By Paul Thompson
Are you tired, weary or discouraged? No? Then you probably haven’t been working on your church budget or the evangelism committee. Polls show that 40 percent of all Americans claim to attend church regularly. We wish! The real figure is barely half that.
Before becoming too distraught, remember what Christian denominations have done in this country. Many, if not most, of our hospitals were started by Christians – certainly the largest ones in Tulsa and Oklahoma City.
Well known universities such as TCU, Notre Dame, Georgetown, Northwestern and DePaul have religious antecedents. In England, government education only began in the early 19th century having been largely church run prior to that time.
What then has happened, since the hospitals and the universities are increasingly secular in their operation?
One answer is that the government has increasingly played a role in financially supporting these institutions.
When the government provided free public schools in England, the number of fee charging church schools plummeted. With less of a role in health care, education and helping the poor, the mission of the church has likewise lessened.
In Europe, less that 5 percent of the population attends church on a weekly basis and one European writer commented that when Americans say that they regularly go to church, they are looked at like museum pieces. One writer has characterized the prevailing attitude as “Christaphobia.”
One might think since the Europeans look at their American cousins as folks that need to grow up, the handwriting is on the wall.
But the lessening of our sisters and brothers in their religious observance and the ascendance of the public purse in these endeavors proves the opposite.
The government has spent over a trillion dollars on social programs and yet 50 percent of marriages end in divorce; more than 30 percent of all births are out of wedlock and marijuana has become the number three cash crop in America. We are, quite literally, going to pot. When employers begin drug testing, 20 percent of all employees test positive for illegal drugs.
A 50-year graph showing church attendance on one line and out of wedlock births, drug use and crime on another would see the lines travel in opposing directions – church down; societal malady up.
Europeans embrace open drug use, prostitution, trade with terrorist regimes and a whole list of hedonistic behaviors. There is even a hotel in Switzerland where you can take a room, a handful of lethal drugs and commit suicide in a “sensible” way - giving a new meaning to checkout time. Are these the goals we embrace here?
We have tens of thousands of people close to our churches who are lonely, hurting and needing help. They are not the ones that the bureaucracy is likely to help. If we seek them out and bring God’s word and a helping hand to them, we will likely need less help with our budget and attendance problems. If the Church is not the answer, ask yourself, what is? It won’t be easy or comfortable to go outside our church walls. But James tells us what our task is:
“Dear brothers, what’s the use of saying that you have faith and are Christians if you aren’t proving it by helping others. Will that kind of faith save anyone? If you have a friend who is in need of food and clothing, and you say to him, “Well, good-bye and God bless you; stay warm and eat hearty,” and then don’t give him clothes or food, what good does that do? So you see, it isn’t enough just to have faith. You must also do good to prove that you have it. Faith that doesn’t show itself by good works is no faith at all-it is dead and useless.” (James 2:14-17 TLB)