As churches create more and more satellite campuses and turn to online ventures (see here for Out of Ur's description), I am struck by how evangelical churches have accidentally undermined their own relevance. Now, many of you might be all for these relatively new features of the church (internet services, satellite campuses, etc.), but I'm not interested in criticizing that. What I am referring to as a dying church has happened in many evangelical circles long before any of this has come about. Somewhere along the lines, building upon the enlightenment obsession with self (only to be outdone by the postmodern uber-obsession with self), the church became about the individual's growth and experience. We see this in the Great Awakening and the smaller early American revivals down through the history of evangelicalism.

An instance of this phenomena can be seen in this quote from Bill Hybels, founding pastor of Willow Creek, "We made a mistake. What we should have done when people crossed the line of faith and become Christians, we should have started telling people and teaching people that they have to take responsibility to become ‘self feeders.’" The church's task, in other words, is to make people independent, in a similar way that a parents task is to help children leave home and exist on their own two feet. But is that the church's task? What this is modeling, in my opinion, is the opposite of what the church needs to be doing - not to make people dependent upon a service for their relationship with God, nor to be turning them into "self-feeders," an odd term if there ever was one - but for the body of Christ to exist as a people, and individuals to exist within that as individuals within the larger body.

The problem in our day, as I see it, is that we have come to conceive of the church in a similar way we conceive of education. Our goal is to help people know right things and get them excited for their task. The form this takes is preaching and praise (almost fundamentally) in most evangelical churches. The problem we face today is that I can find "better" preaching online, "better" music online and can certainly find better community at the local Starbucks. Our big churches get bigger, not because they are reaching other people, but because they poach from the people who just want more, better and more sophisticated. We have spent so much time proclaiming a view of the church which is based on getting excited and getting information that my generation woke up and thought, "Well, if I can get information and excitement elsewhere, why bother with church?", and more sadly than that, much of evangelicalism doesn't have a response. The church, in many ways, has taught that it is just not that important.

I have been convicted for many years now that the spiritual formation conversation might as well die now unless it plans on speaking meaningfully into the church. While churches have been talking about it, I have yet to see real significant change. In fact, it seem to me, that all we've done is to feed the idol of growth, once again seeking to be "self-feeders" - to become those who "do this Christian thing" for the sake of growing personally - rather than for the sake of serving God.

What are your thoughts? This is certainly an evangelical/low-church problem, so those in other traditions feel free to share your experience or insights here.