BIG Gap Between American Pastors' Perceptions & Reality

Earlier this month, the Barna Group released scathing results of a study conducted to get some insight on whether or not American pastors are in tune with the spiritual health of their congregations. I'm always a little wary of Barna's research because of how easy it is to get the answers they want/expect, but I think these particular findings have potential to do a lot to help American pastors re-think how they evaluate their ministries.

The report states that "pastors contend that 70% of the adults in their church consider their personal faith in God to transcend all other priorities." At one point in the report, it's unclear as to whether or not the 1002 adults who were polled were church-goers, or just average American people on the street. That said, the poll did isolate those who attend Protestant churches and reported that "23% named their faith in God as their top priority in life." (51% of those who identified themselves with the term "evangelical" said that their faith in God was their highest priority.)

I've never been real crazy about how Barna throws around labels (like Protestant, Evangelical, conservative, liberal, "born again," etc.) and it seems like there are a lot of presuppositions that go into much of the research. However, in this particular poll, I have to wonder if Barna is on to something critically important, especially in summarizing the conclusions of the survey.

". . . the typical pastor measures the spiritual health of congregants by considering one or two numbers (e.g. church and Sunday school attendance) and a handful of vague impressions (what did exit comments suggest about people’s reaction to the sermon, how widespread was people’s participation in the singing, were there enough people who were sufficiently trained to enable the services and programs to operate smoothly)."

Later, George himself goes on to say, "“The only way to explain the enormous gap between the perceptions of pastors and the reality of people’s lives is to understand that pastors evaluate spiritual health from an institutional perspective – that is, are people involved in keeping the system going – while people are aware of their unmet need to have a deeper and more meaningful relationship with God.” (emphasis mine)

Ooop. There it is. Welcome to 21st Century Christendom. A lot of concern for numbers (financial, attendance, or otherwise.) A lot of concern for surface level involvement. A lot of concern for external indicators of success. Not much concern for making disciples of Jesus who are increasingly committed to walking in the way of Jesus. Not much concern for being a catalyst of change in society. Not much concern for announcing and demonstrating the Kingdom of God on the Earth. (Heck, even Barna ostensibly suggests that the objective of pastors should be to meet the needs of their people to have a deeper relationship with God, which is good, but still falls far short of Ephesians 4.11-12, not to mention the ministry objectives of Jesus.)

I don't say these things to be overly critical or cynical. I say these things because I love the church and I believe that it is the church that God Himself has commissioned to be the primary tool for accomplishing His purposes on the earth. But when I look around at the church in Western society today, I see a lot of acquiescence to modern day business standards, enlightenment philosophy, and other standards of success that fall so short of the vision that Jesus had when he launched the church in his 3+ years of ministry on the earth.

How do we change? I don't know. Thus far, it seems that I myself have this uncanny ability to know exactly what's wrong with the Western church, equaled only by an uncanny inability to articulate those things well and suggest necessary steps for change. But there are a lot of other people out there asking similar questions and raising similar issues. And there are even people out there trying to do something about it. Best of all (and I have to remind myself of this constantly), the One who created all things, including the Church, is the One who said, "I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it."