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| They love the church, but hate Jesus! We’ve heard it often: People love Jesus but they hate the church. College chaplains will tell you this all the time. Dan Kimball turned the expression into the title of an Emergent Church/Emergent Generation book last year: They Love Jesus but Hate the Church: Insights into the Emergent Generation. The book was born out of conversations Kimball and company had with young adults in coffeehouses about Jesus, Christianity and the church. Kimball asked them two word-association questions: “What do you think of when you hear the name ‘Jesus’?” and “What do you think of when you hear the word ‘Christian’?” Kimball’s conclusion is that this generation loves Jesus but hates the church. He says that there are six primary reasons for this: • The church is an organized religion with a political agenda. • The church is judgmental and negative. • The church is dominated by males and oppresses females. • The church is homophobic. • The church arrogantly claims all other religions are wrong. • The church is full of fundamentalists who take the whole Bible literally. It’s not always reasonable to argue that the opposite of what one opposes is the position that is embraced or affirmed. That is, I don’t know if these same kids who don’t like “organized religion” would prefer instead a church that is unorganized with no political agenda, that is tolerant and positive, that is dominated by females and oppresses males, that is “open and affirming,” that believes that all religious roads lead to the same God, or that is full of non-fundamentalists who don’t take the Bible seriously. Wait! There is a church like that, some say. The Emergent Church! Well, that’s not fair at all. Because the Emergent Church does not oppress males as far as I know, and it’s not a church, not in any organized sense of the word. Truth is — as I see it — the EGers and ECers are exactly right. I mean that sincerely. This generation does seem to love Jesus. Jesus is pretty cool, they say, keeping in mind that this is the same generation that, according to one online reviewer of Kimball’s books, loves The Da Vinci Code, The Rozabal Line, Holy Blood/Holy Grail, The Jesus Papers, and so on. They love Dan Brown but hate Dan Kimball, said another reviewer. The ECers and their love of “vintage” Christianity, as Kimball puts it, are doing a lot to bring a fresh wind of the Spirit across the land. It’s all good. But, it’s an “emergent” church, and as a movement, it has a shelf life of about 10 years, 20 years max, and by then what “emerged” will have been assimilated and the themes by which it was noted will be picked up by the next emerging generation and called something else. That’s not bad; that’s the nature of dynamic change and cultural shifts. I know. Ask me where I was in the ’70s. Me and my “Jesus Freaks,” were blooming long before the current crop of Jesus freaks were even thought of. We were the “Jesus Generation,” or “Jesus People,” “Flower children.” Flower power, baby. Groovy. So it’s good. I mean it. But there’s just so much interesting stuff here. One nuance to be chewed on, is that when a Christian EGer says she “hates the church,” you have to ask if that’s not some sort of ecclesiastical self-loathing. She is the church. She is of that which she hates. Yes, I know she means that she hates the institution … but it gets real soupy fast, because behind the aluminum doors of that mobile home Church of the Apostolic Blessing, or behind the stained glass of First Self-Righteous Blue-Blood Church, and so on, are some of God’s people — like ’em or not. That EGer — she’s them, she’s us, she’s it. The church. The bigger issue, I think, is not that the EGers love Jesus but hate the church. It’s rather that in the much larger expression of the church beyond the EC movement, the problem is precisely the opposite: They love the church, but hate Jesus. There are about 300,000 churches in the United States These people are not ECers. They love the church — the institutional church. Even the E and C crowd will at least go to church two times a year. They love the music, the traditions, the poinsettias at Christmas, the lilies at Easter, the choir anthems, and might even tolerate the worship band and let the pastor have a “contemporary” service, whatever the heck that is. And they love that some of the money they put in the offering plate helps to support the soup kitchen downtown or a homeless shelter, and they like to help the youth group go on that mission trip to the Appalachian Mountains or to a village in Mexico, and they love seeing their friends in church and catching up on what’s going on in the community, and they love serving on a committee or two if they can fit it in, and they love the liturgical seasons, with the colors and banners, and they love to see the kids come up front to hear a story from the pastor, and they love their pastor, too. Sure she’s not perfect, and in fact, they’d prefer she was a he, but hey, change is in the air, and that’s okay. They love the church. They love their church. They hate Jesus. They wouldn’t say that, of course. But let’s face it: What Jesus asks of those who follow him, it’s really just too much. Jesus is way over the edge. Jesus sets people’s teeth on edge. Jesus sends us out with a bag and a staff and a cross. Jesus says that there’s no point in starting down the road with him unless we’re willing to “deny” ourselves. So, one would hope we who love the church will come to love Jesus, too. And our children and grandchildren, the Emergent Generation, will come to love the church as well as Jesus, The world needs Christians who not only love Jesus and the mission he’s called us to, but love the church, the body through which the mission can be actualized. To say we “hate the church” is the same as the head of the body saying, “I hate the body. I hate you arms, hands, legs and feet.” For more, see 1 Corinthians 12. Let’s love Jesus. Let’s love the church. Jesus does.
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