The curious anomaly of the churchless Christian

How well do you really "like" someone if you can't stand his wife? That, in a nutshell, is the acid test for the so-called "churchless Christians" who think Jesus is just alright, but the church is just all wrong. Authors Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck address this curious phenomenon in their new book, Why We Love the Church: In Praise of Institutions and Organized Religion. Following up on their previous title, Why We're Not Emergent (by Two Guys Who Should Be), DeYoung and Kluck continue to lay bare the myriad of fads and passing fancies currently dotting the landscape of pop culture religion. Unimpressed by the "revolutionary" arguments of "church leavers," these two "church lovers" state passionately, yet charitably, their case for the visible church as an institution which, though marred by human shortcomings, nevertheless serves an indispensable divine purpose.

Of particular interest for DeYoung and Kluck are the writings of George Barna, who has lately elevated skipping Sunday worship for a round of golf to the status of a revolution. "I could be wrong," writes Kluck, "but I fail to see how two privileged CEO's stroking the perfect nine-iron shot on a Sunday morning constitutes revolutionary behavior." Indeed, there is nothing at all revolutionary even in the proposition. "I feel closer to God on the links than I do in a church full of hypocrites" was the well-worn argument of many a "church leaver" long before "church leaving" was "cool." For that matter, most, if not all, of the arguments demolished by DeYoung and Kluck are merely proof of the biblical adage that there is nothing new under the sun.

Contrary to the popular perception created by the proliferation of literature by disgruntled "revolutionaries," leaving the church in order to "seek God" is not a growing trend. It is true that church attendance in the United States over the last two decades has not increased relative to the population, but neither has it decreased. Rather, the number of persons attending Sunday morning worship today is pretty much the same as it was in 1990 when Barna and others were warning of the imminent demise of "church as we know it."

The real challenge facing the church today is not bringing back the wayward sheep who have gone astray, but bringing in the wandering sheep who claim to "like Jesus, but not the church." It only requires a rudimentary understanding of the relationship between Christ and the church to understand how spiritually and theologically vacuous such a claim is. The church is Jesus' bride, the bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. Despising the church, the Bride of Christ, cannot but have a negative effect on one's relationship with Christ himself. But, as Emergent author Dan Kimball, who literally wrote the book on that subject, admits, the "Jesus" so admired by those outside the church is not the Jesus who is revealed in Scripture. Such a Jesus, divorced from the church, is not the Son of God and Savior of the world, but a pop culture counterfeit.

In the final analysis, the "churchless Christian" is not so much a growing phenomenon as it is a curious anomaly. "Spiritual but not religious" followers of a counterfeit, culturally accommodated Jesus have been around since the church's inception. What is unique to the present moment is not their increase in influence, but the increase in attention and admiration they are receiving from people who ought to know better.