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[I originally thought I would pop off a blog about this topic.  I soon realized that in order to do the topic properly, I needed more space so I have decided to break this into two parts.  I do consider this a conversation so please contact me via WalkofFaith at twitter or comment here.]

“Hey John, I’d like to start a small group can you put me on the list?”  ”Sure!  Just get me a picture and let me know what day and time and I’ll get you setup.”  How many of us have had this conversation or know someone who has had this conversation?  The amazing part is: it really is that easy to get a portion of the church assigned to be under you.  That’s great for you, at least you might think so.  But bad for the church and when it’s bad for the church, it’s bad for you.

If you have already read my last post on the Major Leadership Problems we have in the church, then you probably think you know where I am going with this, and in a way you would be right: there is very little accountability that occurs between the leadership of the church and the small group leaders.

But that is not the real problem.  The church is failing.  Now I think it is important to say here that I have a deep love for the Church and I am pointing out that it is failing because unless we acknowledge the elephant in the room we will never do anything about it.

We know it’s failing because we can see that we are not a people set apart from the world.  As the Church, we have the same divorce rates as the national average, 70% of our children are leaving the faith by the second year in college and 34% of those are not coming back by the age of 30,  that means that if you have 4 children statistically 3 of them will walk away from the faith for up to 10 years of their life.  And we don’t believe that children are a Gift from God (see Psalm 127).

How do I know children aren’t valued as gifts from God?  For the last 10 years Christian birth rates have been below the world average, which right now is 2.61%.  Would you go into battle with 2.61 arrows?  Probably not.

What does this tell us? Well it tells a few things.

1)  The fact that we have the same divorce rates, and some studies have shown that Christians have higher than normal divorce rates, as the secular population, tells us that they do not value God’s word and seek to obey His commandments, like where it says several times: do not divorce.  But it also tells us that people don’t have a biblical perspective on marriage but a worldly perspective.

2) The fact that 70%-88%, depending on which study you look at, of our children are walking away from the faith by their second year of college, tells us that it was never their faith, it was their parent’s faith.  As soon as they came out from under the wings of their parents, their faith in God was tested and found wanting.

3)  The fact that many Chrisitan parents complain about their children and view them as a burden, that they believe God has left it up to them to decide how many gifts He will give them, tells us that many Christians do not have a biblical perspective on children.

But the question is: Am I reading into things or are there studies to support these deductions?  The sad truth gives us a picture very bleak, correctable, but potentially disheartening if we didn’t have faith in our Redeemer.  Based on studies done by Nehemiah Institute:

In 2001 the Nehemiah Institute published a report stating the following:  If the PEERS trends of high school youth from Christian homes continues at the same rate of decline (those in Traditional Christian schools or in public schools), we would have to officially label the ‘next generation of Christian adults’ as “Committed Secular Humanists with leanings toward Socialism” between the years 2014 and 2018.

Please note, this was not a forecast or a ‘prophecy’ but simply stating that if the same rate of decline continued then the PEERS scores of these two groups would fall below -10.0 on average by 2014 for youth in public schools and by 2018 in Traditional Christian schools, which would give strong support for their views being firmly grounded in basic tenets of Humanism and/or Socialism.

Now, seven years later, with the exact same test, and the addition of several thousand test results, the following calculation can be made:  Assuming the same rate of decline in test scores of the past seven years, students from ‘traditional Christian schools’ would score on average at -9.9 in the year 2016. Youth from Christian homes and attending public schools would score -24.5 in the same year.

These results, remarkably close to the view seen in 2001, would mean that the students had intentionally rejected the basic tenets of Biblical Theism in favor of basic tenets of Humanism/Socialism. In short, it means that the secularization of our culture has more successfully captured the hearts and minds of our youth than has the efforts of the Christian home, the church or even the traditional Christian school. With 90% of youth from Christian homes being among this group, it seems clear that the Christian Church could be in for a major collapse in the first half of the 21st century, based on historical orthodox views of Christianity.

The way the church has been trying to take care of the flock isn’t working.

Would a shepherd let anyone who volunteered take care of his flock?  I don’t think so.  Yet leaders frequently, probably without realizing it, abdicate their responsibilities to people who have no business teaching or leading other Christians.  Even if they do have a biblical perspective, there is rarely any accountability.

Why do I think that small groups have caused the failing of the church?  In truth, they haven’t.  Small groups are just one of many bandwagons that the church has jumped onto in an effort to assuage and comfort their flock.  Church leaders, because they desperately love their flock, follow like lemmings the trends that the mega churches set.  Today it is small groups but it is already transitioning to other things like para-church ministries, which have no accountability to any church.

One of the major problems for many churches has been an incorrect interpretation of the Word.  Many people, myself included at one point, believe that because of what happened in Acts, where God “added to their number daily”, that we should constantly strive to “add to our numbers.”  But if we look more closely at how God often works, we see that God does not need numbers but dedication and reliance upon Him.

There is a wonderful story of how God continued to cause Gideon’s army to be smaller and smaller until the original 22,000 men became 300 and it was with these men that God defeated the Midianites.  Likewise, Jesus used 12 disciples to establish His church and frequently said things which caused those that followed Him to leave. Jesus did not structure His ministry to build the largest possible following, but instead sought to cause those who were chosen to believe that He was the Messiah and then obey His commandments.

What’s the point?  God does not call us to “add to our numbers”.  The problem is that the church leaders have been too eager to build a large church and then keep it large.  There is no physical way for two pastors to be able to stay in touch with 500 to 3000 people.  But God doesn’t ask us as Christians to stay in touch with each other,  God calls us to make disciples of the nations (Matthew 28:19).  The church is failing to make disciples of Christ.  Disciples obey and seek to emulate their master.

There is another problem, which I mentioned earlier: children are walking away from the faith in unprecendented numbers and while 75% of those who grow up in Christian families end up returning to their faith by age 30, 75% also walk away from the faith for a small or large portion of their twenties.  This is not good.  When they are in continuously sinful disobedience to God, they open themselves up to many sins, sins that could dramatically change the rest of their lives for the worse.  They could have a sinful moment they will regret for the rest of their lives.

I was talking with a good friend who is providing pre-marital counseling for 20 married couples and only 1 out of the 20 couples are coming from families that aren’t torn apart!  The truth is that families are falling apart in the church.  So far the church’s answer to the problem has been, “Come to our small groups.  The men meet on Tuesdays, the women on Thursdays, married couples meet Wednesday nights (if you have kids you’ll have to get a babysitter), and of course your teenagers are welcome to come on Wednesday nights also.  The young ones can come on Sunday and we have a special room for them so they get relevant instruction and you aren’t bothered by them.”  The family is falling apart and the typical church rips them apart even further!

The bottom line: Meeting once a week does not build a disciple.  Meeting once a week with 1000 other people and then once a week with someone completely different(read: small group leader) does not build a disciple either.  Look at Jesus and His disciples.  They spent day and night with Him and asked Him questions and sought his advice.  When He overheard something that was misguided He would take the time to instruct them on how the Kingdom of God worked.

So am I suggesting that pastors or elders should only have 12-15 disciples and spend day and night with them? No.

I’ll get into what I think the answer is in Part Two.

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