Recently I ran into a gentleman that I attended church with a few years back. He was a leader in the church, as a matter of fact he had actually led the core group that started the church. Oh yeah, this was not a church plant it was a church split. By the way, about a year ago he left the church we attended together and started another church… not a church plant, another church split.

To my knowledge each “new” church was not the result of poor theology, worship style or even bad preaching. It was because the church leaders didn’t do things exactly the way he felt things should be done.

Needless to say our interactions since I became a part of NewSpring have always been strained. NewSpring, in his mind, would never be suitable because of worship style and the fact that people don’t wear ties to church (or some other external appearance rule). Here is the saddest part of all of this and why I had to write this… he never passes on an opportunity to either criticize my church (in a backhanded way) or our old church (in a very pointed and specific way… hoping I’ll affirm the comment). I’m afraid that he doesn’t see that many people who follow Jesus will not do so in a way that is to his liking. I’m afraid that he feels this so much that he can’t really see Jesus because of the rules and personal preferences he has set up in his life.

When we begin to mistaken following Jesus for attending a church that suits our needs we end up like the man CS Lewis writes about in Screwtape Letters:

Screwtape (lead demon talking to Wormword, demon in training) expands on developing church participation for evil ends:

“Surely you know that if a man can’t be cured of churchgoing, the next best thing is to send him all over the neighborhood looking for the church that ’suits’ him until he becomes a taster or connoisseur of churches.
The reasons are obvious. In the first place the parochial organization (the local church) should always be attacked, because, being a unity of place and not of likings, it brings people of different classes and psychology together in the kind of unity the Enemy (God) desires. In the second place, the search for a ’suitable’ church makes the man a critic where the Enemy (God) wants him to be a pupil.”

I am so grateful that Jesus came to make his disciples one (Ephesians 4:4-5). Church method and style is not really important. What is important is that the Jesus of the Bible is preached and offered as the only hope of this world. When a church becomes about our preferences it becomes no church at all and that is what the real enemy desires.