John Avant's new book is both provocative and disturbing.  He writes, "I believe in Jesus.  I love Jesus.  But I'm done with 'Christianity’. . .  My journey away from Christianity has not led me away from Jesus.  In fact, it has led me straight to him.  I really believe that if we live as though God is real, Christianity as we know it will die.  It's terminally ill, and I can't see a cure" (p. 56).

[It goes without saying that I don't agree with everything in the books I recommend.  I trust you to understand that.  But I don't choose to spend time picking at the areas of disagreement when there are so many areas of agreement.]

For instance, Avant warns that many "churches" are not really churches after all.  They are clubs.  A church is a group of disciples who are committed to the mission that Jesus gave to His people.  Even true churches can cease functioning as New Testament churches, and Jesus warns that He will reject them and remove their spiritual influence (cf. Revelation 2:5).

"If Jesus tells a church what to do and they don't do it, whom to love and they won't love them, why they exist and they don't care, is that group of people really a church?  I would argue that many of the churches in America today are fundamentally sick.  In my own denomination, a study conducted by LifeWay Christian Resources found that 89 percent of our churches are not healthy.  And the clear reason they were unhealthy is that they were reaching few, if any, unchurched people.  They had become insular, devoting most of their time and energy to the needs of those already there" (p. 61).

Avant predicts that thousands of churches will close their doors within the next few years because they are not interested in the mission of reaching the unchurched.  They spend their time on issues that concern those who already attend, and they invest their resources in meeting the felt needs of those who are already members.  We live in a missions environment now and in a post-Christian culture.  Churches that are not desperate about the need for God's power and passionate about reaching the unchurched cannot survive in a missions environment.

"The whole world has changed around us.  Every church sits in the middle of a mission field.  The diversity of races, cultures, religions, philosophies, and worldviews has grown so rapidly that it's shocking.

"You live on the mission field!

"But the truth is that most of Christianity is not terribly interested in Jesus' mission.  Fulfilling the mission would require so much change from the current club regulations that one thing becomes clear to the doorkeepers:  if they let this change in, the club will never be the same.  It will not even resemble what it has been.  And that's just too much to bear" (p. 64).

I am troubled by the prophetic prediction that thousands of churches are going to go out of business.  I am troubled by the idea that we can be so concerned about taking care of baby Christians instead of making disciples and reaching the unchurched that the Lord Jesus removes our "candlestick" of spiritual influence (Rev. 2:5).  

But I am encouraged to believe that any church can rediscover its spiritual roots in the Book of Acts and can recommit itself to disciple-making and the mission of reaching the unreached.  With John Avant, I believe we need a church full of addicts.

"If God is real, the church should be full of addicts--whose God-addicted lives will be testimonies of God's love and power to transform broken, hurting people into healing, joyful Christ followers.  Our churches should be full of people who have finally found what they're searching for, what they're craving, in Christ" (p. 124).

The only churches that will survive as churches are those where God is real and where believers are real disciples and disciple-makers.

Pastor Alan Day