospel. Churches are more concerned with programming than discipleship. Leadership woes. Easy belief-ism that leads to a shallow faith.
According to Ryan Burge, who has a pretty cool Substack centered around graphs about the Church, we are in decline, but we are headed to an interesting place:
The future of the Church (in America) won’t have a middle class. There will be small churches and mega-churches.
We are losing Gen Z by the droves, even though they are a spiritually curious generation.
We have become more political as an institution, but not in a good way. We are more loyal to our politics than to Jesus.
If we can be honest, the church’s reputation is in the toilet. The cultural cache and inherent respect that once existed have quickly dissipated. I know dozens of people who have spent their lives in the church but are no longer interested in it.
We have no one to blame but ourselves.
Perhaps God is patient with us while we gather our thoughts and do what he has called us to do.
I once gave a talk on faith and politics. I gave the usual “Hey, you can be a Christian and easily land on both sides for various reasons” spiel. That somehow devolved into a conversation about the government being too big and how we shouldn’t rely on it because the Church should meet people’s needs.
Cool….but we’re not.
The Church in the Roman era was famous for starting hospitals and caring for the marginalized.
Early church historian Eusebius had this to say: All day long some of them [the Christians] tended to the dying and to their burial, countless numbers with no one to care for them. Others gathered together from all parts of the city a multitude of those withered from famine and distributed bread to them all.
Julian the Apostate said: “when it came about that the poor were neglected and overlooked by the [pagan] priests, then I think the impious Galilaeans [i.e., Christians] observed this fact and devoted themselves to philanthropy.”
I don’t know if anyone would say these things about us. We don’t do this. This is not us.
What if we really lived this out?
If every church practiced adoption, there would be no orphans. There are 3.2 million orphans in this country and 224 million people who profess to be Christians.
We have more than enough money to pour into the homelessness crisis in our cities. It is estimated we generate 135 billion in tithes, offerings, and donations.
Instead of loving our neighbors, we are demonizing and running from them. We are hoarding our wealth and resources. We are not who we should be.
This led to the question: what should the world do while it waits for us to get our act together?
I’m not an alarmist, but I do pay attention. If we continue down this path and the trends hold. The church will not be destroyed, but it will be sifted.
We are fortunate in that God, in his goodness, will never let his bride fall. The book of Revelation is a letter of encouragement promising this very thing.
Losing the cultural standing we once enjoyed may be a good thing. The church has always thrived on the margins, not at the center of power, which could be good for us. A return to the margins could be a wake-up call.
It will force us to stop assuming that our perspective is dominant, sharpen our apologetics, and remind us of our need to be salt and light. We fight to see the kingdom advance, and we fight to be light in the darkness.
Where is the Church in 2025? By some metrics, she is in decline. What doesn’t change is that she is held by the sovereign hand of God, and no matter what the numbers say, that is the safest and most secure place to be.
We are thankful that he is patient and just. We are thankful that he holds us in his hands. We are thankful that he treats us better than we treat others.