This is the second in a series of lectures entitled “Where the Spirit Leads” delivered by Canon Arnold HollisHow do we do church better? An entire industry has been spawned to help churches do whatever it is that they decide to do.Consultants, parachurch ministries, denominational headquarters, and publishing houses prod and push the church towards whatever the current fad is.Just purify the church from bad doctrine and return the church to basics and many other activities … All this activity anaesthetises the pain of loss. It offers a way to stay busy. Church activity is a poor substitute for genuine spiritual vitality. A significant result is the burnout of clergy who struggle with the increase of expectations on the part of church members. They have no idea what should be in their leadership backpack. The portfolio of skills that once gave them standing in the community of faith no longer distinguishes them, ensures their effectiveness, or guarantees their continued leadership position.Fallout is not limited to clergy. Many church members feel they have been sold a bill of goods. There is no clear evidence that all this activity has produced more mature followers of Jesus.It has produced many tired, burned out members who find that their lives mimic the lives and dilemmas of people in the culture who don’t pay all the church dues. The faithful begin to wonder when their ticket is going to be punched, when they are going to experience the changed life they have been promised and expected to experience at Church.Refuge churchesMany congregations and church leaders, faced with the collapse of church culture, have responded by adopting a refugee mentality. This kind of ministry withdraws from the culture, and builds walls thicker and higher, trying to hang on to what they’ve got, hunkers down to wait for the storm to blow over and for things to return back to normal. Their answer is to live inside the bubble of a Christian subculture complete with its own entertainment industry [Mega Churches]. Evangelism becomes about churching the unchurched and not with connecting people to Jesus. It focuses on cleaning people up, changing their behaviour so Christians can be far more comfortable around them. Refuge churches are greatly pre-occupied in self-preoccupation. They deceive themselves into believing that they are a potent force.Other churches take a different route and sell out to the culture. They try to be “with it”. It involves the sellout of the gospel a capitulation and denial of the power of the gospel. All the effort to fix the church misses the point.You can build the perfect church, and they still won’t come. Over $1 million was spent recently on completely renovating St. James’ Parish Church as well as St. Michael’s - refurbished Bermuda cedar, new pews, air conditioning, new lights, new PA system plus many other new facilities [the most comfortable pew in town]. The age in which institutional religion holds appeal is passing away, and in a hurry. People outside the church think church is for church people, not for them.How do we deconvert from churchianity to Christianity? In Bermuda the invitation to become a Christian has become largely an invitation to convert to a church - join the church. [and it is extended to persons who have ties already with other churches]. The reduction of Christianity to club membership is clear. Interest in institutional religion is down, but interest in spirituality is up. There is a spiritual reawakening going on in Bermuda. It is not informed by Christian theology and it is not happening in church. People may be turned off the church but they are not turned off on Jesus. People in the non-church culture do not associate Jesus with the church.We need to recapture the mission of the church. Yahweh rescued the Hebrews so they could partner with him in his redemptive mission to the world. Jesus does not teach his disciples to pray, “Thy church come”, but “Thy kingdom come”. The kingdom is the destination.The beginning of a MovementJesus entered into a world very similar to our own. Institutional religion had collapsed. Jesus versus the Pharisees. St John’s Gospel, chapter 4, indicates how challenging it will be to re-orientate the Church in Bermuda and in the West. [Matt 23:2227-39; Lk 11:39-54; Jn 4:34-35] In Sychar, at Jacob’s well Jesus had a harder time getting through to the disciples than he did in achieving a radical transformation of the Samaritan woman. It is amazing what we don’t see when we aren’t looking. Later on at the home of Simon the Pharisee, Jesus posed the question to Simon: [Lk 7:36-44] “Do you see this woman?”. Religious people don’t see people; they see causes, behaviours, stereotypes, people other then themselves. They see “those people”. The reason Jesus had trouble getting his disciples to see what he was seeing was simply this: they had grown up in church. They had been trained to be concerned with internal issues keeping the law, etc, rather than keeping their eyes on the harvest. They believed that the messianic reign would only come on earth when enough people behaved properly, that is, observed the law. Jesus was a threat. They had to kill him.Religious people have always been a problem for God. Consider the question put to Jesus right before the Ascension. “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” [Acts 1:6] Keep in mind, this question was put to Jesus after Calvary, after Resurrection, after post-resurrection appearances like walking into rooms with closed doors and after he had served up buffet breakfast on the seashore of Galilee. After all that, Jesus gets a question like this, literally translated: “Now that we’ve got all this behind us, can we get back to the main point: when is the kingdom of Israel going to be restored?”The Holy Spirit also had to confront the Pharisees. Where? In the Church. [Acts 1:8] Under the guidance of the Holy Spirit the movement leapt out of Jerusalem, and swept across Judea and Samaria and Italy, and Asia and Europe. [Acts 10 &13] Were the Pharisees happy? No! The kingdom of God was expanding to places, to people, and to cultures that the Pharisees had never considered God to be interested in. Things were getting out of control, so the Apostles had a summit meeting in Jerusalem. The Pharisees like all religious fanatics were Monoculturalists do not embrace kingdom growth but insists that people conform to a cultural standard in order to gain admittance into the religious club. The bottom line question the early church faced was this: Will Gentiles need to become Jews first in order to receive the gospel? [Acts 15:5-6,13,19]