I found myself getting anxious and antsy sitting in church service over the years. Honestly, it had nothing to do with the teaching. It had to do with me. I'd become a fat, lazy Christian mentally.
Our church is large, with multiple campuses, wonderful worship production, a charismatic pastor with a PhD, and volunteers at every station. The modern Western church has largely replaced personal study with a sermon model that functions more like a TED talk with a prayer. The congregation listens. The pastor delivers. No questions.
And because the average attendee spends far more time consuming the pastor's sermon than reading the text themselves, the dependency drifts — from God's word to the teacher's framing or interpretation.
There's nothing wrong with the model or the teaching. The drift is our lack of reading and interpreting on our own. Speaking for myself.
So depending on which denomination of church you attended, you could get a completely different version of the same story. Or single verses used out of context. Not realizing they had nothing to do with the way they were presented and were totally misapplied.
Now, this probably won't get me many invites to speak at churches and I'm aware of that.
I believe in general they all — almost all — believe they are teaching what's right. But when you read one story in the Bible and it gets taught 10 different ways with 10 completely different applications, this can confuse the person listening.
Do I believe there are saved people in every single church where Jesus is taught as Lord and Savior? Absolutely.
Here's the analogy. God has each of us on a highway to our destination. Along the way we hear some well-meaning pastor teach something popular, or softer than intended, or flip the script and create damaging rules and regulations that the text did not intend. The person driving down the highway God has planned for their life takes an exit due to the teaching they've been hearing.
The exit can be just a detour and they can get back on the highway. Or some people end up getting lost on the back roads and never return to the highway — to use their original God-ordained, God-designed gifts and talents to help others and be God's hands and feet. Instead they end up hurt, lost, lonely, prideful, lustful, and the list goes on. Except now they're no longer not helping people — they are now becoming the one who unfortunately hurts people.
These people didn't start out with this intent. They had no idea that the teaching they were receiving could lead them to an off-ramp where it's easy to get lost. They didn't start out with the intent of being led off track about the Bible, but they ended up off track. It's not all on them — but we chose to take the exit because it was easier than reading the map ourselves.
Why does this happen? We don't do anything for ourselves. We are being spoon-fed and — even though it stings a bit — lazy.
This has been on my mind for a while. And like I said earlier, it isn't improving my odds of being invited to speak at many churches.
It seems as though when Martin Luther nailed his thesis to the door of the Catholic Church in the 1500s, one of his concerns was that the lay person had to go through the priest to get to God. He said according to the scripture we can go directly to God, and the Reformation began, and the Protestant church was born.
Here we are over 500 years later. Knowledge abounds on every phone, tablet, and computer. So much data and information that quite honestly we're overwhelmed and it makes sense that we don't want to dig in for the actual meaning. We just walk in tired to church looking for refreshing and truth, sit down in an auditorium, and — drumroll — let the pastor, no longer the priest, who's studied the Word more than we have, share their interpretation of what the scripture was saying. Like a cow in a field getting a bale of hay dropped off in front of us, we eat it up and walk back to the field taking no action, waiting for the next bale of hay.
That unfortunately is how the average Christian lives out their life.
And the truth is, with all of the overhead — buildings, staff, and other items — it costs the average church 75-90% of the giving they receive to operate. Leaving little to do what is commanded: to take care of orphans, widows, and support missions. I'm not knocking it. It's just reality.
I don't have all of the answers, nor do I claim to.
I built these 5 wells to run lean as far as keeping them open. They do not replace the local church. I love each pastor, lay person, and churchgoer. We just have to "trust in our teachings, but also verify on our own."
I've intentionally created 247 Fellowship just for that reason — not to replace the local church, but to run alongside it in places where Bible-teaching local churches aren't available, or people can't or won't attend.
I've been very careful of the teachings I've created and made sure they are all correct, going back to the original text and context. I've put up guardrails and use the Berean standard on all of them before they are released.
I've used someone else's voice, so I don't become the voice for you, but they all point to God. I did the same thing with worship — no images of people, only the words, so you have nothing to distract you. Only to get you into God's presence.
It's been two and a half years since God laid this on my heart and I was so antsy inside I started walking it out. All I've done is keep digging wells. I've done no advertising beyond putting a post periodically on Facebook and likely making some people uncomfortable — not my goal. In that timeframe, as of this writing, it's reached over 111 nations and over 100,000 people have either read or watched something I've created. That holds me to a higher standard, which is why I have the guardrails, the Ezra and Berean standards in place, and I take it very seriously. Incredible. I've had no part in the distribution. I build the wells and God creates the aqueducts.
It's not perfect. Nothing will be this side of heaven. But I'm doing my best.