Dharius Daniels - I Quit Church

Matthew chapter 21, verse 12 says Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were buying and selling. He overturned the tables of the money changers. Let’s not sanitize the story; He taught a club up, overturned the tables of the money changers, and the benches of those selling doves. It is written, He said, «My house will be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a den of robbers.» Verse 14 says the blind and the lame came to Him at the temple, and He healed them. This is the reading of God’s Word. Grateful for the gift of the Scriptures to our lives, I want to use the series topic as a sermon topic today. I want to talk from the subject, «I Quit Church.» Family, I want to interrupt our regularly scheduled worship gathering with this breaking news announcement: I’m not sure if you are aware of this, but people are quitting church. I say this not just experientially as a faith leader; I say this statistically. The numbers corroborate my claim: at an alarming rate, people are engaging in a mass exodus from organized religion. According to the Gallup group, in 1999, 70% of Americans claimed church membership; now less than 50% do. And out of the 50% that claim church membership, listen to this: the average attendee attends one to two times a month. Most mainline denominations are experiencing declines—in the number of people attending their churches—and they are experiencing increases in churches actually closing their doors. These trends are seen across theological and ethnic barriers. They move out of just the Protestant circle; even in high church traditions like the Catholic Church, we are seeing similar trends. Twenty years ago, close to 76% of Catholics belonged to a church; now less than 60% do. These trends are also manifesting generationally: 62% of Generation X attended church, while only 42% of Millennials do. And I think it is imperative; it is important, ladies and gentlemen, if we love the church the way we say we love the church, and if we love people the way we say we love people, we should pause for the cause and ask ourselves: why are so many people quitting church? There are a myriad of potential reasons. We’ve got the rise of secularism, we’ve got access to the internet causing a new kind of enlightenment affecting society the way the printing press did, and we have access to virtual worship services where people can worship virtually and don’t have to go to a physical location. Yes, all of these are contributing reasons why people may be quitting church. But I think it’s important for the church to put a mirror up to its face and ask itself: are we one of the reasons? I believe it’s imperative to ask that question because anyone who wants to improve anything must be willing to assess it. If you want to improve a relationship, you must be willing to assess it. If you want to improve a business, you must be willing to assess it. Even athletes know if they want to improve their skills, they must be willing to watch game film to see what they can improve. You don’t try to improve something because you hate yourself; you try to improve something because you love yourself. We don’t want to improve church because we hate the church; we want to improve church because we love the church. But you cannot fix what you will not face. And I have a question I think we need to explore: are we a part of the reason people are quitting church? As we attempt to explore this issue, ladies and gentlemen, I want to contend that not all church quitting is created equal. All quitters aren’t the same, and for the purpose of this preacher presentation, I want to divide people into two groups. The first group, Group One, has quit church without accurately assessing why. They have a proclaimed reason that they’ve quit church, but they are unaware of the actual reason they have quit church. With this particular group, whenever there is any kind of institutional or moral issue with spiritual leaders or spiritual institutions, they’ll say things like, «That’s why I don’t go to church,» when the truth of the matter is, they wouldn’t go if that didn’t happen. These are people who, like Adam in the Garden of Eden, are blaming something else for what they are actually responsible for: «The woman you gave me.» So, these are people who don’t have the self-awareness to dig deep enough to be honest with themselves about the real reason that they are no longer affiliated or associated with church as we know it. This group, ladies and gentlemen, can be characterized by a few traits I want to lift up to you today. Number one, this is a group that has spiritualized their selfishness. Church wasn’t what they wanted it to be, so they thought it wasn’t what it was supposed to be. If the church wasn’t something they expected, they assumed it wasn’t something God intended. They assumed if they didn’t like it, God didn’t either. And when someone spiritualizes their selfishness, they make themselves a victim when they aren’t, because they feel entitled to have their preferences accommodated when God promises only to meet our needs. Another trait—are y’all with me? —is that some people in this group quit because they have operated with inaccurate information. This means that they have been taught things inaccurately. In academic theological circles, we say you can’t have all the practice without orthodoxy; that you can’t have right practice without right doctrine; that you can’t live a good life with bad…