Spiritual Drift
Photo by Atlas Green on Unsplash
Last week in church Pastor talked about something called spiritual drift. Spiritual drift is when a person who was active in the church and growing in Christ begins to slide back to their old ways. Where once they were excited about reading the Bible they now glance at it and move on without opening it. Ditching church now and then is no longer a big deal and going to a small group when Real Housewives of Wherever is on is unthinkable. Join the hospitality team? No thanks, I did it for a while and got burned out. Kids ministry? Shudder, uh-uh. Some still raise their hands during worship (more if the worship pastor tells them to do so) but most of these drifters are just staring at the stage wondering if they are really going to sing every verse twice.
I can’t speak for everyone but the above is a perfect description of me (except for Real Housewives. For me it was Game of Thrones which we are probably all going to Hell for not only watching but actually enjoying. Of course, we Christians all looked away during the nudity and sex scenes, right?) I became a Christian when I was 40 years old. That was 15 years ago. I had been searching for something for a long time and I was pretty sure I’d found it. I dug into the Bible. I got involved in ministry, I tithed my 10% and then some (this after much praying and gnashing of teeth). I hung on every word the pastor spoke, hungry to learn and grow and be that new creation the Bible promised I was. After a couple years I started to realize that I was familiar with what was being taught and took that as a sign that I was learning and growing. I began leading life groups and teaching. After a couple more years I was started to grow tired of hearing the same things over and over. Get in ministry, get in a life group, give us your money (after all, it isn’t yours, it’s Gods). I was already doing all of these things.
I started to drift. Some call it burnout. I call it something else–boredom.
There, I said it. I’m bored with Christianity. I’m bored with church. I’m bored with the same old sermons. I’m bored with the songs and the apathy of the so-called hands and feet of Jesus. I’m tired of God not doing what the sermons and Christian books tell me he’s going to do. I’m tired of not being that new creation that I was promised. I’m the same old loser I always was. Sure, there have been a few positive changes in my life but those can be chalked up to simple maturity. And yes, I’m well aware that I’m to blame for this. I’m not doing my part. I must have some hidden sin (hidden from who? God knows everything, right? And trust me, he and I have had many discussions about my sins). I’m not trying hard enough, even though I’m told over and over that God loves me just as I am (if that’s true why is my soul trapped in perpetual darkness?). I need to go to Africa and feed the starving. I need to go to the homeless. I need to tell my God Story (I hate that term, by the way).
I’ve been on four over-seas missions (actually, the fourth happens in a couple weeks), I’ve been on the hospitality team, children’s ministry, worked the sound board, participated in more local outreaches than I can remember (Remember local outreaches? We used to do them.) I’ve cleaned the church, scrubbed carpets, set up and torn down. When the church asked for volunteers to help grind down and polish the concrete floor (very dusty, dirty work) I was there for three different shifts (while going through bladder cancer treatments). I say all of this not to tout my own horn but to show that I have been involved. I’m not bored due to lack of trying. The thing is, I haven’t found God in any of this. It just felt like doing stuff. I’m not saying he wasn’t there, I just couldn’t find him. Again, this is probably due to some fault of mine. It usually is.
Now, I’m going to step out on a limb here and guess that I’m not the only one who feels this way. I’m not the only one whose tried their best to be a good Christian and has grown bored and starting drifting away. I see the blank stares during worship. I go out with a fairly large group to eat after church (okay, I’ve kind of drifted away from that, too) and I can tell you that none of us talk about the sermon or anything we might have learned from it. Ask a church goer one hour after church what the sermon was about and they’ll have to think about it. Ask the next day and most will have no idea.
Again, I can only talk about myself and my flaws but I do pay attention. It’s my spiritual gift. As an introverted depressive I spend a lot of time on the outside looking in. I also tend to say things that are unpopular but not necessarily untrue. Church has become a spectator sport. We sit in comfortable chairs and watch the worship team perform, maybe even sing or clap along. We sit and hope the pastor entertains us with his/her witty monologue and then we go home. None of this changes us. We leave the church and go out and act like everyone else. Why do you think so many are church-hopping? They’re looking for something they can’t find where they currently are. They’re looking for a purpose. They’re looking for God.
One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. This is also a good definition of the church. We do the same thing week after week and expect people to change. I’ve been a church-goer for 15 years and, except for a few slight tweaks (music is louder and we sometimes take offering at the end of service instead of the beginning) nothing has changed. Three songs up front, announcements and offering, a sermon that any of us who have been around a while have heard over and over again, another song and let’s get out of here and get something to eat.
What if we tried something different. What if the church went from being a spectator sport to and actual dialogue? What if we quit staring at a stage, put the chairs in a big Kumbaya circle and allowed the congregation to participate. We could still sing and pray but take the showmanship out of it. The pastor would still give a sermon but it would be shorter with group discussion afterward. Have the deacons and elders there to help facilitate (at least then we would know who they are). Would we lose people? You bet. We’d lose the ones who only want to be spectators. Would this be incredibly difficult in mega-churches? Yep, so what? Mega-churches will remain the safe place for those who just want to be entertained and hidden. (I’m not saying this to bash mega-churches but the number of people who attend any church and actively participate is less than 10%, so in a mega-church that’s a lot of people just hanging around). This is only one idea. There are a lot of people out there smarter than I am who I’m sure can come up with better ones.
Getting the congregation actively involved in the service brings people closer. It allows them to ask questions and go deeper. The expectation now is that we do this in life groups while keeping church services safe for those seekers out there. I’ve been involved in almost a dozen life groups over the years and it’s usually just more of the same shallow thing I see in church. Besides, I get up at 3:30 in the morning and am brain dead by 7:30 in the evening.
I believe that if the church stopped defining success by the number of butts in the chairs and started defining it by how many true disciples are being sent out it would be much more effective. Jesus told us to be in the world but not of it. Many of us (most) are drifting off toward worldliness because Christianity has become more what we talk about and less who we represent. It has become repetitive and dull. Continuing to do the same thing will not change this.
Trust me, I’m aware that this rather lengthy post is an oversimplification of a big problem. I wish I had better ideas on how to fix it. The good thing is, I’m not alone and don’t have to fix it myself. There are a lot of good people in the church who really want to be the hands and feet of Christ. There are also a lot of beautiful aspects of the church as it is today. I wish I could see them clearer. I wish my soul were not so dark. I wish the light could break through more often than it does. I have to believe God made me this way for a reason. Maybe he made me to be that guy that rocks the boat. Maybe he made me to write this.
Take care,
Tom