I read this from a man who was seeking a position in ministry:

I don’t want to sound negative here but you guys must be living in a different world than me. I am trying to get a job in the ministry and no one will hire me because I can’t and don’t want to disciple people…….Think about it, when I was growing up in the 60’s and 70’s we had Sunday school and worship. There were no groups or special programs yet people were more devoted than they are now.

My response to him was:

In response to your post –

Discipleship is the very core of following Jesus – In fact Jesus gave a command that was issued to His disciples standing before Him and unto every disciple after them until His return – “Go into every Nation…… and make disciples……”

The fact that all that happened in the 60’s, 70″ and 80’s was Sunday school and Church is what has left us with the generation we are dealing with now. Yes, they may have been more dedicated to “their Church” but they greatly lacked in being dedicated to the advancing the Kingdom. It was during that time that eastern teachings crept into the Church, self-help books where starting to be written, a generation of “spiritual consumers” were being raised up to consume everything at the alter but share it with none, like a plague of locust they sought to eat up everything in their path in the sphere of the spiritual which truthfully caused more spiritual damage and droughts that anything good..

Not, all Christians or Churches where that way but the majority them were and enough to allow the enemy a greater entrance in our society. I know, for I come from that generation being born in the early 60″, the generation that slept or was too busy indulging themselves at spiritual shmorgishborgs of self-realization while abortion was legalized and the Bible & prayer in schools were outlawed. When liberalism began to rewrite our schools text books and nothing was said or done. We can blame the present spiritual atmosphere of the Church and this nation on Satan all we want but the reality is the watchmen of the previous generation were too busy about their own business rather than that of the Fathers. O’ there where some who cried out the warnings but like Israel of Old the people silenced them and sought a good word even if it was from a false prophet.

Father, awaken Your Bride that she be not found asleep and guilty of losing another generation.

The failure of one generation carries over into the next, the same as the blessings of one generation can carry over. That was a season of bless me, bless me Lord, whereas a true Kingdom identified generation will not seek selfishly after the blessing of the Lord, they will, with a great depth of hunger, cry out asking the Father to allow them to be a blessing unto Him.

Let us who are alive today in this generation of the Lord seek to be His blessing which covers the earth.

by Mike Breen

From time to time I will have the people I’m discipling write out their own pastoral obituary. I ask them to write out how our enemy would take them out, rendering them unable to serve their family and communities. As you can imagine, the answers vary, but always serves as a really helpful exercise as they are forced to confront issues of character, etc.

You see, taking the same exercise I’ve used with pastors, for the past year I’ve been thinking how the enemy would/might be trying to take down the American church. Now what I’ve noticed is that the original temptations Jesus faced (which can best be boiled down to Appetite, Affirmation and Ambition) are somehow warped and insinuated into the culture. As each culture is distinct and different, a smart enemy would come at each culture in subtle ways, tempting them in ways they don’t see or expect, and with things that would look different from culture to culture.

For instance, the issues the European church deal with are actually quite different than the ones the American church is dealing with – even though often times they are put under the same broad umbrella of “Western Church.” Sure, there are some similarities, but the attack is different. More nuanced.

But those original temptations of Appetite, Affirmation and Ambition are slowly insinuating themselves into everything we call CHURCH. We just often don’t recognize it or see it.

And so this is how, if our enemy gets his way, the American church could be taken out:

A culture of CELEBRITY (affirmation)

A culture of CONSUMERISM (appetite)

A culture of COMPETITION (ambition)

The original temptations of Appetite, Affirmation and Ambition are creeping into everything we call CHURCH.

CELEBRITY

The idea of celebrity is deeply woven into American culture and values. All you have to do is look at the ridiculous nature of Reality TV and you see how Americans are constantly craving celebrity (either to be a celebrity or to find the next celebrity and stalk their every move). Now there is nothing dark or sinister about “celebrity” in and of itself. You can’t find an argument that says Jesus wasn’t a huge celebrity in his day.

However, there is a difference between being famous and being significant. If Jesus was famous, it’s because he was doing something significant. The problem with many pastors is they make decisions, develop personas and define success from the lens of what will make them a celebrity/famous (even if they don’t know it or see that they are doing this). So in American church culture, it’s pretty easy to become a celebrity: Grow a HUGE church. Now all in all, it’s not terribly difficult to grow to be a giant church if you have the right tools at your disposal – but that doesn’t mean the ends justify the means of getting there.

For instance, though Jesus was a celebrity in his day, he was willing to say things that ran people off in droves. In fact, the book of Mark chronicles the way (from about the mid-point of the book on) how people left Jesus to where, at the end, virtually no one was left. NO ONE wants to be associated with him for fear of the consequences. That’s a Charlie Sheen-esque flameout (obviously without the character issues!). That’s not something you see too often in American churches.

I suspect it’s because riven deeply into the American psyche is the desire to be a celebrity. And American pastors are very susceptible to this. Many subtle things happen in people who desire to this kind of celebrity status:

* They can disengage community and isolate themselves, setting themselves up for moral failure.

* They can make decisions that are numbers driven and not always Kingdom driven.

* They can skew to a shallow understanding of the Gospel as opposed to a holistic one that leads people to discipleship.

* They can put the good of their church (their personal Kingdom) over the good of God’s Kingdom.

Question: In what ways are your decisions made by a subtle undercurrent of ambition and a hope for celebrity?

CONSUMERISM

We live in a culture that revolves around consuming. Every TV commercial, every store, every credit card company, every bank, every TV show or movie, every piece of clothing, car or product, every website, every restaurant every everything is tailored to fit your desires, needs or personal preference. We are easily infuriated when things don’t happen exactly as we want them. We exist in a place that implicitly says this: “We are here to serve you and meet your every whim and desire. Let us take care of you.” What’s more, it’s never enough.

We live in a culture that revolves around consuming.

Eventually the house or the car get older and we want new ones. The clothes aren’t as fashionable and we want something more in style. That restaurant is getting boring, we must find another. Our favorite TV show is wearing thin, so the search begins for the next favorite. And on and on and on. This is how we are wired to think in the United States. And it is all backed up by this rationale: You’re worth it. You deserve to have what you want, how you want it, when you want it. And for the most part, the church plays the exact same game.

We do as best we can to provide as comfortable an experience as humanly possible, using every means at our disposal to attract them in (and then keep them in). So we tailor what we do around their wants and desires. That’s Marketing 101, right? The problem is at the end of the day, the only thing that Jesus is counting is disciples. That’s it. He doesn’t seem to care too much about converts, attendance, budgets or buildings. It’s about disciples. And, by nature, disciples are producers, not consumers.

Yet most of our churches are built around feeding consumers. I’d argue 90% of the church’s time, energy and resources are linked to this. But the issue is this: The means you use to attract people to you are usually the means you must use to keep them. In other words, if you use consumerism to attract them to your church, it often means you must continue using it to keep them or else they will find another church who will meet their “needs.” And yet, that consumer mentality is antithetical to the Gospel and to the call of Discipleship.

Disciples aren’t consumers, they are producers. Jesus cared about disciples more than anything else.

The means you use to attract people to you are usually the means you must use to keep them.

COMPETITION

You will never find a more hyper-competitive culture than you do in the United States. As a foreigner living in this land, I can attest to that with the utmost respect. Americans love to win, they love the struggle of the journey and love holding up the gold medal of victory. Now don’t hear me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with being competitive, it’s just how competition has become warped and twisted within our culture. And it’s that, at least in the church, we are competitive about the wrong things.

Much of the American church finds itself competing with the church down the road. “Are we bigger than them? Do we have more influence than them? Do we have the best/biggest youth group in town? Do people like to get married in our church building? Do people like our church better than theirs?”

The fact of the matter is that there is a battle, we do have an enemy and we should be competitive – but against our enemy! What we haven’t seen is how crafty he is. This seems to be the alliance he has struck with the American church: “I’ll let a good chunk of your churches grow, just not at the expense of my territory.”

Disciples aren’t consumers, they are producers. Jesus cared about disciples more than anything else.

And so what happens? 96% of church growth is due to transfer growth and not churches striking into the heart of our enemy’s territory. We’ll consider it a win because we have the new service or program that is growing – but that growth is mainly from people coming from other churches. That’s not a win! That’s a staggering loss.

Furthermore, for many pastors, we don’t think we’ve won until we’ve won AND someone else has lost. Seriously?! For sure, we have an enemy and we should be competitive, but we should be competing against our enemy, knowing that the final battle has already been won, and not competing against our own team members.

So gifted and skilled is our enemy, so conniving is he, that he has convinced us that beating the people on our own team is victory while he stands back and laughs, rarely having to ever engage in conflict, protecting his territory. He is beating us with a slight of hand, with a clever distraction, turning us against ourselves. Question: In what ways are you competing (both in actuality or simply in your mind) against people who are on your own team?

In all honesty, it isn’t that the American church will ever truly die or cease to exist. It will always be there. But it is entirely possible that if these three critical issues aren’t addressed and dealt with, it will be a hallow shell that is spiritually listless.

If we think through Celebrity, Consumerism and Competition, the anti-body against all of these is sacrifice. Learning to lay down what builds us up and giving to others instead. Learning to serve, rather than to be served. Looking for anonymity rather than celebrity. To build a culture of producers rather than a consumers.

To live in a vibrant, sacrificial community fighting a real enemy rather than competing against the same community God has given us to fight WITH rather than AGAINST. It’s about sacrificing what we want for the glory of God and the advancement of his Kingdom, regardless of our advancement or desires.

Clearly this is what Paul was getting after in Philippians 2:6-11 when describing the attitude of Jesus as taking on the attitude of a servant, willing to sacrifice all acclaim and equality with God. It was a willingness to set aside and sacrifice celebrity, consumerism and competition at the altar of the incarnation.

Fifty years ago, as these three subtle threads were being woven into the American church, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., serving as a prophetic voice, said this:

If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century.

We are now into the second decade of the 21st century and we find ourselves still, for the most part, refusing to sacrifice what we want for what God is asking of us and his Church. Will we have the courage to sacrifice as Christ sacrificed? Will we do the things that cost us so that his Kingdom may advance?

About The Author

Mike Breen has been an innovator in leading missional churches throughout Europe and the United States for more than 25 years, and leads 3DM, a movement/organization that is helping hundreds of established churches and church planters move into this discipling and missional way of being the church.  Twitter: @mike_breen

Over the last few years, I have been thrilled to watch an increasing number of American Christians explore the idea that their faith requires them to break out of the confines of their middle class lives. In response to a deep yearning and the clear message of some authors and speakers, many followers of Christ are adopting children, moving across town or across the ocean to minister to those in need, and discovering exciting new callings to live out the mission of God.

Unfortunately, some are labeling this all-in, life-altering activism as the “new legalism.” Critics argue that we shouldn’t make people believe they have to reject suburbia to do amazing, cool, and world changing things for Jesus. In a Christianity Today cover story, the author wrote that the Good Samaritan didn’t do any of the things we call radical today. Instead it was “as he traveled” that he did something ordinary. He helped a person out. We just need to be faithful, the author says, “in our corporate jobs, in our middle-class neighborhoods … reaching out in quiet, practical, and loving ways.” True. But that represents just the start of the all-in commitment that Christ calls us to.

I think the critics of radical Christianity have got it wrong—they are encouraging Christians to play it safe, keep it comfortable.

The problem isn’t that we are asking too much of Christians who seem content with ordinary Christian lives. The problem—or should I say “opportunity”—is that the Gospel places much higher demands on Christians. We aren’t being radical enough!

As followers of Jesus Christ, we are supposed to actually follow Jesus Christ—the man whose radical message got him killed. Certainly, Jesus was on a unique mission, but nearly all of his earliest followers also gave up their lives. Make no mistake, the call of Christ on our lives is not one that fits easily into a pleasant middle class existence.

Perhaps the church has done an inadequate job of explaining this, but when we become Christians, we make a pretty radical commitment. It’s like enlisting in the military. When you sign up, you don’t get to tell your commanding officer that you’ve decided to settle down in Boca Raton, spend time golfing, and become a stock broker. When you enlist, you sign on to the mission. It is expected that an army private might be deployed overseas and risk his life for a greater cause. Why would we think enlisting as a follower of Christ would somehow be less radical?

Of course, just as the military has its press corps, its logistics operators, its procurement officers, and other desk jobs, we may not all be called to the front lines. God may not ask you to move into the inner city or the hinterlands of South Sudan. Our job is to offer our service to God, to be available, and to be willing to lay down our lives. Being radical is about the commitment you’re willing to make. Whether God puts you on the front lines or behind a desk, the point is: you’ve enlisted.

Jesus’ agenda is about changing the world. It’s a breath-taking revolution to bring all things under the reign of Jesus Christ. We are to show the world an extraordinary new way to live. So we pursue Jesus’ mission by being beacons of truth and love in whatever work we do. Whether God has called you to a corporate job, to raise a family, or go to the mission field, his agenda is about demonstrating the good news of the gospel to a watching world through our actions and our words. This radically changes why and how we do what we do.

We have been sent into the world with a message – that all people can find forgiveness and healing at the cross and that Jesus offers each one of us a different way to live. This is a revolutionary message that transforms all dimensions of human endeavor – the arts, the sciences, business, politics, communities, and families.

Yes, the Good Samaritan was doing something ordinary when he stopped to help a wounded traveler on his journey to Jericho. But he radically upset the social norms that said Samaritans don’t associate with Jews. The Good Samaritan was no ordinary nice guy. He was a radical. And we must be too.

~By Rich Stearns