Only 5 to 10% of believers in the US are planted in a church. But it really maxes out at 5% who are deeply rooted, committed/planted in a church. (Stats from the Barna Group.)
This is so very sad.
Normal church life is full of people who are growing and becoming more like Jesus. That process brings both joy and struggles. The struggles are what cause many to cut their losses and leave.
Relational irritations, frustrations, and wounds, real or perceived, are all part of the growth and maturation process in the believer. This is hard for most to accept. But this exists in the church because every one of us is on the journey of growing and together, and becoming more like Jesus. We become wise disciples of Jesus when we accept this truth and allow God to mature us relationally. It is the proving of our love for each other. If we reject this truth, we severely limit our maturity in Christ. We alone become the reason God’s purposes are stunted in our lives.
God’s encouragement to us in the face of relational issues, is to let them push us to our knees in prayer and humility, mature us into greater love for one another, greater grace and healing, and grow our spiritual authority. This is where we learn to be VICTORIOUS OVERCOMERS in CHRIST JESUS!
MOST believers, the 90-95%, reject God’s maturing process. They cut their losses and leave for another church, then another, and another after that. Some choose no church at all. We can no more leave the Bride of Christ and be disconnected from Her, than we also leave and disconnect ourselves from Christ Jesus Himself.
I have dear friends who have rejected Christianity and embraced universalism over their inability to see and grow through their disillusionment of church life. For them, accepting a different gospel (2 Corinthians 11:4) was preferable to having God deal in their hearts and heal them. Accepting personal responsibility for disillusionment and the pain incurred is too hard for many believers. Pointing fingers and blaming others is the easy way out. And finger pointers easily find friends who are also avoiding responsibility. The sympathizer is often sympathizing because it excuses their own conscience! excusing their own need for repentance before God.
This is the great trap of deception: Many will not allow God to work in their heart because it’s easier to blame someone or something else for their circumstances. People stuck blaming others never grow to become responsible, mature believers in Jesus.
Jesus warned us about this. He warned of the increasing lawlessness which is lovelessness: “Because lawlessness abounds, the love of many will grow cold” (Matthew 24:12). Lawlessness is anomian in the Greek, “against the law.” What is the highest law? To love God with our whole heart. And the second highest is like it, to love people as ourselves (Matthew 22:37-40). Lawlessness is anything against love.
LAW -lessness = LOVE -lessness
How is it that 90 to 95% of believers will not plant themselves and commit to a church family? Lovelessness… they do not love.
The 90 to 95% is made up of many people who will not make loving Jesus their highest priority. Though many claim to love Jesus, they don’t. Their lack of love for Jesus is proven by their lack of love, despising, or even hatred for their brothers and sisters (1 John 4:20). In spite of the many excuses, a person’s lack of love for people, their lack of commitment to God’s church, their choosing to hold on to perpetual woundedness, bitterness, and resentment shows that Jesus is not their highest priority.
Mere words of love mean nothing from a person if their life is not demonstrating the fruit of love: commitment to others over self, willingness to lay down for another.
Jesus said, a last days phenomenon will be that many believers will sit down under the weight of their own bitter woundedness. Being easily offended they will allow hatred to grow in their hearts. Betraying friendships they will walk away from brothers and sisters in the church family… all the while, their love for God grows cold (Matthew 24:9-12). They do not realize it all stems from distance in the heart from God; a separation because something else has been enthroned on their heart. The enemy seeds this kind of destruction into the church, continually. That 90 to 95% of the church lives this way is a sad but very real statistic.
BUT!!!!
5% of the US church ARE defying the enemy’s plans and are living victoriously in Christ Jesus.
I want to be in the 5% army of God.
To be a “5 percenter” I must die to self, so I can live for Christ (Galatians 2:20). If I have been crucified with Christ, then it means:
- I have laid down my need to be justified, my need to be right, my need to be heard, validated, or vindicated.
- My reputation before men means nothing—I leave that all up to God!!
- I fear no man, but freely and truly love all men, the way Christ has instructed me (Jn 15:9-14).
- I lay down my pitiful self-excusing for any area in my life and turn my life over to Jesus, for Him to take hold of.
- I repent of blaming others and repent of any idolatry of perpetual woundedness because I am NOT a victim, I am a victor in Christ Jesus (Acts 3:19).
- I manage my heart, its meditations, and affections to grow in the revelation, knowledge, and wisdom of Jesus (Ephesians 1:17-22).
- I am not self-centered, I am Christ-centered.
- I do not seek comfort or convenience, but…
- I have become a servant, just as Christ came to serve (Matthew 23:11; Mark 10:43-45).
- I hold in my heart the TRUTH that Jesus serves me the best meals right in front of my enemies (Psalm 23:5). No matter what trial I face, I know Jesus has food for me right in the middle of the mess; the best food is when it’s the darkest. He’s always with me and has “food” for me.
A 5 percenter has learned that Jesus is our Food. Everything else is bland and tasteless, temporary and fleeting, mere counterfeits for the Real and Living Food that is Jesus…
This is what my church, Seashore Church, is pursuing!!!
