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A study released today by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life shows that the U.S. religious marketplace has become extremely volatile. The study found that “nearly half of American adults are leaving the faith tradition of their upbringing to either switch allegiances or abandon religious affiliation altogether”.

In August of last year, I gave an account of an experience on a busy street corner in Brooklyn, NY which in part addresses what I think is responsible for the aforementioned.

First published in August of 2007

Shouting as loud as her slender figure would allow was elderly woman I ran into on a busy street corner in Brooklyn, NY on Sunday.

“Turn from your wicked ways; you will burn in hell; get out of Babylon; stop committing adultery” …and she was going on and on, looking passersby directly in their eyes, while forcing Bible tracts in their hands.

The majority of those who passed in her direction, hurriedly did so in order to get away from this seemingly crazy woman.

When I saw the commotion, I turned to a friend who was with me and suggested that a smile, followed by the words “Jesus loves you with an everlasting love” would have sufficed (while of course offering the Bible tracts).

The reality is that most people are jaded when it comes to Christianity, case in point, the response of the passersby that afternoon. Many have come to know Christendom not as a place of solace, hope and faith but as the footstool for fire and brimstone messages, condemnation and intolerance.

I’ve found that many churches are hijacked by non-Biblical traditions, they are out of touch with their communities and blind or afraid to get their hands ‘dirty’ when it comes to the real issues that even their congregants face, save for those outside their walls.

My non-Christian friends say that they see nothing appealing about Christianity and they rightfully say so. To the post-modern mindset, really, what is appealing about sitting in a ‘sanctuary’ for two hours (more or less), “listening to a select few perform classical music, followed by sedentary singing and a long speech about a guy named God”?

Traditional methods are not working. I personally quite frankly see tradition to be synonymous with mediocrity; God does not tolerate mediocrity.

A repeating pattern I find when I visit churches that have a traditional format is that the congregation is often void of young adults while those even younger anxiously wait for when they reach the age where they can chose to not go to church.

In this age of iPhones, Harry Potter, MTV and MySpace, traditional Christianity needs a high dose of Reality, an even greater dose of Practicality and most importantly, Relevance if she serious about reaching the masses.

What she (Christianity) needs to do is roll up her sleeves, loosen her neck ties, replace her high heeled shoes with sneakers and revise not her message, but her methods of presenting the message of salvation to the masses.

To move forward, stereotypes of and by Christians need to be broken; the status-quo needs to be challenged to give up centuries old traditions and allow for open and honest dialog if the trends of recent are to change.

Until then, like that lady on the street corner in Brooklyn, people are just going to continue to hurriedly pass us by as if we are a bunch of crazy people, simply because they do not understand what a friend called “the thee, thou and thy” language that we speak.

I found the following great churches in my area to be at the forefront of keeping it simple…

• The Life Center Church- Camp Springs, MD
• New Hope Church- Fulton, MD
• Journey’s Crossing- Silver Spring, MD
• Find a church in your area that keeps it simple here

Akhenaton

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