Who Needs Persecution When We Can Easily Implode Without It?

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You may choose your weapon: a machine gun or a bazooka. You can also choose your foe: A gargantuan and angry grizzly bear or a swarm of killer bees, both feel threatened by you. What choice do you make?

Even though the fierce bear may be terrifying in appearance and a single bee may seem small and insignificant (sans allergies), a swarm of bees is something you cannot take out with such weapons. The choice should be an easy one. [Note: no animals were hurt or injured in the writing of this blog post. This is only an analogy to make a point about vulnerability. I do not need any comments from animal rights groups because I would never shoot a bear with either a bazooka or an automatic weapon, and if I shot a swarm of bees with either I would not likely hurt or injure a single bee]

There are two contrasting movements in the US church. One is preparing the church and the other is setting her up for a huge crash. The micro church movement, like the Chinese churches mentioned in a previous post, is preparation. The mega church movement, like the Russian Church (also mentioned), is painting a huge target on the church.

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You may be tempted to think I am one of those fringe conspiracy theorists, and who knows, maybe I am. But I do not think persecution is so far off. What would it take? Not much. I believe the pieces are already on the board and being pushed into play. Truthfully, however, I think most churches can be taken out before any persecution ever occurs.

The church in the West is far more vulnerable than most care to admit. With the rapid rise of the mega church we have been watching the church become more centralized and dependent. In fact with the closure of so many smaller churches and their people being assimilated into the larger ones, we have actually concentrated all our people, resources and ideas into a few large targets rather than many smaller independent ones. We have also seen that the church is more dependent upon a single charismatic leader. Take him/her out (or compromise this person) and the whole church suffers greatly.

The mega church is far more fragile than it appears because it is expensive to run and dependent upon a large collection. This is not usually discussed but recently became public when a single weekend collection from the largest church in America (Lakewood Church in Houston) was stolen and the amount of the theft indicated that the church takes in upwards of $32 million dollars annually. That is a lot of cash and raises loads of legitimate questions. Another mega church pastor is in hot water for using church funds to manipulate the NY Times bestseller list so that his book can be claimed as a bestseller. Another is being scrutinized for having an excessive mansion built for him and his family. The pastor of the world’s largest evangelical church in the world barely got out of serving time in prison for being party to embezzling 12 million dollars, so I would say that our dependence upon mammon and a single leader is a serious vulnerability. These are only stories coming out in the last six months. We do not need persecution to take us out of play, we seem to fall victim to simple temptation and dependence upon our consumerism. If we cannot resist simple temptations than persecution is really not even needed.

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The mega church in America appears to be successful, well financed and solid. It is not. We are beginning to see how weak it is as certain mega church leaders are being taken out. Robert Schuller was removed and the Crystal Cathedral is all but gone and the hour of power has passed to the past and is now a blip in history. David Yongi Cho is in prison and the church in Seoul will finally have to admit what it has kept secret for a long time…it is not as large as it once was and is unable to draw young people. Chuck Smith passed away and we will see how well Calvary Chapel does in his absence. Will Mars Hill survive the current exposure of troubles that Mark Driscoll is swimming in? How do you replace Rick Warren or Bill Hybels in the churches they founded?

The problem is not these leaders, but the Christian celebrity culture that created them and is dependent upon them. You might say that the Christian culture is set up to fail.

That is why some of us have been hard at work planting seeds of change and preparation. We must learn from the past. Will we be more like the Russian church that had all its assets centralized into an easy target or like the Chinese church, which was decentralized and not dependent upon buildings, budgets and big shots? Right now the answer is both. There is a little time left and our churches can take steps to be better prepared, but there is not as much time as we once thought.