I made the mistake of watching the news before I poured my second cup of coffee. Then, after I poured my second cup, I scrolled through my social media feeds and saw posts by folks like Franklin Graham, Robert Jeffress, and Josh Howerton that are just bathed in Christian nationalism and terrible theology. As I watched and scrolled, I found myself thinking about the influence of American Christianity…the good, the bad, and the ugly. So, I started typing…and if I’m being honest, I’ve taken a trip to negative town. But, there is some hope sprinkled in too!

There are some questions the American Church needs to be willing to ask itself: Why should anyone be surprised when people outside the church want nothing to do with us? Why should we be surprised when people who once sat in our pews, served on our committees, taught our Sunday school classes, and gave generously to our ministries decide they can no longer remain part of the institution?

Seriously, we shouldn’t be shocked when people who still love Jesus, still read his words, still want to follow his teachings, and still hunger for a deeper spiritual life choose to do so somewhere beyond the walls of the church. Before we start another campaign to get people back into church, we ought to ask ourselves what they experienced that made them leave in the first place. Before we lament the decline of Christianity’s cultural influence in America, we ought to consider what kind of Christianity we have been offering the world. Because if we’re just inviting people who have walked away the same thing they walked away from…well…

Church, we have a PR problem and it’s time we take responsibility for our problems.

When prominent Christian leaders repeatedly choose the powerful over the powerless, the institution over the injured, and the reputation of the church over the well-being of the people it has wounded, we should not be surprised when people stop trusting us.

When people who claim the name of Jesus defend abusers while questioning the abused, belittle the marginalized while elevating those who created the margins, and offer endless grace to those who cause harm while demanding endless patience from those who suffer it, we should not be surprised when the world looks at us and wonders whether we have ever really understood the gospel we proclaim.

When we align ourselves with the very people Jesus consistently challenged, while ignoring the people Jesus consistently welcomed, we should not be surprised when people begin to question whether the church is actually following him at all.

When the Church responds to these concerns by defending itself rather than examining itself, we should not be surprised when the distance between Jesus and his institutional representatives continues to grow.

At some point, we have to stop asking why people are walking away and start asking what, exactly, they are walking away from.

Maybe we should read the Gospels again. Not just the verses we have embroidered on pillows or printed on coffee mugs. Not just the passages we use to reinforce what we already believe. Read the whole story.

Look at the people Jesus confronts. He confronts religious leaders who use their authority to burden others while protecting themselves. He challenges people who obsess over religious appearances while neglecting justice, mercy, and faithfulness. He tells stories in which the religiously respectable are the ones who fail to recognize their neighbor. He welcomes people whom respectable society has rejected. He touches those others will not touch. He shares meals with people others consider unworthy of a seat at the table.

When Jesus speaks about judgment, he repeatedly directs our attention to how we have treated the vulnerable. In Matthew 25:31–46, Jesus identifies himself with the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, and the imprisoned. His words are startling in their simplicity: our response to people who are vulnerable is inseparable from our response to him.

He doesn’t focus on our political affiliations, the size of our congregations, the beauty of our sanctuaries, the respectability of our reputations, or our ability to say all the right religious things.

He invites us to consider how we treat the people who need us? Do we feed the hungry? Welcome the stranger? Care for the sick? Visit the imprisoned? Do we recognize the image of Christ in people who could offer us nothing in return?

These are not peripheral questions for Christians. Jesus places them remarkably close to the center of what it means to be faithful.

And yet, too often, the Church seems more concerned with protecting the comfort of the powerful than with embodying the compassion of Christ.

We defend leaders because they are influential, successful, charismatic, or useful to our cause. We minimize the suffering of victims because acknowledging their pain might threaten the institution. We question the motives of people who speak up while extending the benefit of the doubt to those whose actions have caused harm. We ask the wounded to be patient. We ask the marginalized to be quiet. We ask the abused to consider the consequences of speaking out.

And we call it protecting the Church. We call it protecting Christian values. But protecting the Church from accountability is not the same thing as protecting the Church’s witness. In fact, it may be destroying it.

We shouldn’t abandon due process, refuse forgiveness, or assume every allegation is automatically proven. But we should refuse to let someone’s status, influence, or religious credentials determine whether their actions will be taken seriously. The safety and dignity of those who have been harmed cannot be treated as secondary to the preservation of an institution or the protection of our political agendas.

The Church does not honor Jesus by protecting people who harm others. It honors Jesus by telling the truth, protecting the vulnerable, pursuing accountability, and refusing to confuse power with righteousness.

If our theology of grace makes it easier for powerful people to avoid accountability than for wounded people to find healing, we need to revisit our theology.

If our understanding of unity requires victims to remain silent so that everyone else can get along, we need to revisit our understanding of unity.

If our commitment to the Church requires us to abandon the way of Jesus, then we have confused the institution with the One the institution exists to serve.

One of the things I love about the Bible is that it refuses to let religious people get too comfortable. The prophets of the Hebrew scriptures were not hired to protect the reputations of the powerful. They were called to speak uncomfortable truths to people who had become comfortable with injustice. They challenged rulers, confronted religious hypocrisy, and reminded God’s people that worship divorced from righteousness was an offense to God.

Consider Micah 6:8: “He has told you, O mortal, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?”

If we look at what God requires, it’s not a bigger building, a more impressive worship service, a stronger grip on cultural influence, or a seat at the table of the powerful. God requires justice, kindness and humility.

Consider Isaiah 1:17, which calls God’s people to learn to do good, seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, and plead for the widow. Or Amos 5:21–24, in which God rejects religious festivals and songs when the people’s lives are characterized by injustice, demanding instead that justice roll down like waters.

The point is not that worship, tradition, doctrine, or the life of the church are unimportant. The point is that none of these things can substitute for the faithful practice of justice and mercy.

The prophet Amos does not suggest that Israel needs to improve its worship production. He suggests that the people need to repent. Micah does not tell the people to become better at looking religious. He reminds them what God actually requires.

Maybe the American Church needs to hear these prophets again. We need to hear them not as ancient voices addressing someone else’s religious failures, but as living witnesses asking whether we have mistaken the maintenance of our institutions for faithfulness to God.

If our churches can preach endlessly about personal morality while remaining remarkably quiet about injustice, something is out of balance. If we can identify the sins of people who are different from us while refusing to confront the sins committed by people who share our values, something is out of balance. If we can speak passionately about the authority of Scripture while ignoring the biblical commands to defend the vulnerable, something is out of balance. If we believe that our religious convictions excuse us from the difficult work of loving our neighbors, we have misunderstood those convictions.

The prophets would not be impressed by our ability to quote Scripture if our lives contradict its demands.

I suspect Paul would have a few things to say, too. His letters to the early churches were not always gentle. He confronted division, hypocrisy, arrogance, exploitation, and the ways Christian communities failed to embody the unity they proclaimed. He was willing to challenge churches he loved because their faithfulness mattered more than their comfort.

We seem to have developed a Christianity that is eager to correct outsiders but reluctant to correct insiders. We have become experts at identifying the speck in someone else’s eye while explaining away the log in our own. That is not spiritual maturity. It is spiritual self-deception.

Progressive and liberation theologians have spent generations challenging the church to take seriously the relationship between the gospel and the lived experiences of people who are oppressed, excluded, or wounded by systems of power. Their work is not simply about adding a few social concerns to an otherwise unchanged Christianity. It asks whether we have understood the gospel correctly if our faith leaves us indifferent to suffering.

What does it mean to proclaim a liberating Savior while defending arrangements that keep people oppressed? What does it mean to worship Jesus, who was executed by the combined forces of political and religious power, while reflexively siding with powerful people when they harm the vulnerable? What does it mean to celebrate the cross while refusing to stand beside those who suffer?

These are not abstract theological questions. They are questions about what our faith looks like when it encounters real people with real wounds.

Christian love is not a command for victims to make their abusers comfortable. Forgiveness is not a mechanism for avoiding accountability. Reconciliation is not a demand that people return to unsafe relationships or pretend that harm never occurred. Grace is not the absence of consequences. Unity is not the silencing of people whose pain makes the rest of us uncomfortable.

If we are serious about reconciliation, we must be serious about truth. If we are serious about forgiveness, we must be serious about repentance. If we are serious about healing, we must be willing to acknowledge the wounds.

The church should be the place where people who have been hurt discover that their stories matter, their dignity is protected, and their suffering will not be minimized to preserve someone else’s reputation.

Imagine what it would mean for the church to become known for that. Imagine what it would mean for people to say, “I went to the church because I knew they would believe that my life mattered. I knew they would stand with me. I knew they would tell the truth, even when the truth was costly.” That would be a powerful witness to the gospel.

Instead, too many people have experienced the opposite. We should not be surprised that they have difficulty trusting us.

Here is where I think the American Church needs to pay particular attention. We often talk about people leaving the church as though they have simply abandoned their faith. We assume that declining participation means declining spirituality, that leaving a congregation means leaving Jesus, or that questioning the institution means rejecting Christianity altogether. But those assumptions can obscure what is actually happening.

Some people are walking away from faith. Others are walking away from a particular congregation, denomination, or expression of Christianity. Others are trying to hold on to Jesus while creating distance from the institution that taught them about him.

Some are exhausted by hypocrisy. Some have been wounded by spiritual abuse. Some are tired of watching the church defend people whose actions contradict its teachings. Some have watched the church become entangled in the pursuit of political or cultural power and no longer recognize the Jesus they encounter in the Gospels. Some simply cannot reconcile the love of God they have experienced with the judgment, exclusion, or indifference they have encountered in God’s people.

We should listen to these stories before we presume to explain them. Not everyone who leaves the church does so for the same reason, and not everyone who remains in the church is complicit in its failures. There are faithful congregations, courageous pastors, compassionate laypeople, and communities doing extraordinary work in the name of Jesus.

But the existence of faithful churches does not absolve the broader institution of the responsibility to examine its failures.

Nor should we assume that everyone who walks away has stopped caring about spiritual things. Some of the people who have the most profound questions about the church are asking those questions precisely because they take Jesus seriously. They have read the Sermon on the Mount. They have encountered the Jesus who blesses the poor in spirit, calls peacemakers children of God, commands his followers to love their enemies, and warns against the seduction of wealth and power. They have heard Jesus insist that the greatest among his followers must become servants.

Then they look at the church. They see leaders who demand loyalty but resist accountability. They see institutions that protect their public image at the expense of wounded people. They see Christians who speak passionately about biblical values while displaying remarkably little compassion for people whose lives are complicated, whose circumstances are difficult, or whose experiences challenge their assumptions. They see a church that sometimes seems more interested in winning than in loving, more concerned with influence than with integrity, and more committed to protecting its own than to embodying the grace it proclaims.

Understandably, they wonder whether they can follow Jesus without continuing to participate in that contradiction.

We should not be so quick to condemn their questions. Maybe some of them are not walking away from Jesus at all. Maybe they are walking away from the distance between Jesus and the church. Maybe the most faithful response is not to insist that they come back, but to ask what the church would need to become for them to recognize Jesus among us again.

I believe the church desperately needs revival. But I am not talking about revival as a temporary surge in attendance, an emotional worship experience, or a campaign designed to restore Christianity’s influence in American society.

I am talking about a revival that gets us back to the way of Jesus. A revival that begins with repentance rather than defensiveness. A revival that makes us more concerned with faithfulness than popularity, more committed to truth than convenience, and more willing to surrender our privilege than to protect it. A revival that reminds us that the church does not exist to make powerful people more powerful. It exists to bear witness to the kingdom of God. A revival that leads us to take Jesus seriously enough to let his teachings challenge our assumptions, our loyalties, our prejudices, and our practices. A revival that moves us beyond simply believing the right things about Jesus to actually doing the things Jesus told us to do.

Jesus did not tell his followers that the world would recognize them by the size of their buildings, the influence of their leaders, or the effectiveness of their political strategies. He said people would recognize his disciples by their love for one another (John 13:35).

That love, however, is not sentimental. It is not merely a warm feeling toward people who look like us, think like us, vote like us, or make us comfortable. It is a love that tells the truth. It is a love that protects the vulnerable. It is a love that confronts injustice. It is a love that refuses to abandon people when standing beside them becomes costly. It is a love that does not confuse the preservation of the institution with the fulfillment of its mission. It is a love that is willing to change.

A revived church would not simply preach about the poor; it would rearrange its priorities around the needs of its neighbors. It would not simply welcome marginalized people into its buildings; it would examine the practices and assumptions that marginalized them in the first place. It would not merely issue statements about compassion; it would demonstrate compassion when doing so requires sacrifice.

A revived church would not measure its success solely by attendance, budgets, buildings, or institutional longevity. It would ask whether people are becoming more like Jesus and whether the communities around it are experiencing more justice, mercy, hope, and love because the church is there.

When a revived church fails, and it will fail because churches are made up of human beings, it will respond with humility, confession, accountability, and a willingness to make things right.

That is the kind of revival I long for. Not a revival that makes the church look powerful again, but one that makes the church look like Jesus again.

The most important question is not whether the American church can regain the trust it has lost. The question is whether we are willing to become the kind of church that deserves to be trusted.

That begins with repentance. Not the kind of repentance that simply acknowledges that we are imperfect people. Not the kind that offers a vague apology before returning to business as usual. Not the kind that asks those who have been harmed to forgive quickly so that the rest of us can move on.

Real repentance tells the truth about what has happened. It acknowledges the people who have been hurt. It accepts responsibility. It changes behavior. It makes restitution where possible. It creates safeguards to prevent future harm.

Real repentance is more concerned with the well-being of the wounded than with the comfort of the institution. Real repentance requires humility and the willingness to admit that we may have confused our traditions with the gospel, our preferences with God’s will, and our institutional survival with faithfulness.

It requires us to return to the Scriptures, not to find ammunition for defending ourselves, but to allow the living Word of God to examine us. It requires us to read Micah 6:8 and take justice seriously. It requires us to read Matthew 25 and recognize that our treatment of vulnerable people matters to Jesus. It requires us to read the Gospels and pay attention to whom Jesus welcomes, whom he challenges, and what he says about the dangers of religious hypocrisy.

It requires us to remember that Jesus reserved some of his sharpest criticism for religious people who were convinced they were getting everything right.

The church does not need to be perfect to be faithful. But it does need to be honest about its failures and willing to change.

We need pastors who are courageous enough to speak truth when silence would be easier. We need congregations that value people more than reputations. We need leaders who understand that accountability is not a threat to healthy leadership but a necessary expression of it.

We need Christians who are willing to ask if the way we live, lead, worship, serve, and treat our neighbors actually resemble Jesus? If the answer is no, then we have work to do. Not work to make ourselves look better but to become more faithful.

Despite all of this, I have not given up on the church. I believe the church can still be a place of extraordinary grace, meaningful community, spiritual formation, healing, and hope. I believe congregations can become communities where people encounter the love of God in tangible ways. I believe the church can stand beside people in their suffering, challenge the forces that diminish human dignity, and help build communities where all people have the opportunity to flourish.

I believe the church can be good news. But it will not happen simply because we insist that it is.  It will happen when our lives make the gospel believable.

When people who have been wounded discover that the church will stand with them. When people on the margins discover that they are not projects to be managed or problems to be solved, but beloved children of God whose gifts, stories, and dignity matter. When people who have been excluded discover that the church is willing to examine its own practices rather than blaming them for feeling unwelcome. When the powerful discover that Christian leadership means service and accountability, not entitlement. When our neighbors experience the church as a community that feeds the hungry, welcomes the stranger, cares for the sick, advocates for the vulnerable, and loves without calculating what it will receive in return. When the people around us see a community whose commitments are not merely spoken from pulpits but embodied in ordinary, everyday acts of courage, generosity, mercy, and justice.

Then perhaps people will begin to see something worth trusting. Not because the church has perfected its public image, but because it has returned to its purpose. Not because we have reclaimed cultural power, but because we have learned to use whatever power we have in service to others. Not because we have finally figured out how to get everyone back into our buildings, but because we have become more faithful to the One who sent us into the world.

That is the revival I hope for. That is the church I want to be part of. That is the witness I believe the world desperately needs.

The American church should not be surprised when people reject it if we continue to choose the powerful over the powerless, the abuser over the abused, and institutional preservation over the way of Jesus.

I still believe we can become something different. We can repent. We can change. We can rediscover the radical, costly, liberating love at the heart of the gospel. We can stop asking the world to come back to church and start asking the church to come back to Jesus.

The world does not need a church that is simply more influential. The world needs a church that looks, loves, serves, and lives like Jesus.

There is something wonderfully absurd about Noah…God tells him to build a boat. A really big boat…And Noah starts building.

The only problem is that, as far as we know, it wasn’t raining. Not a little rain. Not a drizzle. Not even one of those ominous afternoons when the sky turns dark and everyone starts wondering whether they should bring the patio furniture inside.

Nothing.

Just Noah, a boat, and presumably a whole lot of people wondering what in the world he was doing.

Genesis tells us that God gave Noah specific instructions for building the ark. And then comes this remarkably simple statement “Noah did everything just as God commanded him” (Genesis 6:22).

Noah didn’t have a five-year strategic plan. He didn’t have a guarantee of success. He didn’t have immediate evidence that any of this was going to make sense. He had a call. And he responded with obedience.

That’s what makes Noah’s story so interesting for the church. Because sometimes God calls us to begin something before there is any visible evidence that it is going to work.

We are not particularly good at waiting. We live in a world of immediate results. We order something online and expect it tomorrow. We stream whatever we want whenever we want it. We can get an answer to almost any question in seconds.

So naturally, we bring those expectations into the church. We try something new and want immediate results. We change something and want everyone to love it. We launch a ministry and expect the room to be full. We adjust our worship and want attendance to jump. We try something for a few weeks, don’t see a dramatic difference, and conclude:

Then we go back to what we were doing before. As we might say drawing on Scripture, we “go back to Egypt.” Because Egypt may not have been ideal, but at least it was familiar.

That’s one of the great temptations of church life: we can become more committed to what is familiar than to what is faithful.

Of course, faithfulness doesn’t mean stubbornly continuing something simply because we started it. Sometimes an idea really doesn’t work. Sometimes we need to change course. Sometimes the Spirit leads us somewhere we didn’t expect.

But there is an important difference between saying “this isn’t faithful” and saying “this hasn’t produced immediate results.” Those are not the same thing.

That’s why clarity matters.

Before a church asks, “Is this working?” it should ask: What are we trying to become? What is God calling us to do? Who are we called to reach? What kind of community are we becoming? What does it look like for us to embody the way of Jesus in this particular time and place?

The “ark,” then, isn’t one particular program or change. The ark is the larger vision, the church we believe God is calling us to become.

The changes we make are simply ways of moving toward that vision. And that distinction matters because churches are really good at arguing about the details while forgetting the larger purpose.

Should the service start at 10 or 10:30? Should we sing this song or that song? Should the bulletin look like this or that? Should the walls be painted this color? Should we have this ministry? Should we change that ministry?

Important questions, perhaps. But they’re not the ultimate questions.

The deeper question is: Does this help us become the church God is calling us to be?

This is where things get practical.

Sometimes responding to God’s call means launching an entirely new ministry. Sometimes it means changing the way we worship so that contemporary worship actually feels contemporary rather than simply being traditional worship with a guitar added. Sometimes it means freshening our facilities, bringing paint, décor, signage, and common spaces into the 2020s so that our physical environment communicates the welcome and vitality we say we value. Sometimes it means changing a bulletin that has accumulated enough information over the years to qualify as a small theological encyclopedia. Sometimes it means rethinking how we welcome a first-time guest. Sometimes it means creating a new pathway for discipleship. Sometimes it means changing a committee structure or ministry practice that has become more of a roadblock than a bridge.

And sometimes it really is just paint. But none of those things is the point by itself. The point is what those changes communicate and make possible.

If we’re trying to become a church that is more welcoming, more accessible, more outward-facing, more spiritually alive, and more connected to the people around us, then the way our worship feels, the way our building looks, and the way we communicate all matter.

Not because God cares about paint. Not because the Holy Spirit has strong opinions about bulletin fonts. But because what we do communicates what we value.

Sometimes changing something small is a way of making the larger vision visible.

One of the greatest mistakes churches can make is abandoning something before it has had time to take root. We plant something on Sunday and want fruit by Tuesday. We make a change and expect everyone to understand it immediately. We try a new ministry and judge it by the first three weeks. We make a change in worship and expect the congregation to instantly embrace it.

But living things take time. Seeds take time. Relationships take time. Trust takes time. Discipleship takes time. Culture change takes time. Church renewal takes time.

And apparently, according to Genesis, ark construction takes time.

The absence of immediate results doesn’t necessarily mean the work is failing. Sometimes it means the work is still happening.

A congregation may need time to adjust. New people may need time to find us. Relationships may need time to develop. A new ministry may need time to mature. A culture of hospitality may need time to become instinctive. People who have been hurt or excluded by the church may need considerable time before they believe that our welcome is genuine.

We shouldn’t confuse slow with unsuccessful. Nor should we confuse uncomfortable with unfaithful.

There is an important qualification. “Keep going” cannot mean “never reconsider.” Faithfulness is not stubbornness.

We pray. We listen. We discern. We learn. We pay attention to what is happening around us. We ask whether what we’re doing is actually helping us live more faithfully into our mission.

And sometimes we change the plan. That’s not failure. That’s faithfulness, too.

The goal isn’t to defend every decision we’ve ever made. The goal is to remain faithful to God’s call.

Which means the church needs both courage and humility. Courage to persevere when the work is difficult. Humility to admit when we’ve misunderstood the call.

Maybe you’re in one of those seasons right now. Maybe the change you’re being asked to make feels enormous. Or maybe it feels ridiculously small.

Maybe it’s a new ministry. Maybe it’s a new way of worship. Maybe it’s a freshly painted hallway. Maybe it’s a bulletin that doesn’t require a magnifying glass. Maybe it’s a new way of welcoming people. Maybe it’s simply learning to stop saying, “We’ve always done it that way.”

Whatever the change, the questions are the same: Have we prayed? Have we listened? Have we discerned? Does this align with who we believe God is calling us to become?

If the answer is yes, then don’t abandon the work simply because the results aren’t immediate. Give it time. Give people time. Give relationships time. Give the Spirit room to work.

Noah didn’t know when the rain would come. He didn’t know exactly how the story would unfold. He knew only that he had heard the call. So he acted. And he kept at it.

Perhaps that’s the invitation for us, too. Know what God is calling us toward. Know why it matters. Keep listening. Don’t confuse discomfort with failure. Don’t confuse slow with unsuccessful.

And when we are convinced that we are moving faithfully toward the vision God has given us: Stay with it.

The sky may still be blue. The rain may not have started. Someone may still be complaining about the paint. But that doesn’t mean nothing is happening.

Sometimes faithfulness is simply what we do before we can see the storm.

“Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth! Do you not perceive it?” ~ Isaiah 43:18–19

There are some things a pastor can say on Sunday…And there are some things you probably shouldn’t say unless you want to watch half the congregation suddenly become very interested in the ceiling or the floor.

So, in the spirit of our Imagine series, I thought I’d say a few of the things that weren’t said on Sunday morning.

Isaiah says something rather startling: “Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old.”

That can sound almost disrespectful. After all, we are people who love our history. We love our traditions. We love the things that have shaped us. We remember the people who came before us, the ministries that mattered, the hymns that formed us, the programs that touched lives, the ways we have worshiped and served and been the church.

And we should. The Christian faith is not built on amnesia.

But there is a difference between remembering the past and living in the past. There is a difference between honoring what God has done and assuming that God is only allowed to work in the ways God has worked before.

Isaiah isn’t actually telling Israel to erase its history. He’s reminding them that God’s faithfulness in the past does not mean God’s future will look exactly like the past.

In fact, Isaiah says something even more provocative: “I am about to do a new thing.”

Not I did. Not I used to. Not remember that one time? But, I am about to do. Present tense. Future possibility. Holy anticipation. God is still moving. And if we’re not careful, we can become so busy protecting what God did yesterday that we miss what God is doing today.

Churches rarely decide one morning, “Today we are going to become stuck.” It usually happens gradually. We keep doing something because we’ve always done it. We resist changing something because someone might be upset. We preserve a structure because changing it feels complicated. We keep a program because it once worked. We defend a worship style because it feels familiar. We hesitate to rethink staffing because “we’ve never done it that way.” We continue offering things primarily for the people already here while wondering why we’re not reaching the people who aren’t.

Eventually, without ever intentionally choosing it, preservation becomes the operating system. The question quietly shifts from: “What is God calling us to become?” to: “How can we make sure nothing changes too much?”

Those are very different questions. One is driven by mission. The other is driven by fear. One looks toward the future. The other looks over its shoulder. One asks, “Who is God calling us to reach?” The other asks, “But what about us?”

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: a church can be incredibly faithful and still become stuck. We can love Jesus and resist change. We can love the church and resist the future. We can have wonderful memories and still need to make difficult decisions. We can be deeply committed and still be standing in the way of the very thing God wants to do next.

There is a particularly powerful force in church life known as “But we’ve always done it that way.” It is remarkably adaptable. It can defend almost anything. It has been used to protect buildings, programs, committees, worship styles, staffing structures, budgets, furniture, schedules, bulletin formats, leadership models, and probably at least one casserole recipe.

Let’s be honest: sometimes “we’ve always done it that way” is a perfectly legitimate reason to keep doing something. Sometimes tradition carries wisdom. Sometimes continuity matters. Sometimes the old way really is the best way.

But sometimes the phrase isn’t actually an argument. It’s just fear wearing a cardigan. If we allow fear to make every decision, we shouldn’t be surprised when our church stops moving.

Our denomination gives us a remarkably clear mission: to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.

At First Wayne Street, we believe we make disciples as we love God, love people, and serve together. We are becoming a church where everyone can belong, grow, serve, and encounter the transforming love of Jesus Christ. 

Those aren’t decorative statements. They’re not words to print on a banner, put on a website, or recite at a leadership retreat before returning to business as usual.  They’re supposed to function like a compass. They should help us decide what we do, what we stop doing, where we invest, who we reach, how we worship, how we organize ourselves, how we use our building, how we spend our money, how we staff, and how we serve our community.

If something helps us love God, love people, serve together, make disciples, pursue justice, practice peacemaking, create belonging, and become radically outwardly focused, then let’s find a way to do more of it. If something consistently prevents us from doing those things? Well, perhaps we need the courage to ask whether it still serves the mission. That’s not disrespectful. That’s discipleship.

Here’s where Isaiah gets really interesting. God says: “I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth! Do you not perceive it?”

Notice the question. God doesn’t ask, “Would you be comfortable with it?” God doesn’t ask, “Would everyone approve?” God doesn’t ask, “Have we ever done this before?” God asks: “Do you not perceive it?”

In other words: Can you see what I’m doing? Can you recognize where I’m moving? Can you imagine something beyond what you’ve already experienced?

That’s really the question behind the Imagine sermon series.

Can we imagine a church that is not simply trying to preserve itself, but is actively participating in God’s future? 

Can we imagine worship that speaks to people who aren’t already part of us? 

Can we imagine structures that make ministry easier rather than more complicated? 

Can we imagine staffing around mission rather than around historical expectations?

Can we imagine programs designed around the people we are called to reach rather than simply the people we already have?

Can we imagine using our building in ways that bless downtown Fort Wayne?

Can we imagine a church where a young adult, a young family, an empty nester, a recent retiree, a longtime member, a person who has never been inside a church, and someone who isn’t entirely sure what they believe can all discover that there is a place for them here?

Can we imagine it?

If we can, then perhaps we are beginning to perceive what God is doing.

Just to be clear: “new thing” does not mean “everything old is bad.” We don’t need to burn the hymnals. We don’t need to bulldoze the building. We don’t need to pretend the last 150 years didn’t happen. We don’t need to become something we’re not.

Our history is part of our gift. Our traditions have formed generations of disciples. Our stories matter. Our people matter. The saints who built this church deserve our gratitude.

But the best way to honor the people who built the church is not to freeze the church exactly as they left it. 

It’s to have the same kind of courage they had. They built something for their generation. Now we have been entrusted with building something faithful for ours.

That’s not betrayal. That’s stewardship.

This may be the hardest thing to admit. Sometimes the thing standing between a church and its future isn’t the culture. It isn’t the denomination. It isn’t the economy. It isn’t downtown. It isn’t the younger generation. It isn’t technology. It isn’t even the church down the street.

Sometimes the biggest roadblock is simply our unwillingness to let go of what has become familiar.

We can become experts at identifying everything that might go wrong. We can list every reason a new idea won’t work. We can explain why another church can do something but we can’t. We can predict who will be upset. We can remember the last time something didn’t work. We can tell stories about how much better things used to be.

Eventually, we can become so good at protecting ourselves from disappointment that we also protect ourselves from possibility. That is not faith. Faith doesn’t mean we know exactly what will happen. Faith means we trust the One who does.

Maybe that’s one of the most important invitations of Imagine. Not to become trendier. Not to chase numbers. Not to change things simply because they’re old. Not to abandon who we are.

But to get out of God’s way. To loosen our grip. To stop assuming that our preferences are the same thing as God’s will. To stop confusing familiarity with faithfulness. To stop measuring every possibility by whether it makes us comfortable. To stop asking, “What will we lose?” long enough to ask, “Who might we reach?” To stop asking, “What will people think?” long enough to ask, “What is God doing?”

And maybe to have enough holy imagination to believe that the best days of this church aren’t necessarily behind us. Maybe they are ahead of us.

Isaiah continues: “I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” That’s the promise. God doesn’t simply tell us to go find our own way. God promises to make a way.

There will be uncertainty. There will be hard conversations. There will be things we have to release. There will be decisions that make some people uncomfortable. There will be moments when we wonder whether we’re getting it right. There will be things that don’t work. There will be experiments. There will be learning. There will be laughter. There will probably be a few strongly worded emails.

That’s church.

But there will also be grace. There will be new people. There will be new disciples. There will be new friendships. There will be new ministries. There will be new ways of worshiping. There will be new ways of serving. There will be people in downtown Fort Wayne who discover that the church isn’t just a building they pass on their way somewhere else. There will be people who encounter Jesus here. There will be lives transformed.

Perhaps, years from now, someone will look back at this moment and say: “I’m so glad they had the courage to move forward.”

That’s the church I want us to be. Not a church that forgets its past. Not a church that despises tradition. Not a church that changes for the sake of change. But a church that loves the past enough to learn from it, loves the present enough to engage it, and loves the future enough to prepare for it.

A church willing to say: We remember what God has done. We are grateful for what God has given us. But we are not finished. Because God isn’t finished.

So let’s imagine. Let’s listen. Let’s loosen our grip. Let’s take some holy risks. Let’s have difficult conversations when difficult conversations are necessary. Let’s celebrate what deserves celebrating. Let’s release what needs releasing. Let’s try some things. Let’s fail at some things. Let’s learn. Let’s laugh. Let’s dream. Let’s pray.

And above all, let’s pay attention. Because somewhere ahead of us, God is already doing a new thing. Hopefully our hearts, our hands, our eyes, and our minds will be open so we can perceive it. 

I have a prayer…

I pray that Christian nationalists, and those American evangelicals who have come to identify Christianity so closely with nationalism, power, political victory, and cultural control, might someday meet Jesus.

Not the Jesus of campaign slogans. Not the Jesus of the culture war. Not the Jesus who seems perpetually angry about who is using which bathroom, who is marrying whom, or who is crossing which border.

I mean Jesus. The Jesus we actually encounter in Scripture. The Jesus who sounds remarkably like Micah 6:8: do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.

The Jesus who, when given an opportunity to explain what life in the kingdom of God looks like, preached a Sermon on the Mount filled with blessings for the poor, the grieving, the meek, the merciful, the peacemakers, and those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

The Jesus who said, “Love your enemies.” The Jesus who told his followers to turn the other cheek. The Jesus who warned us about our own hypocrisy before giving us permission to diagnose everyone else’s. The Jesus who touched people respectable religion had pushed to the margins. The Jesus who ate with sinners. The Jesus who welcomed children. The Jesus who wept. The Jesus who forgave.

The Jesus who repeatedly seemed far more interested in how human beings treated one another than in whether they had successfully established themselves as the righteous people on the right side of every cultural argument.

And then there is Matthew 25. It is difficult to read Jesus’ words about the final judgment and come away thinking that the central question is, “Did you win the culture war?”

Jesus says the question is whether we fed the hungry. Gave drink to the thirsty. Welcomed the stranger. Clothed the naked. Cared for the sick. Visited the prisoner.

And then comes the part that should make all of us uncomfortable: “Whatever you did for one of the least of these, you did it to me.”

That sounds an awful lot like Jesus.

And here’s the awkward thing: Jesus never once mentions abortion in the canonical Gospels. He never once addresses homosexuality or same-sex relationships.

That doesn’t mean those issues are unimportant. Christians can, and do, reason from broader biblical, theological, ethical, and pastoral principles about them.

But Jesus himself spends an extraordinary amount of time talking about love, mercy, forgiveness, humility, justice, reconciliation, generosity, peacemaking, and how we treat people who are vulnerable or excluded.

Maybe we should notice that. Maybe we should be just a little suspicious when a version of Christianity becomes consumed by issues Jesus never explicitly addressed while becoming strangely quiet about the things he talked about constantly.

Maybe this is why I find myself praying for something much more radical than another political victory.

I pray for revival. But not the kind of revival that simply produces more people who vote the right way. Not the kind that fills stadiums, sells books, builds political coalitions, or gives Christians greater cultural influence.

I want a revival that actually makes us more like Jesus. A revival that makes us less obsessed with power and more committed to service. Less interested in domination and more interested in reconciliation. Less concerned with winning and more concerned with loving. Less eager to identify enemies and more willing to see the image of God in people we don’t understand. Less interested in being right and more committed to being Christlike.

That is why I struggle with the increasingly militarized language surrounding some expressions of American Christianity.

Our Secretary of Defense has spoken openly about restoring a “warrior ethos,” emphasizing lethality, deterrence, readiness, and the capacity to defeat enemies. Those are understandable concepts within the vocation of national defense.

Maybe I’m the odd man out, but I don’t want my theology to be shaped by the Pentagon.

I want my theology to be shaped by Jesus.

Jesus did not say, “Blessed are the powerful.” He said, “Blessed are the peacemakers.”

He did not say, “Blessed are those who dominate their enemies.” He said, “Love your enemies.”

He did not say, “Blessed are those who protect their status.” He repeatedly moved toward people who had none.

Jesus’ kingdom is not built through conquest. It is built through love.

That doesn’t mean Jesus was soft. He wasn’t. Jesus could be fierce. He confronted hypocrisy. He challenged religious authorities. He overturned tables. He spoke uncomfortable truths. He demanded radical obedience. But his power was cruciform.

He conquered not by killing his enemies, but by refusing to become like them. That is the kind of spiritual awakening I want.

Not a Christianity that becomes more powerful. A Christianity that becomes more faithful.

Not Christians who look more like America. Christians who look more like Jesus.

Maybe that kind of revival would change more than an election ever could. Maybe it would change the way we welcome immigrants. The way we care for the poor. The way we speak about people we disagree with. The way we respond to prisoners. The way we treat LGBTQ people. The way we care for our neighbors. The way we talk about race. The way we use wealth. The way we wield authority. The way we understand patriotism. The way we practice religion. The way we treat our enemies. The way we understand what it means to be a Christian.

And perhaps, if we experienced that kind of transformation, I could finally stop feeling like I need to introduce myself by saying: “I’m not that kind of Christian.”

I don’t want to spend the rest of my life explaining what Christianity isn’t. I want to be part of a Christianity so recognizably shaped by Jesus that people don’t have to ask.

A Christianity that does justice. Loves mercy. Walks humbly. Feeds the hungry. Welcomes the stranger. Visits the prisoner. Makes peace. Loves its enemies. Forgives extravagantly. Serves sacrificially. And follows Jesus, not because doing so will give us power over the world, but because Jesus showed us what the kingdom of God looks like.

So yes, I have a prayer. A rather audacious one.

I pray that Christian nationalists might meet Jesus. I pray that American evangelicals might meet Jesus. And, if I’m being completely honest, I pray that progressive Christians might meet Jesus too.

Because perhaps the deepest spiritual awakening we need isn’t one more battle for control. Maybe it is the rediscovery of the person at the center of our faith…Jesus.

Not the Jesus we have constructed to serve our politics. Not the Jesus we have recruited to bless our tribe. Not the Jesus we have enlisted in our cultural battles…Jesus.

The one who calls us to love God. Love our neighbor. Love our enemies. Do justice. Love mercy. Walk humbly. And become, in every possible way, more like him.

That is the revival I am praying for.

And maybe someday, if that prayer is answered, I won’t have to say, “I’m not that kind of Christian.”