“We” Faith in a “Me” Culture August 19, 2009
Posted by Dan R. Dick in Church Leadership, Congregational Life, Core Values, Religion in the U.S..Tags: church, Mission & Purpose, Values
9 comments
I am convinced that the most serious challenge to the Christian church in the United States is the individualistic, consumeristic, self-indulgent, and personal entitlement mindset of most Americans. On a recent church visit, I 
met a forty-something woman who told me, “I come to church for me. I ask my husband to stay home with the kids so I can come here and get my “God fix.” It is such a blessing to not have to worry about him or the kids. Church is one of the few things that’s just mine.” Am I crazy, or does this kind of sentiment miss a few points? In numerous interviews with both regular church attenders as well as those unaffiliated with any church, I have been struck (repeatedly) by the number of people who share that their greatest gripe with the church is that they cannot “be left alone” when they attend. Fully 40% of active United Methodists say they prefer to come to church, slide in unobtrusively, worship, then slip out unaccosted. What’s this about? It certainly doesn’t honor or reflect the fundamental communal nature of “church.”
But this shouldn’t be surprising. Independent evangelical Christians perpetrated a privatized, individualized, personalized, and consumeristic version of Christianity throughout the twentieth century in the United States. However, blame must be shared with the mainline church that bought into the “do you know Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?” and “have you been born again?” mentality that transformed the Christian faith from shared journey to a “me-and-my-buddy-Jesus” closed-club. The “we” of community has given way to the “me” entitlement mentality that saturates today’s church and larger culture.
