From 'Sit Back and Watch' to 'Get Up and Go'

According to church researcher Ed Stetzer, 86 percent of unchurched people say they can have a good relationship with God without belonging to a church.

Perhaps you’ve heard someone say something like, “I don’t need to go to church. If I want to listen to a sermon, I’ll download something from the Internet. If I want to worship, I’ll get my favorite songs off iTunes. Watch the show at church, or watch it at home—what’s the difference?”

How do you answer that?

Maybe you’d respond that they should go to church because the presence of God is there. But they could respond, “I don’t need a church building to encounter God. Besides, I can catch the podcast from the comfort of my own home. I can be blessed by worship, edified from a sermon, and save gas all at the same time.”

You may be cite Hebrews 10:25—“Don’t forsake the gathering of the saints together,”—but they could reply, “Well, I do meet with other Christians all the time. We meet at my house, the coffee shop, the gym—you name it!”

You might even answer that they need pastoral leadership, but let’s be honest: most people who go to church don’t get much pastoral care. Only those who manage to penetrate the iron curtain of secretaries and appointments will ever have much face-time with the pastor.

The truth is as long as church is a performance to an audience on Sunday morning, there’s little to say to such objections. There are few opportunities for people to be recognized and heard. They sit at home in the glow of their monitors because all we ever ask them to do is sit, watch, and listen. We never ask them to use their mouths.

They sit at home in the glow of their monitors because all we ever ask them to do is sit, watch, and listen. We never ask them to use their mouths.

And they’ve got so much to say.

The interactive generation

This is the media generation. Before young people even graduate Junior High, they’re making their own movies on their computers. They can’t remember a time before the Internet. Blogs, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter—everybody has something to say. They don’t care if it’s important, polished, or relevant. If they like a product, they blog about it. If they are watching TV, they participate in the show’s online chat forum. Music, movies, food, clothing—all provide links, connections, a space, an opportunity to be heard.

Then they walk through the doors of a church, and we tell them to sit down and shut up. Listen to us. Quietly!

Comment, question, criticize? We don’t do that sort of thing.

This is where we’re blowing it. The church is lagging decades behind the culture for fear that we might compromise. But missionaries study a culture and find an “in” for the gospel. And to communicate the gospel in this generation means allowing people to participate and give feedback. Here’s the good news: The most unchurched generation during my lifetime, the iGeneration, has provided the church with the tools to reach them. This is where the church, if it we're willing to, could learn a lot. This generation may not only give us to key to unlocking dialogue with them, but also may teach us how to be more like the first-century church.

Putting gifts to use

When people ask why they should go to church, we can respond with two words: spiritual gifts.

Certain things can’t be done well over the Internet, like kissing. Or a Thanksgiving meal. You need to be there to experience Mom’s hugs and Dad’s proud pat on the shoulder. You have to be physically present for that expression of love.

So too with spiritual gifts.

Paul established that spiritual gifts only operate when we’re in the presence of one another: “For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you—that is, that we may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith” (Rom. 1:11–12).

Something supernatural happens when you get together with other believers and use the gifts to function as Jesus’s hands, feet, and mouth. Jesus himself will interact with somebody through you as you serve that person with your spiritual gifts. Now that’s something worth dragging yourself out of bed for on a Sunday morning.

Getting ministered to, but more importantly, ministering to others is essential for the interactive mind-set of this generation.

As a youth pastor, when I took a kid and forced him to save all his money, get onto an airplane, and fly to some foreign country to serve, he came back supercharged for Jesus. What made the difference? He was using his gifts. The mission field allowed him to do that. Sundays don’t.

When the church is a theater, the attendees become an audience. The challenge of any pastor is trying to get an audience to start acting like missionaries. Using their gifts makes them part of what God is doing. This generation doesn’t just want to read about the book of Acts. They want to live the Book of Acts, but too many churches aren’t ready to let them do that.

The 20th-century Methodist missionary and theologian E. Stanley Jones explained it well:

The very setup of the ordinary church tends to produce the anonymous. The congregation is supposed to be silent and receptive, and the pastor is supposed to be outgoing and aggressive. That produces by its very makeup … the recessive, the ingrown, the non-contributive, and the parasite. Men and women who during the week are molders of opinion, directors of large concerns, directors of destinies are expected to be putty on Sunday, and are supposed to like it. They have little responsibility, hence make little response, except, perhaps, “I enjoyed your sermon.” They have little to do, hence they do little.

Beyond the building

I accidentally planted my first church in Europe in a Starbucks reading group discussing The DaVinci Code in hopes of debunking it. Afterward they wanted to read the canonical Gospels. We set up chairs in a horseshoe pattern around coffee tables. It allowed everybody to focus on a sermon while allowing people to interact with each other.

One Sunday morning in urban Long Beach, where I was church planting, I shocked my congregation by literally applying Matthew 10 where Jesus sends out the 72. After teaching on it for 10 minutes, I told them that the application was to go to the lost sheep of Long Beach and proclaim the Good News of the kingdom.

At first they looked stumped, but slowly they began to move out in pairs. Like the 72, they came back rejoicing that incredible things had happened. Conversations lasted three hours, people broke down and wept, the hungry were fed, and friendships with locals were kindled.

That day, many Christians learned why Christianity is a full-contact sport. They got to sweat and get their hands dirty. Christianity doesn’t make sense apart from mission, and the gifts were given for empowerment. If we don’t use them, something within every Christian dies a little.

I believe we’d see many more people fired up for the gospel if we would step out in faith and actually engage the community around us. And that all starts by empowering the people of God.

Peyton Jones is pastor of Refuge in Long Beach, California.