by Edyta Tehrani

Created on: December 29, 2006   Last Updated: February 10, 2011

It is very common these days to see very committed Christians leave the organized church system.The reason for this is lack of integrity among Christian leaders, as well as the lack of spiritual life in many congregations.

When the leadership starts to rely on worldly methods such as door prizes in order to attract attendance, they will also have to compromise on spiritual quality of their services. Initially it may help to bring more people to the church, but in order for them to stay and become true believers in Christ there needs to be spiritual food provided.

Jesus taught that the Father will draw people to Himself when He is glorified, and that the Holy Spirit is the one who convicts people about their sin and leads them to genuine repentance. When the message of the Gospel is toned down, so that the "seekers" would not be offended, and instead of seeking God's presence churches turn to entertainment the power that is in the Word of God is made to be of no effect. The church becomes a religious form of club, but the lives of people are not changed.

In such situation, the believers who desire to grow in their faith will look for spiritual food and real fellowship elswhere. When this happens very often they are branded by their former leaders as backsliders or rebels even though they did not abandon their faith, but on the contrary  they pray more, read the Bible and fellowship with other believers anywhere they can.

This "phenomena" is happening all over the world and seems to grow. In countries were Christians are persecuted it contributes to enormous growth. People meet to worship from house to house, as well as in other places where authorities cannot find them. We can see the examples of this kind of church life in the Book of Acts, especially among the gentile believers. Jesus Himself  is quoted in the Gospel of John saying to the Samaritan woman that God is not concerned so much with the place where people worship as with the quality of their worship, " Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming where you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem worship the Father...but the hour is coming and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him."

More believers now begin to understand that the Church is not a place, but a body of believers and wherever two or more of them meet, there Jesus is present with them in the Holy Spirit. In the book titled "So You Don't Want to Go to Church Anymore," authors Wayne Jacobsen and Dave Coleman point out very well problems facing modern church system and were it has gone wrong. In this narrative, we follow the journey of the main character who being a church leader discovers the trap f doing church, rather than being the Church.

"We are so quickly captured by a work- driven religious culture that thrives on guilt, conformity, and manipulation that it devours the very love it seeks to sustain...strange isn't it, that forming something what we thought was a church could do what persecution couldn't? The routine eventually withers life, no matter how good it is."

It seems that those who do church instead of being the Church have lost their first love and the believers who leave such churches are seeking to go back to it. It is very easy to get so busy with the ministry that we do not have time anymore to sit at the feet of Jesus, like Martha in the gospels who was so busy serving Jesus that she did not have time to spend with Him. Simple relationship with Jesus is the most important part of christian life, because without maintaining this relationship everything else will sooner or later fall apart.

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