Rebranding the Church

Rebranding the Church

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What Do You Think of When You Hear the Word Church?

What do you think of when you hear the word basketball? What do you think of when you hear the word Philadelphia? What do you think of when you hear New York? BMW? North Pole?

What do you think of when you hear the word church? Many today think of the church as full of hypocritical, fake, phony, self-righteous, out-of-touch, unloving, judgmental, absent, and selfish people. Even for those who reject Jesus, the church should still be recognized for some basic things that could garner respect in most settings: love, generosity, philanthropy, patience, and a basic sense of justice. The church should be full of kind, empathetic, nurturing, responsible, responsive, and sacrificial people. However, sadly, I think the world has some legitimate problems with us of because of weeds we’ve been sowing. As the church of Jesus Christ, we have sown much of the former rather than the latter. I’m not saying that the latter characteristics don’t exist; I am saying that the negative ones seem to be predominant in the eyes of a non-Christian world.

Problems in the church make headlines every week: Christian nationalism, the foibles of prosperity-gospel preachers, and sex scandals. Add to this the fact that so many Christians define themselves by what they are against rather than what they are for and it is clear the church has a public relations problem. Our brand is calculated by our failures rather than our successes. When you say you are a Christian, people will want you to prove it. Christians are seen as wholesale hypocrites.

Even in the black community, where the church has historically been held in high regard, things are looking grim. For many of us African Americans, Christianity is viewed as the religion of our oppressors. Teachings like “Love your enemies” and passages on slavery are believed to be man-made laws to get black people to become docile slaves of our white so-called superiors. A recent Pew Research Center article called “Faith Among Black Americans” shows that millennials and Gen Zs aren’t monolithic when it comes to faith, religion, and spirituality. One of the most interesting facts is that both groups are less connected to the church than past generations, particularly predominantly black churches:

Protestantism has long dominated the Black American religious landscape, and still does. The survey shows that two-thirds of Black Americans (66%) are Protestant, 6% are Catholic and 3% identify with other Christian faiths—mostly Jehovah’s Witnesses. Another 3% belong to non-Christian faiths, the most common of which is Islam.

But about one-in-five Black Americans (21%) are not affiliated with any religion and instead identify as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular,” and this phenomenon is increasing by generation: Roughly three-in-ten Black Gen Zers (28%) and Millennials (33%) in the survey are religiously unaffiliated, compared with just 11% of Baby Boomers and 5% of those in the Silent Generation.

Those stats paint a picture of new generations departing the church, but there is a remnant that God is raising up to represent the reign of Jesus effectively on the planet. The gospel is invincible. The stats do not have the last word; however, they should light a fire under followers of Jesus to help the church recover its passion for true discipleship and a more Christlike brand identity.

Today, when seeking to share the good news about Jesus, many times I have to wade through people’s hangups with the church before I can get to the gospel. Let me share an example of an issue I’ve encountered recently.

There is a group known as the Black Conscious Community that is always telling the church what we should be doing. They are a non-monolithic group of black people who value and even worship black identity but hate the church. The community is comprised of black atheists, Kemetics, Black Hebrew Israelites, Moors, Nation of Islam (NOI), and the Five Percent Nation of Islam. Each group is distinct, but they all have a lot in common: They believe that Christianity is the white man’s religion, black people are the original man on the planet, and the white man is the devil. This community spends more than half their time trying to debunk and discredit the church. Not all their issues with the church are well researched, but their criticisms have caused people to become disgusted with the church. Although there are many churches doing the Lord’s work, it is clear that’s not how the church is perceived by and large.

NOI’s Louis Farrakhan once challenged the church not to be bought by the government. Many Black nationalists today claim that churches having 501(c)(3) (nonprofit) status means those churches are subject to the government and cannot speak truth to power. Other people, such as the author of the 2016 article “Why Black Churches Are Doing a $11.5 Billion Disservice to the Black Community,” generally state that the black church is the wealthiest business in the black community and should be doing more for its community.

With our own internal issues as the universal church, false propaganda from various groups and individuals, and legitimate critiques leveled at the church from within and without, one thing is clear: The church no longer has a healthy reputation. And that poor reputation is keeping the church from effectively accomplishing its mission.

Recent Challenges

Over the past few years, there has been an inordinate number of idols that have raised their heads and caused the church to lose its footing. On several fronts, the church—in its various spheres, tribes, and philosophies—has become divided over politics and ethics. I wasn’t around in the 1960s, but many of my mentors say that now is the most politicized the church has been in decades. While there are many people who believe the church should stay completely out of politics, I am not one of them. I believe we are called to shine the light of Jesus Christ in every sector of society. The apostle Paul encouraged Titus to teach believers that honorable political engagement is a part of the church’s witness: “Remind them to submit to rulers and authorities, to obey, to be ready for every good work” (Titus 3:1). But that isn’t what we are discussing here. I am concerned about what I would call political idolatry. Both those committed to Christian nationalism and those committed to extreme liberation theology or progressive theologies tend to place too much stock in politics. Tim Keller states this best:

One of the signs that an object is functioning as an idol is that fear becomes one of the chief characteristics of life. When we center our lives on the idol, we become dependent on it. If our counterfeit god is threatened in any way, our response is complete panic. We do not say, “What a shame, how difficult,” but rather “This is the end! There’s no hope!”

Each side seems to equate the political success of a particular party as almost an ultimate goal of God. Each side sees the other as fundamentally opposed to God in their voting. I’m around people who believe that if you vote for Donald Trump, you are a sellout whose ultimate allegiance is not to God and you don’t care about morality or the welfare of women. Similarly, there are those who believe that if you vote Democrat, you don’t care about the unborn. Both are unfair sentiments. Each side has played a major role in affecting the world’s view of the church. Christian nationalism has viewed itself as helping the West remain Christian (as if it ever were). The question we need to address is this: What Christianity are we talking about? A form of cultural imperialism wrapped in Christian clothing? In other words, the Christian faith for nationalists requires patriotism to the United States. There’s nothing wrong with healthy patriotism. However, patriotism is not required of Jesus followers, and just because someone is a patriot doesn’t mean they are a believer.

Too many professing Christians treat faith and citizenship as a package deal, which lulls us toward nationalistic pseudo-Christianity and allows those with no credible Christian devotion to self-identify as evangelical. Partisan values now define American evangelicalism. Votes in a national election can weigh as heavily as a genuine confession of faith. Because the bar is so low, masqueraders are polled and licensed to speak representatively—marring the evangelical image.

On the more progressive end, there can be efforts to remove aspects of tradition that are good for society in general. For example, consider how gender ideology is currently bringing confusion into spaces where distinctions between male and female have long been clear. What’s concerning about progressive ideologies is that everything can, at times, seem up for grabs to be redefined or terminated, even helpful norms and definitions:

Conservative and progressive are notions that once existed independent of political parties. As we will see, there were conservatives and progressives in both parties. “Conservatism” refers to the desire to maintain the social status quo or return to a social norm from a previous generation. Progressivism is the assumption that society should be in a constant state of social evolution, arguing that societal change is evidence of a healthy community.