Unbuild

01 — The Room

You sat in the dark auditorium.

The spotlights came up and held on center stage. A smoke machine billowed on cue. Some self-effacing dude in snappy sneakers told a silly story about his kids. It landed exactly where the run-sheet said it would land. The band modulated as the synthesizer drove a deep, ethereal build. The appeal of everything had been focus-grouped and deemed the “way to relate.” You looked around at hundreds or perhaps thousands of people and realized you didn't really know any of them. None of them knew you.

If you never came back, the only thing that would register your absence is the giving report.

Then you went home and felt guilty for feeling nothing.

02 — The Drift

I'm over feeling guilty.

The modern church has become more like a Sunday matinee performance than a body of believers aligned around a shared purpose. For roughly three centuries, the church had no buildings, no budget, no branding, and no professional class. It had tables. It had homes. It had people who knew each other's names and real sins. It had no marketing department and no growth strategy. Everything began to change in Constantinople.

With imperial approval came architecture. We moved from the dining room to the basilica. The gathering became a “service.” The family became an “audience.” The priesthood became an authority with a proverbial stage and spotlight of its own. Everyone else got a seat and a sightline.

Every century since has added a layer. The pulpit, the pew, the clergy paycheck, the program calendar, the sermon as the point of the whole thing are all the byproducts. Then America, ever the country of entrepreneurs and innovators, added the last layer. We made it a market and fell prey to the seduction of production.

03 — The Market

Once church is a market, it needs a product.

It needs a brand, a funnel, a competitive position, a growth curve that goes up and to the right. The Sunday experience gets engineered like a theme park. There can be no dead air, no discomfort, nothing that would make a first-time guest feel anything other than “welcome” (whatever that means).

The number nobody puts up on the screens is that “growth” might not actually be new. It's transfer. Church A’s four hundred new faces are Church B’s four hundred quiet departures, and both leadership teams report a banner year. The church with the newest, latest, greatest whiz-bang draws the moths to a brighter light. We are cannibalizing one another’s congregations and calling it revival. The kingdom didn’t grow. The market share moved.

04 — The Numbers

Meanwhile, roughly 40 million American adults have walked out.

That's more people leaving in one generation than came in through the First Great Awakening, the Second Great Awakening, and the Billy Graham crusades combined.

Those aren't backsliders. Those are people longing for more than just something to do on a Sunday.

05 — THE EXPLANATION

This is not a case against the church.

All the disappointment aside, it is not an attack on pastors, either. Most of them are the walking wounded of the same machine. They were hired to shepherd and then measured on attendance, buildings, and cash. A man can be crushed by a system he is also paid to defend. Many are exhausted and know exactly what I'm describing, because they say it to their spouse in the car on the way home.

I'm not looking for a permission slip to quit church. Leaving is not the goal. The modern Western church didn't try and fail. It's simply that it succeeded at the wrong thing. It optimized for attendance instead of transformation. For comfort instead of conviction. For scale instead of depth.

It gave you an excellent hour and a small life. You cannot repair that by building better. You repair it by unbuilding.

06 — THE ASK

Take down what was added.

Unbuild the stage. Unbuild the brand. Unbuild the assumption that church is a place you drive to, a performance you watch, and a line item on a calendar. Take down what was added and see what's still standing underneath. I may well be overly optimistic, but I assess that what's underneath is the potential for quiet, humble, selfless community that enables conviction, conversion, and change.

I imagine people telling the truth about themselves in a room small enough for the truth to cost something. A table. A text. A handful of people who love you too much to let you stay the way you are.

Maybe it can best be found in completely random places, like a garage, a break room, a diner booth, a folding table in a backyard. It could start with total strangers who become, within a year, the closest thing to family you've had in a decade. Maybe they're the literal neighbors next door or down the road. No lights. No band. No appeal.

07 — THE WAY FORWARD

Disillusionment is a doorway, not an address.

My hope is that we someday reach a point where the reaction to such simple ideas leads to compelling action. Deconstruction that never rebuilds is just a slower, sadder way of leaving. Plenty of people have made a whole identity out of the wound. That's where I am, and it's not the reality I ever wanted. Grief is honest. Grief is also not a destination. The current church playbook seems like it could greatly benefit from the corporate axiom of doing “more with less.”

Taking inspiration from a cornfield converted to a baseball field in Iowa, maybe if you unbuild it — they will come.