Last post I spent a lot of time focused strongly on Micahn Carter and Together/Church of the Highlands (COTH). And while Micahn represents an abhorrent type of “preacher” because of his direct sexual sin (potentially also assault) and/or his money-grab style of church, I think the church has a bigger problem I touched on before.
Certainly, also, the character of most church leaders is outpaced by their charisma. This only exacerbates the problem of the brand-based church. The brand and personality of the church typically centers on the lead teaching pastor’s style or rhetoric, even if the structure of the church government is not giving that role higher authority. It’s obvious with the mega-church brand of pastors like Micahn, Steven Furtick, Mark Driscoll, or Judah Smith because the church community typically embraces or is formed around their personality. It’s harder to spot in smaller but growing churches, but the brand is still based on good preaching or the personality of the pastor. When a new pastor gets hired at a church and can stir up new members and passive attenders to stronger faith it’s not typically because the church started functioning differently, but rather the style and charisma changed of the lead guy and the targeted audience is successfully reached while sections of passive attendees enjoy the rhetoric more.
Either way, it’s a capitalized brand focused on drawing in a targeted audience (even if they say untargeted) so that the church can continue to generate more revenue and survive. Life-long politicians and pastors have similar problems. The capitalization of the entire church is clear in the pragmatic approach to drawing in new members and the commitment and certainty to the ideological beliefs but the bending of actions around those beliefs. It’s hard to find how many church events, ministries, and words align with the mission and vision of the church because these actions are pragmatic to sell people on coming inside and not intentional acts built on the previous acts.
The church should never be pragmatic in its approach because it means the church lacks identity and action-based commitment to its beliefs. The Bible claims the church was built on a rock, Peter. But today, I see the majority of churches built on preaching and taking the “correct” biblical stance in a way that affirms their audience rather than a commitment to a solely Jesus-driven approach. They’ve got the loving God part of the Great Commandment down, but they’ve forgotten the last half unless their neighbor is going to their church and behaves like them.
And verses like Acts 2:36-47 or 1st Corinthians 12:12-26 probably give a pretty prescriptive way to go about church that takes away pragmatism and ideological commitment. 1st Corinthians, in particular, is probably centered more on giving up your differences as one “universal” body of the church and less on finding our strengths to work together. And, if it is about working together, it’s making it clear that all believers are necessary. (Probably even the progressive ones. Gasp.)
I fully believe the Catholic Church has managed to stay a strong international religious institution because they have a committed approach, shared across the entire community regardless of theological differences, centered around clear government for any church claiming to be Catholic. When Christians spent time fighting over theology and splitting their churches (the path to heaven is narrow, after all) the Catholic church remained unified by their common belief, even if other non-negotiable beliefs were different or altered by some. And, the Catholic church is not the big-bad-wolf that it was during the time of Luther, I’d expect more modern Catholics to make it to evangelical heaven than Christian evangelicals.
In many ways, the failure of the Christian Church to maintain common beliefs, attendance, or positive perception could be blamed on the lack of government for the commonly quoted “Universal Church”. The Pope and the government of catholic structure is a uniting force, something evangelicalism has desperately needed.
Trump did a pretty good job at uniting the majority of evangelicals. Sure, many evangelicals also don’t like Trump, but on a wholescale, they won Trump 2024 and 2016. This represents a really dangerous problem in its own right as it has gripped the church with political guidance on biblical beliefs rather than proper exegesis (More irony from me since I don’t believe the Bible can’t be trusted). Trump himself also represents the entire problem of supporting someone who sexually assaults women and subsequently brags about it. But, for the Church, I see a more nuanced problem with their love of Trump, but the sexual assault is certainly awful enough.
When Trump burst forward with his rhetoric in 2014-2015 it entrenched ideological certainty for both sides, if it hadn’t been previously, and allowed the brand-based church to thrive in a new way. After 2015-2016 I think the church started taking a much stronger stake in the culture war (it was already massive, but they deny it) because Trump proved you could say the “negative” truths when they needed to be said and understood. The church has long held negative “truths” that they have tried to hide or water-down, Trump allowed the church to follow his lead and draw clear lines in the sand. With speech.
Speech is the center of the brand-based church and it hinges on what I’d call the Passive-Gospel. For people like Joel Osteen, it’s clear as day his gospel is false because its Prosperity and health/wealth guru shit. But the Passive-Gospel unites a strong majority of churches and the different capitalized brands hides the passiveness of it, to the point that a church like Westside Church today or Stone Church before 2014 would be appalled that I’d ever compare them to Together Church or Church of the Highlands. And while Westside and pre-2014 Stone aren’t mega-church vibes or money-grabbing quite like Together and COTH they are victims of the Passive-Gospel and brand-based church centered on the charisma of their pastors. (I call them out because of familiarity, but I’d wager its 90% of existing churches)
The Passive-Gospel is the idea that we can say the things we believe strongly, donate and vote correctly, but let the words of the Bible hardly impact the day-to-day life we lead. It’s choosing to use our speech as our main identifier of identity rather than action and it pushes the responsibility of action to political and non-profit institutions. And it’s very clear this has happened for quite a while because so many Christian leaders have fully devoted themselves to the belief that Christian kindness will be so overwhelmingly special that non-Christians will be drawn to the “light” that evangelicals have in this dark world. Yet, will simultaneously admit that some of the kindest and best people on earth have never been Christians nor will be.
This belief that evangelical love and kindness, instituted by the Holy Spirit, would be so radical to grip people to Christ has been a losing strategy. Yet, the Passive-Gospel claims the commitment to ideological speech mixed with a dash of personal kindness should do it. And while Trump represents a slight change in strategy, he breathed new life to the Passive-Gospel that believes current-day “Christians” are so loving that they are bringing new believers into the fold more than they prove that “God’s Kindness” is no better than most people’s kindness. Ricky Gervais nailed this sentiment on After Life when he’s asked why he doesn’t just rape and kill as many people as he wants since he doesn’t believe in God. His answer to that question is “ I do. Which is none at all.”
Which makes it overwhelmingly ironic that Trump is one breathing more life to a Passive-Gospel centered on proving evangelicals are set apart in love and kindness, at the very least even the Trump Base knows he’s an asshole.
This is the exact problem with the Passive-Gospel and letting our kindness be the only thing shining through, Christians took away the uniqueness of the gospel so that they weren’t so abrasive. And now lost its identity as a serious religion because the Passive-Gospel has stripped it from any actual weirdness that sets it apart. Christians were lulled into being “Of the World” rather than just being “in the World” because they felt a passive/kindness approach mixed with pragmatic ministry ventures would capture more people…and it did, which makes me wonder if the path to heaven is more narrow than we already believe. When I would meet pastor’s of churches in Africa and India it was very clear that the commitment level to action and love was much stronger than that of the majority of pastors in America. And, the way they practice evangelicalism looks weird in the way an American evangelical finds Islamic prayer weird. Outside of the west, Christianity is still a religion, it’s not primarily an ideology driven by speech. The weirdest religious practice Western Christians do is pray before they eat dinner, that’s quite a dumbing down of the expectations their commitment to biblical rhetoric would provide, and what the bible says for weird and charismatic religious practices.
Growing up in church, committing deeply and serving regularly, and attending Bible College and subsequent churches I found the Passive-Gospel already with a deep grip on myself and evangelicalism. Sure, myself or a church like Westside would go out and serve a few times a year, donate money, and be generally kind. But, the level of commitment to rhetoric and speech of beliefs far surpassed the commitment to the actual action. Like I said, the first half of the Great Commandment is nailed by most churches, but they forgot the last half. Unless we’re claiming a 10-day mission trip, a one-week youth soccer camp, and a few service projects per year is really nailing it? I think Acts and 1st Corinthians alone argues against it.
The brand-based charismatic preacher is truly the perfect fit for the modern-day church. It perfectly allows the role of church and pastor to be enough spiritual fulfillment due to speech and passiveness. When you can be fulfilled by hearing things you already agree with in a new way, why would we attempt to change from just being kind?
The brand-based church, passive-gospel, and charismatic preacher work together in a trinity to worsen the deadness of the modern church and further separate its ability to reach people. Trump just drives a harder wedge between Christians and the people Jesus would be eating dinner with if he came back today. Just one example is how the majority of Christians and churches have fully given up on the LGBTQ+ community with the belief that they’re pretty much destined to hell with no path to heaven unless they fully deny a core identity of themselves. Trump added the entire new problem of helping evangelical kindness be perceived as a negative or manipulative. (Maybe Trump is the best for your policy hopes, but can you say that his impact on the church or health of society is positive?)
The role of speech over action is obvious in the amount of hours staff spend preparing the words said on Sunday rather than spending intentional time with the community without an agenda. Doing life together looks like more than a couple of events each month and a bible-study each week. It almost makes me wonder if the art of Preaching is even a necessity as the main programming for Sunday church. The internet provides endless commentary and study for Christians to learn via reading or sermons and the role of the church, at its essence, is about the community more than any individual thing the church does. Preaching was essential before and shortly after the printing press, and it is still useful for evangelicals, but is it the meat of what Christ wanted the church to be? How many churches with 250+ people have multiple members who never meet?
I’m not saying I have the solution for the church or how it can solve its problems. But, I’ve learned that if you can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, you can still usually see your next step even if small. I’m pretty certain the next step and probably a few after that one, are backward and not forward for the church.
Deconstruction has earned an awful reputation because it so strongly encourages people to embrace a completely opposing ideology and is not always started consciously/knowingly or with the hope of reconstruction Even I, trying to reconstruct, have still taken on fully new ideological beliefs that I’ll have to reconcile with my belief in a God and the beliefs that held strong prior to deconstructing.
But the church, with pragmatism, false gospels, brands, Trump, speech, and charisma has made it to the point where the next step very well could be an intentional deconstruction and eventual reconstruction of the church and its structures, beliefs, or operations. Church needs to be seriously honest about the parts that they can’t be certain on and people could actually make a choice of faith rather than being sold the product of Jesus.
It is time to strip the church back down to the rock it stands on before we try to build upon that rock. I feel that if the Church won’t do it, the people will, and the church will lose both itself and its people.
Links:
Church of the Highlands https://www.churchofthehighlands.com/
Stone Church https://www.stone.church/
WestSide Church https://westsidechurch.info
Thoughts of Life and Taylor Swift 
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