The Church Does Not Look Like Jesus

I say this with grief. The primary church in America — Evangelical, Non-Denominational, Pentecostal — is not the church of Jesus Christ. It a church in love with abusive strong men and consumed by Christian Nationalism. Somehow the church inhabits both judgment and cheap grace — judgment towards the “other” and ignorance of our own rampant idolatry. A church greedy for wealth and power. Homophobic. Our theology is rooted in a hatred of this planet and its people. The church endangered the most vulnerable during Covid. Our portrayal of God the father is not loving. We worship the Bible without understanding it. Donald Trump’s presidency was a product of this church: it was not an aberration but rather the perfect culmination of what we idolize. Would Jesus see himself in us? I doubt it. Lord, we repent, forgive us. Forgive me.

This is article one of what will be many in what I am calling “Church Repentance.” What are we repenting of? We repent of refusing to be like Jesus Christ. While I outlined many of the problems above, there is one central issue: we do not look like the Jesus presented in the Bible. Rather than basing our understanding of God on Jesus, the incarnation of God in our faith, we see and depict God as this all powerful, rigid being longing to exact judgment against all of humanity. Jesus was the man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. Our God is always victorious, always perfect, always winning. We have stripped God of the humanity so evident in Jesus and failed to understand that maybe humility and frailty isn’t a weakness of ours but rather evidence of God’s character in us. Jesus’ ministry, teachings and life was rooted in love and yet we are not forming kind and loving people in our churches. We like authoritarian people. We seek perfection and have modeled our Pastors as such because that is how we understand God the one we call Father and in doing so, we have ignored the personhood of Jesus Christ.

I know. I have been a part of the American Christian church for my 44 yrs., saved repeatedly at church camps across my childhood, radically transformed at 16 yrs. old, Bible College graduate, have a Master of Divinity from Fuller Seminary, 24 yrs. of ministry work, a Teen Challenge Men’s Director, and a Pastor. I’ve been in the heart of ministry: a decade and a half in the inner city of Minneapolis and the prisons of the Iron Range of Minnesota. I now hold Theology Pubs, Hogwarts Halloweens, and House Church in what my brothers would call “the belly of the beast” in downtown Sacramento that kind of wants to be San Francisco. I have prayed people through “deliverance” more times than I can count and “laid hands-on” thousands of people for emotional and physical healings. I don’t say this to brag, just to establish that I’ve earned my view from the trenches and the classroom.

This love of strongmen and masculine aggression is brilliantly outlined in Kristin Kobes Du Mez book “Jesus and John Wayne.” I can tell you from my own experience, I wasn’t taught to be a kind and loving man. I was taught to be righteous. And powerful.

I remember being a 20 yr. old conservative Bible College student, sitting in Pandora’s Cup, a darkly lit Minneapolis coffee shop, that reeked of hemp and patchouli, falling in love with the words of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are the merciful. It was not the message we got in our school or churches. We were taught “being right” and “being holy” were more important than being loving and thus we were neither.

Years later, then thirty-one years old, my soul battered after ten years being told to be perfect, I reflected on the disconnect between Jesus Christ and what I had witnessed in ministry. Jesus first miracle was creating potent wine for a wedding celebration; I had witnessed a mega-church Pastor refuse a young woman’s wedding for having an off-site dance. Jesus said, “you cannot serve God and money;” I was told by my Pastor, “I don’t want to hear of you doing ministry, you’re a director now, go get money.” Jesus welcomes a woman of Samaria, considered an outcast in Israel, to worship God; I sat with a young woman, Callie, as she spoke of being thrown out of church at 12 yrs. old because her mother was gay. Jesus refused to condemn a woman caught in the act of adultery; I witnessed my assistant Jay tear up as he was fired for confessing his fiancé’s pregnancy, another Brad fired after he confessed issues of lust. These are a few stories of hundreds in my experiences. Many of you have them too.

In the 1970’s the Evangelical world went through what is now sometimes called the “Shepherding Movement.” Essentially Pastors were taught that they were the authoritarian shepherd, the leader of their “flock” of people. It was not a new idea, rather it was simply the codification of how burgeoning pastoral ministry in Evangelical settings had developed. Evangelicalism does not come out of mainline Protestant churches. No. The roots of Evangelicalism are the Fundamentalist revival preachers of the late 1800’s. That revivalist preacher saved his flock from eternal damnation and they sure as hell were going to follow him completely. The Pastor became the righteous head of the local church people and was to be obeyed without question.

The Evangelical world likes authoritarian leaders. We like the ethos and swagger of Donald Trump and Ron Desantis. We like strongmen. They are quasi kings, just like our own John Piper or Charles Stanley, Bill Johnson or John MacArthur. This isn’t that deep — our most successful Evangelical Pastors embody strength without fear, power without weakness, determination without repentance. They look like our flawed understanding of all powerful God the Father. They do not look like Jesus.

In future articles I will look at our broken theology behind Christian Nationalism, the cheap grace church, homophobia, racism, greed, our hatred of this world and our abhorrent anti-life response to Covid. . . but at the root of all these issues is our toxic understanding of power because at the core we do not understand this God we claim to serve. Jesus — God — entered this world in a humble manger, born to scared kids . . .before his 2ndbirthday they fled a monstrous wannabe king as refugees. Jesus would become a homeless, unmarried, itinerate preacher who spoke of humility, love and forgiveness, refusing to take up arms against Rome. He would be abandoned by his followers and shamefully executed for blasphemy by the church of his day.

Our church worships money and power, constantly looking for the next superstar to pledge our allegiance to. In doing so we have ignored Jesus. It is heartbreaking. People are fleeing Christianity, not because we love Jesus, but because they do not see Jesus in us. Yes, people are leaving the Christian church for moral reasons. Church. I am sorry. But we have no credibility left.

I repent. For years I did the work of God, for God, without God. For years of ministry, I did not pray. I repent that in my 20’s I did not stand up to Pastors Tim, Gerald, Doyne and Rich when I saw them abuse others as well as myself. I repent of Jay and Brad’s firing and others. I repent of the way Ben was fired. I repent of silently being part of a church that exiled Callie and so many others due to their sexuality — I always knew it was wrong. For many years, my entire 20’s, I did not love like Jesus loved — I repent. Repentance is the only way forward for the American Christian Church. Join me.