I have this crazy idea... maybe we should NOT let the world dictate how we should do church? I know! It sounds crazy to think that maybe the Bible knows more about what makes a good church than sociologists but it might work!

All joking aside, I think that when most people's definition of what an 'authentic' church is has little to do with Biblical teaching, there reason for entering the church has less to do with knowing God than wanting more friends, and their view of the church's role in the community is focused on the peripherals rather than the gospel it might be time to re-evaluate.

Maybe the reason that non-Christians find us so irrelevant is that we have stopped performing our primary function: Preaching truth! Of course we must preach the truth in love but these days I'm seeing a whole lot of love (defined in a way that avoids the gospel for the most part) and not so much truth.

This is why I left my Baptist church of 50+ years. We all said we believed in Christ, and that we needed to witness. But all action was always directed inward. The minister was a bean counter, only wanting to increase membership. (Wanted new members but wanted them to be like us. No room for kids from the public housing. No real appreciation for the slow minded man who did the grunt work of groundskeeping.) Jesus taught the two most important commandments were to love God and to love one another. Seems like THE Ten Commandments fit very nicely in these 2 categories. If you believe the Bible, it shows us how to build a church. Remember the disciples were about God's work. They concentrated on God's work, and God increased their numbers. They didn't try to persuade believers to be Methodist or Protestant or Holy Rollers. They preached the gospel of Christ and demonstrated love of God and love of others. This suggestion was made to the upper eschalon of my church and ignored. That church still struggles and is declining. Chuck Swindoll said it best: "The problem with faith is that someone always wants to make a religion out of it." I say self examination serves a purpose, but an authentic church, as in Acts, necessarily reaches outward. I still believe in "believer's baptism," but more and more feel less Baptist and more nondenominational.

I agree that church life is changing, some are positive changes others are unpositive. Worship styles, styles of dress, etc. differ from church to church, which is totally fine. I agree that we should be looking at ways we can impact our communities & the world. For example, my church is very active in helping single moms & their children in our community & we hold an annual outreach in the spring where we tune up & detail their cars, have a clothes closet for them & give each family huge boxes of food, then every fall we have a back to school event for the single moms & their kids where each child gets a back-pack full of school supplies, gets their hair cut, and again, huge boxes of food are distributed. Many of those mom's & their children have become Born Again Christians as a result of these outreaches. But though we are reaching out to those in our community, my church has stayed VERY committed to preaching the gospel & having that be CENTRAL to our faith. We reach out to people with the love of God. We are sensitive to the individual situations of the people that attend our church, but the Word is NOT watered down in an attempt to not "offend". My husband & I left a church that became a place that was too "seeker sensitive" in that there were very few verses in the sermon & in some ways the Gospel was watered down to make it "palatable", there was a lot of entertainment & very little substance. It was like being a cutesy play every Sunday. I felt like I was dying spiritually. The church's first responsibility to preach Christ & Him crucified. Next we are to take care of & help others in our community & the world & love them with love of Christ. We need to stay focused on those 2 endeavours. If we do, we will transform the world.