Curated by It’s That Part™ — Originally published by Faith and Proverbs on .
When I started in pastoral ministry 15 years ago, the intellectual arguments of New Atheism were the most popular objections to Christianity. I read The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins to understand what I was up against. However, amid the great dechurching, there are new cultural narratives that are as effective as doubt at keeping people away from church.
I meet many people, especially young men, who don’t object to belief in God. Instead, they see participation in a religious community as superfluous and as evidence of a sheeplike mental disposition. There may be a “surprising rebirth of the belief in God,” but it hasn’t come with a rebirth in belief in the church. The frequency of church attendance has declined over the past decades, though the metric has been masked by the rise of live-streamed services. That mistrust in the church reflects an increasingly negative view of institutions in our tech-saturated culture.
In The Reason for Church: Why the Body of Christ Still Matters in an Age of Anxiety, Division, and Radical Individualism, Brad Edwards—lead pastor of The Table Church in Lafayette, Colorado—makes the case that church is the answer to some of the biggest problems people face in this world. Many of those problems stem from false cultural narratives like spiritual pragmatism, political polarization, and counterfeit institutions that function as defeaters to healthy participation in church. Edwards identifies those beliefs and offers suggestions for faithfully navigating our low-trust, socially awkward, and highly digital culture.
It’s Hard to Get to Church
Society puts immense pressure on individuals to improve themselves, optimize their children’s lives, and compete in the marketplace. It’s exhausting. Church gets crowded out by spiritual pragmatism, a cultural narrative that “churches exist to facilitate our personal growth and help us fulfill our unique potential” (5). This narrative makes it easy to skip church when it’s inconvenient or hard. As Edwards observes, “Sure, we could go to church, unless we’re too tired and need to sleep in, or our kids have a soccer game, or we had a long week and just need some ‘me’ time. After a long week of self-actualizing, going to church feels too much like work, not rest” (22).
For some doctrinally orthodox Christians, as wealth increases, involvement in extracurricular activities—both the kid versions (club sports) and the adult versions (weekend at the cabin, going to brunch, training for a triathlon)—fill up calendars such that time feels scarce. Even if someone isn’t at work on Sunday, basic chores like grocery shopping or cleaning the house can encroach on the Sunday gathering.
In an age where we can catch the sermon podcast on our commute the next day, connecting with a local church seems like an optional side rather than the main dish. A digitized, content-centered relationship to church is more plausible than ever when pastors are seen as content creators and not shepherds of a flock. More importantly, we can customize our own spiritual training program by selecting the podcasts and sermons that fit our felt needs. But that’s not a healthy view.
Healthy spiritual formation requires much more than absorption of carefully curated content. It requires community. It’s impossible to fulfill the “let us” commands in Hebrews by listening to a podcast on a walk or watching a sermon from a sofa (e.g., Heb. 10:22–25). It’s hard to get to church, but in a fractured world, we need community more than ever.
Matter Matters
As Jonathan Haidt showed in The Anxious Generation, the digital world is stressing younger generations out. And, if we’re honest, it’s stressing the rest of us out as well. We’re scrolling ourselves to death and need embodied communities like the church.
Yet belonging to a church can be less attractive than joining a counterfeit institution, which Edwards defines as “a digital medium that shapes belief through social interaction and incentives” (48). By nature, counterfeit institutions “unravel society at an individual level by distorting reality, disenchanting experience, and exploiting our most cherished relationships” (56). In other words, counterfeit institutions make socialization harder.
It’s hard to get to church, but in a fractured world, we need community more than ever.
Socialization has never been easy, but the prevalence of digital relationships makes in-person gatherings more challenging. People whose social formation has been largely online often struggle with in-person connections. Edwards observes, “If it seems harder than ever to start, maintain, and deepen friendships, you’re not crazy” (139). It’s simpler to find an online group that affirms our chosen identity than to become a member of a church that asks us to change our minds from time to time. It’s not as easy to plug into a diverse, multigenerational local church as it is to join an anonymous video game community or the curated world of social media.
The answer to counterfeit institutions is embodiment, which can be a hard sell in a digital age. After all, some may ask, what’s the difference between live-streaming a service at home in our pajamas (while using orange juice and pancakes as Communion) and making the heavy lift of showing up in person? That perspective has more to do with Gnosticism—the denial of the goodness of the material creation—than with historic Christianity. As Edwards reminds us, “Matter matters to God.” Moreover, “our union with Christ is both spiritually and physically embodied” (131).
Though social anxiety is more common and our calendars are overbooked, Edwards argues that commitment to a local church offers a way of escape from the digital draining of the modern age. Embodied, material, local, synchronous participation in the local church is “surprisingly, exactly the refuge we’re searching for” (xxvi).
Community Matters
The Christian life requires community. Expressive individualism leads many Christians to assume that spiritual disciplines are a menu of personal, private, and bespoke life-hacks for self-improvement. However, that’s inconsistent with the way spiritual formation is depicted in Scripture.
Commitment to a local church offers a way of escape from the digital draining of the modern age.
As he unpacks Acts 2:42, Edwards highlights the communal nature of the Holy Spirit’s work in the church. He identifies four key elements of “integrated life together in Christ”: (1) gathered worship, (2) biblical preaching, (3) the Lord’s Supper, and (4) prayer. Notably, he argues, “Those are not individual, personal practices. They are the substance and shape of the body of Christ” (143). They’re central to the nature of the church.
Fellowship with the body of Christ is key to our spiritual formation. Pastors should see their work as community-building, not merely life-coaching individuals on their way to becoming the best version of themselves. Church members should see themselves as disciples who are called to the challenge of discipling others in community. To give way to individualistic instincts spiritually is to give away the blessing of the communion God has with and for us.
Amid the decline in institutional trust, Edwards doubles down on the value of the local church. The Reason for Church is a profound reminder for church leaders and members how the local church helps us overcome the cultural narratives that threaten to derail our faith.
For truth in every fact, visit itsthatpart.com.
Originally sourced via trusted media partner. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/reviews/reason-for-church/
