I was disappointed reading What If Jesus Was Serious About The Church by Skye Jethani. Skye has some great observations about the shortcomings of the institutional church but there is no sense of how change would be implemented or any mention of an alternate way of meeting or doing life together. A quote from the back cover reads, “Rather than an event, a building, or an institution, the New Testament calls the church to be a community living in communion with God and one another for the sake of the world.” It’s unfortunate that the Skye never elaborates on how that can be achieved. The excerpt below is about Vampire Churches and gives a sense of observations with no solutions. I do not recommend this book.
I find Jesus’ purpose for church leadership in Ephesians 4 to be beautiful and inspiring. It means pastors and Christian leaders are to help us grow into maturity so that our communion with God through Christ can transform our work, our relationships, our communities, and ultimately our world into one in which God “is over all and through all and in all” (Eph. 4:6). This dramatically changes how we measure a church leader’s work. Ultimately it’s not about how many people attend to hear a sermon on Sunday, or even how many volunteers are engaged in the church’s programs. Instead, it’s about whether people are deepening their life with God and manifesting Christ’s kingdom everywhere they go Monday through Saturday.
Unfortunately, many churches don’t carry this vision, and too many leaders narrowly define what it means to “equip the saints for works of ministry.” That’s why the vocations of God’s people in business, government, the arts, education, the home, the social sector, and the media are so rarely acknowledged or affirmed within the church and why few non-clergy vocations are ever celebrated as genuine callings from God. Rather than empowering people to manifest God’s reign in the world, too many churches seek to use people to advance the goals of the institutional church. Success is assumed when a person is plugged into the apparatus of the church institution rather than released to serve God’s people and their neighbors out in the world.
I call such ministries “vampire churches” because they suck the life out of you. They view people as resources to be used rather than as God’s saints to be empowered, and the wide acceptance of this posture explains, in part, why so many committed Christians are becoming church dropouts-or what sociologist Josh Packard calls “church refugees.” In his book by that title, coauthored with Ashleigh Hope, Packard interviewed hundreds of Christians who’ve given up on institutional churches. Remarkably, he discovered those most likely to leave the church were also the most spiritually mature and often had years of deep church involvement.
A recurring theme in Packard and Hope’s interviews is how dehumanizing the church structures can become. Sophia, a professor, said, “I felt that really all I was doing was functioning as part of a machine, doing what the machine likes, which is money and head count…Nobody was mean to me; nobody did anything. It was like once you became a member, it was all about what you could do for the church to keep the church going.” Another church refugee put it more bluntly “The machine just eats you up.”
So, how do you know if you’re part of a vampire church? Here’s what I do-engage and get to know the people at the center of the community, those who are giving the most time to the institution- the pastors, elders, staff members, and volunteer leaders. What fruit do their lives display? If you generally find healthy women and men of peace, harmony, gentleness, and joy, it’s usually a good sign. If those at the center are consistently burned out, exhausted, anxious, bitter, and unable to keep their core relationships healthy-be careful. Remember, the reason vampires want to suck the life out of you is because it’s already been sucked out of them.
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