The Single Biggest Problem in the American Church Today

The ambiguous and shallow criticisms of The Church is exhausting, unfair, and inaccurate.

You want to know what the number one problem in the American church is today? It is the person who confidently announces they know the number one problem in the American church today.

I’m tired of it. Truly.

The Church is not a machine to be diagnosed by instagram prophets.| It is a body. And that body is yes full of bruises, but also beating hearts.

Bodies, if you haven’t noticed, always have aches and pains.

The person who expects a perfect church might as well expect a perfect mirror… both will always reveal their own flaws.

No one has been given prophetic insight into the universal downfall of the Church in America. That way of thinking mistakes the very nature of New Testament prophecy.

In the Old Testament there were lots of prophets, but there was always The Prophet. The mouthpiece of God Himself. Under the old covenant, God’s prophet judged the people. Under the new covenant, it is completely reversed. It is the people of God who test the prophetic word.

This is why Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians 5 to test the prophecies. We prophesy in part. None of us sees the whole. We see fragments.

Here’s the point: when we criticize other churches, it is often not because they are deficient but because they are different.

Banning Liebscher is a great example of someone who manages this tension. He knows what God has given him. He knows his strengths and his limits. I remember chatting with him before a podcast recording and we had a conversation about eschatology and he said something to the extent of, “I let so and so handle that.”

And the same goes for churches. Some write the songs that shake the nations. Some labor in prayer for revival. Some feed the hungry by the thousands. Some train better than others. Some teach better than others.

My church, New Vintage, and the LA Dream Center are both doing what God has gifted them to do. And here is the paradox: I am inspired by the Dream Center, yet I not trying to imitate them. I can learn from Matthew Barnett without trying to become Matthew Barnett.

Stop comparing your church to someone else’s.

Stop watching “church online”. It’s an oxymoron. Get up on Sunday and go worship with actual people.

So, lets MAKE LOCAL CHURCHES GREAT AGAIN.

THAT IS ALL.

GOD BLESS.

- Austin