Wayne Jacobsen

Over thirty-five years ago I was with a group of pastors discussing where we felt most alive in “the ministry”. It didn’t take long for me to answer. It came in those moments when I stood on the edge of a stage, Bible in hand, expounding some Scripture with my voice raised, more words in my mouth than I could get out in a reasonable amount of time and holding the crowd in the palm of my hands as they hung on every word either laughing uproariously or moved to tears by some insight I was sharing.

But I was only in my mid-20s at the time so my ignorance can be excused. I wouldn’t give the same answer today. As I look back I now know how deeply that moment appealed to my own needs more than it served those listening to me. Now I find my greatest joy opening a door for someone to see into a bigger reality and watching the lights come on in their heart.

Look at the contrasting pictures above—one is of me speaking at a conference in Germany a few years ago, the other of me sharing in a home in Brazil around the same time. For most people drawn into “ministry” it would be the one on the left. It is so much easier to follow a pre-planned outline than to risk a free-flowing conversation with unforeseen struggles and difficult questions.

If you were going to be with someone you wanted to learn from, where would you rather be—part of a large audience or have a conversation over a meal? If I was invited to a golf lesson from a famous golf pro I would much prefer he and I alone on a driving range than being in a stadium watching him on a Jumbotron. And how different the lesson would be, too! For the stage he’d talk in generalities and everyone would have to try the same technique hours later when they got to a golf course when they no longer remember the lesson. If was just the two of us he could look at my swing, listen to the problems I’m having, and offer me solutions I could immediately try.

Over the past forty years, I’ve watched a lovely shift in my thinking about teaching and helping others on this journey. I’ve gone from thinking success and efficiency are found where I address a macro audience—a number of people I don’t know through sermons, podcasting, or publishing—to knowing that the most transformative moments come in conversations with people I’m getting to know.

My first wake-up call came over twenty years ago as I sat town for a Tuesday lunch with a close friend of mine. Before we even sat down he wanted to tell me how great my sermon had been Sunday morning. “That was the best sermon I ever heard and I’ll never be the same.” When I asked what had particularly touched him so, he got a lost look on his face as he tried to reach back in his memory. For the next five minutes I watched him squirm uncomfortably because he couldn’t remember one point of it, not even the text. He begged me to help but now I was intrigued to see why he was so excited about a sermon he couldn’t remember two days later. This was not a man given to empty flattery. It made me wonder how effective a lecture is as a teaching tool.

As I’ve traveled over the last twenty years, I’ve been particularly aware that the smaller and more interactive the conversations were, the more enduring fruit they produced. I now know that the engagements that happen before and after the meetings have the most impact on others. Riding in a car, sitting down to a meal, or just pausing to answer an individual question all have more impact. That’s why I prefer to stay in homes not hotels, and prefer conversations to speaking engagements.

As I read the Gospels now, it is easy to see that Jesus spent a lot more time in personal engagements than he did lecturing crowds. He talked with the Pharisees; he didn’t debate them. He was in their homes as well as those of his friends. He found a boat trip across Galilee a propitious place to share the reality of the kingdom as he did sitting beside a well in Samaria. He sought out Zaccheus for lunch when a large crowd was seeking his attention on the street.

Before you point out that Jesus also spoke to large crowds, I’m well aware of that. I am not suggesting that they are evil only that they aren’t the most effective way to help people embrace the life of his Father. It has caused me to think a lot about what I do in macro or micro engagements. Macro engagements include speaking to groups, publishing books or website content, or producing podcasts or other recordings. I do a lot of that because I enjoy it and feel called to but some information in the world that way. So I’m not against it but I am realizing how limited it is.

Though Jesus spoke to crowds, he didn’t seek them or gather them. He didn’t organize and promote any meeting; they found him. Even then, many in the crowds left confused and unengaged. It was the extra time he spent with his disciples and others that helped them get what they had missed earlier. The most formative moments in my journey have not come from lectures but personal engagements.

I’m not saying large crowds are evil and small crowds are good. This isn’t an either/or discussion. We can make room for both, even as we recognize that the reality of Jesus’ life passes on better in table-sized conversations than in large-scale meetings. What’s bothering me is that so many people, especially those who aspire to ministry pursue the macro engagements in speaking and publishing, spending more time trying to build an audience of strangers than grow in conversations with people they already know. So many are worried about expanding their influence, building their platform, fighting for speaking engagements, and pushing their books or podcasts hoping to gain traction as an expert, when the greatest opportunities to share the kingdom live in the relationships they already have. Everyone gets to participate there, not just gifted writers or eloquent speakers.

And unless our space in the macro world doesn’t grow out of our lives at a personal level, it can easily create an environment where the realities of the kingdom are easily distorted. The lure to have influence gratifies our ego if not our pocketbook. Dazzled by the lights and popularity of the stage many buy into the false notion that those who occupy it are significant people and their words reflect God’s heart. But do they really?

I’m not convinced. The macro conversation values the wrong realities—the youthful entertainer over the wise sage, the energetic entrepreneur over the servant, and the manipulation of crowd dynamics over the integrity of open and honest dialog. It prizes the well-crafted illusion for the depth of our character. Audiences really don’t know the speaker in front of them, only the illusion they want to create and there may be little connection between them.

We need to look no further than the allegations against Bill Cosby, who lived for decades as an admired man on the stage for his humor and insight and yet seems to have used that notoriety to exploit women who sought his help. The fact that we don’t know tells you everything we need to know about the stage and how little we know about the person on it. I met one popular Christian author who was sleeping with his girlfriend while he was going through a divorce. I asked him if he had any conflicts between his writings and his current lifestyle. “Oh, you think I’m trying to live what I write?” he said as if I was from another planet. “I’m not. I’m a writer to a Christian marketplace. This is how I make my living, I know how to write what they want to hear.”

How many times have you been disappointed to discover a person’s public persona was at odds with their private life? Anne Lamott wrote, “The most degraded and sometimes nearly evil men I have known were all writers who’d had bestsellers.” The most nonrelational people I’ve ever met have written books on relationships. Watching how someone treats their spouse, their staff, and others around them will tell you far more about them than anything they share on a stage.

Not everyone on the stage is a fraud, there are some who offer a genuine and compassionate voice, but they are few. The pursuit of the stage twists something in us, putting self-promotion above people and most become a caricature instead of a genuine person perfecting cute slogans and three easy steps that never work. To hold it you have to perpetuate the illusion and manipulate people around you. That’s why people on a stage act differently than anyone in real life, with the tones they use and the demeanor they display. They live in illusions creating fake communities to appeal to the need to belong, offer “special” wisdom and insight to put them above others, and convince people they’ve never met that they love and care about them. Why can’t we see through the fakery of it all?

Meanwhile people of profound wisdom live right down the street from us untapped. The men and women I’ve met on this journey who are the most Christlike and have impacted me the most don’t live on a stage or have a website. They are content to know their love for others and engagements with them are far more fruitful. So we must use the macro world advisedly. It is not evil, it just lends itself to honoring the wrong realities. Celebrity culture disfigures almost everyone who touches it. It is easier to be perceived as expert on a stage than live as a brother or sister on a journey. It allows you to pontificate unchallenged, and say things to people you wouldn’t have the courage to address face-to-face. How many sermons have you heard that were thinly veiled admonishments to someone who had offended the speaker? I’ve done it, too, to my regret but it’s a coward’s way out.

I wouldn’t discourage you from putting your voice out there however God gives you opportunity. I do all those things because I know it can help people I’ll never meet, but at the same time I know that those things are not the most significant things I do. Perhaps they should take about the same priority in our lives that we see in the gospel, about 80% of our time in the micro conversations that matter, and only 20% to faceless audiences as a way to plant seeds. And that 20% is best when the crowd is organic wanting to seek our help, not when it has been contrived through self-promotion.

Let’s value our personal engagements more highly. This has not been a philosophical shift for me; it was an experiential one first. I began to notice where the kingdom really thrives and it is rarely on a stage. That environment is too one-dimensional offering principles in a one-size fits all format, rather than helping someone make a next step in their journey. On a recent flight home I ended up in a conversation with a broken man that was far more powerful than any other conversation or presentation I had on the trip. It reminds me again that God really rescues one sheep at a time and the real power of his kingdom comes in a personal engagements and growing friendships rather than events, outreaches, or meetings. So look for the next conversation Jesus has for you, with an old friend on the phone, a stranger in line at the market, or a neighbor across the fence.  Nothing else offers more opportunity for people to engage God’s reality.

The “Dones” that I’ve met aren’t looking for a more engaging sermon, but a different environment where people learn through dialog, where they are not pressed for conformity of thought, but to explore their own transformation. This doesn’t minimize the gifts of teaching and encouragement, but reframes them in a different, and far more challenging environment where the quality of someone’s character is more important than their ability to turn a phrase.

Of course, the elephant in the living room we haven’t discussed yet is the business model that underlies these two conversations. It is easy to monetize the macro conversation. Our culture is set up for that. But it is impossible to monetize the micro conversation and for those who seek to make their living by the Gospel, that is a problem. Or is it? We’ll look at that in my next installment.

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This is part 10 in a series on The Phenomenon of the Dones by Wayne Jacobsen who is the author of Finding Church and host of a podcast at TheGodJourney.com.  You can read the first half here and subsequent parts below:

• Part 8: Five Factors Contributing to the Decline in “Church Attendance”
• Part 9: An Invitation Not An Imposition

If you’d like to subscribe to this blog and receive future posts by email you can sign up at the top of the right-hand column.

This is part 9 in a series on The Phenomenon of the Dones

Last October I was invited to participate on a panel that presented the statistics of the “Dones” and share my experience of being with people who no longer see the church as an institution. “The Future of the Church Summit” was designed to help pastors wrestle with the fact that so many people are leaving traditional congregations and statistics showed there is little hope of getting them back. They question they hoped to answer was, “How do we keep the ones we have from leaving too?”

It was a courageous attempt, but sadly the focus was on fixing the program. They focused on making worship more sensory and interactive, preaching shorter sermons and involving more stories from others (video-taped so you can edit out the boring bits), and more streamlined decision-making.

There was even one session on innovative new programs to help the church go out where the people are instead of trying to get them to come to a building. That seemed promising. All five of the presenters started by telling a compelling story of how someone had a passion to reach people who had little desire for God. Each held that longing before God for a significant period of time, and then God gave them a task to do that proved wonderfully fruitful. You would think that would be a process worth encouraging. Instead, however, all of the presenters, after telling their story, tried to sell pastors on the program they created in its aftermath. Taking something lovely God had done, they systematized it into what they hoped would be a replicable program, put it in a book, and were peddling their new system, completely omitting how it had all begun.

Surprisingly not one session dared to ask if God were in this and if so, how we might celebrate and participate with him? All assumed that the “rise of the Dones” was bad news and it needed to be fixed by once again tweaking the program. My experience assures me that those who have given up on traditional congregations aren’t looking for a better program or system to implement. They have found them all to be short-lived, less fruitful than promised, and rather than leading to more authentic engagements with God and his church, actually produced systems needing continual maintenance and relationships that never reached beneath the surface.

Over the next few entries in this series I want to take a look at why our religious systems and programs are no longer satisfying people who’ve invested a lot of their lives and time in them and seek out the kind of changes that will allow the church to blossom with the glory that Christ intended. Instead of creating and seeking out new programs, we could instead answer the deeper cry of the heart that longs to know God and walk in his ways.

To that end, programs are part of the problem. They only prop up an otherwise thin reality… until they fail. Then what? Programs are an imposition. Someone sets up the doctrine we must believe, the rituals we must observe, or the curriculum we must follow and then seeks conform others to it, often with a system of rewards and punishments that manipulates people through obligation and guilt. No matter how well intentioned these systems are, they are still an attempt to force an outside, artificial construct on this amazing adventure of life. Instead of drawing people into God’s life, these only alienate them from it either because they don’t understand it or do not see the fruits they were promised.

Could this be why Jesus didn’t give his disciples with any list of doctrines, rituals, or discipleship workbooks to share with others? Instead he spoke of a better kingdom where God’s love and power works within them. He invited a handful of them into that same reality, both by modeling it for it and by showing them how they could participate in it too. He wasn’t imposing a system of living from the outside, but helping them rethink from the inside how it is to connect with God’s reality and to follow him freely. It took over three years to help them even begin to learn how to live in the Father’s love and freely share it with others.

Perhaps the greatest lesson here is that the life of God can’t be imposed; that’s the stuff of religion. You can get people to follow systems and confess true doctrines, but without a change in the heart they will never connect with him and find a trajectory that will lead them to increasing life and freedom. The Incarnation taught us that God doesn’t draw a line in the sand and tells us to cross it, but shows up where we actually are—lost in our doubts, our fears, and our lies—and invites us into a process of transformation as our relationship with him grows. Without that people will simply pretend as best they can until the frustration of their own emptiness wins out.

That’s what is happening with many who are giving up on religious systems today, while their hunger for God still grows. For years they did everything asked of them and still not finding the life in God they had been promised. They thought they were the only one struggling with the failures of this system and are only now finding out they are not. They know there is “something more” out there and have set out to find it and they are not hopeful that yet another program will do it.

That’s what the Dones are seeking and I applaud that passion. We’ve had enough of pre-packaged programs, cookie-cutter discipleship curriculum where one size-does not fit all. The congregations that will survive this season will not try to overhaul the program, but will find a more generous way to help people discover the reality behind our faith—God himself! They won’t look at the “Dones” as fallen brothers and sisters, but as colleagues in the faith setting out in uncharted waters to find a city whose architect and builder is God.

Discipleship can only work when it is an invitation to a hungry heart, not by imposing the way people should act or think from the outside. So instead of investing our time coming up with a new programs, writing yet another curriculum, or enforcing a ritual to follow, we would be better served to come alongside people who are hungry and help them discover how God is already at work in them. We can encourage them to recognize and to follow what he has already put in their heart. His life is a journey to discover, not a program to complete.

“Come to me,” Jesus offered. That’s the invitation. Come if you want; obligation won’t work here. Yield to a relationship with him that will re-order every thing you think and every way you respond to others in life. That takes time to grow in the heart so you’re not just following a list of good ideas, but actually living differently. Those who have met God in that way know there is no program that can replicate it. Life is too varied and our humanity too unique to convey to the rigidity of a program.

It’s something he wants to sort out in each heart and the best way we can help is not by organizing another seminar or summit, but by coming alongside people and help them see what Jesus has already begun in them.

People responding freely to that invitation will help shape the future of the church as she makes herself known in this generation.

This is part 8 in a series on The Phenomenon of the Dones by Wayne Jacobsen who is the author of Finding Church and host of a podcast at TheGodJourney.com.  You can read the previous seven parts here and Part 8 here.  If you’d like to subscribe to this blog and receive future posts by email you can sign up at the top of the right-hand column.

Part 8 in a series about the Phenomenon of the Dones.

According to sociologist, Josh Packard, thirty million people are no longer attend a local congregation but remain passionately engaged with their faith in Christ. That’s the same number of people who attend each weekend. Seven million of those are present in services “in body only” and will likely add to the number of those leaving soon.

What are we to make of all of this? Some pastors have suggested that those leaving are just being selfish at a time when the family needs them most. That’s not true of the ones I’ve met over the last twenty years. They didn’t leave out of selfishness, but in exasperation that their best attempts to inspire change in their congregation fell on deaf ears. They haven’t given up on the church, but are looking for more authentic expressions of her.

So why are so many people leaving now? I see five cultural factors that have converged in our time to contribute to this exodus:

The trend away from community. Fifty years ago most local churches were gathering places of a community that had been built over generations and acted as a large, extended family. The church growth movement of the 70s and 80s put a premium on size and with the advent of mega-churches real community was lost in the drive for bigger-is-better and most people found themselves sitting in a room full of strangers. Programming became more important than community and the relationships they did have were superficial at best.

The appeal to the casual attendee. In the drive for increased size, much of this program was designed to appeal not to the passionate Jesus follower, whom leaders assumed would come anyway, but to those less-engaged who needed more entertainment than substance during their once-a-week attendance. When the professional sports realized its economic growth lie in attracting the casual fan, they substantively changed the nature of their sport to make sure they were entertained. It worked. Viewership skyrocketed, but for many hard-core fans that ruined the game they’d fallen in love with. While that might work for football, it has not worked with the Gospel. The passionate followers of Jesus are leaving and many pastors are concerned that they are being left with those who only have a casual interest in spirituality.

The decline of cultural pressure. It used to be true that to have credibility as a Christian in the local community, or to at least be available to that market you needed a presence in a local fellowship. Those who didn’t were looked down upon. That isn’t true anymore and people have lots of options to fill their weekend. People no longer feel obligated by outward pressure and the stigma of not attending no longer exists outside the walls of a local fellowship.

The systematizing of spirituality that bypasses the heart in favor of the intellect. Seminaries prepared academics to instruct the faithful, but left out the heart connection that enlivens spirituality. God is knowable in the inner life of a person, not just through a sermon, a text or a Bible class. By not helping people connect more relationally with God they created a spiritual hunger in people that intellectual understanding alone couldn’t satisfy. Instead of engaging their passion, they settled for obligation and guilt as motivations of faith and have left people worn out, frustrated, and empty.

The availability of alternative views. It used to be that those who struggled with the program thought they were alone. That was easy to maintain as long as there were gatekeepers controlling the ideas people could engage. When distribution of material used to be expensive, it was impossible to literature challenging the status quo since most publishers thought pastor’s recommendations were critical to sales. Now anyone can publish a book, post articles on the Internet, or share a podcast with the world. People are finding out that they were not alone in their concerns about the impotence of the institutional program and their desire for a more vital spiritual life personally and a more engaging experience of community with others.

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That these factors would converge at this time in religious history may point to something far larger than selfish people leaving to pursue their own interests. This exodus may in fact be a move of the Spirit to revitalize Jesus’ church for the days to come. People are not abandoning the church, only those structures that no longer make room for her to thrive in their midst.

So while some look at thirty-one million people walking away as cause for alarm, I find it encouraging. People are taking their faith seriously and if the congregation they they attend isn’t expressing that journey, they are willing at great personal risk to look elsewhere, not just to another institution but to more relational ways to engage God and others. They are finding a more authentic spirituality that is allowing them to love more freely in the world.

This is an exciting time in church history. We are finding out what expressions the church can take when people deeply engaged with God find ways to connect and collaborate in the world without the rigors of institutionalism. I am hopeful that they will better express the nature of God in the world than our tired institutions are currently doing. This is a great time to be alive.

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This is part 8 in a series on The Phenomenon of the Dones by Wayne Jacobsen who is the author of Finding Church and host of a podcast at TheGodJourney.com.  You can read the previous seven parts here.  If you’d like to subscribe to this blog to receive future posts by email you can sign up at the top of the right-hand column.