If there’s one thing that we in the church do extremely well, it’s ignoring the greatest threats that face us. We roll massive Trojan horses inside our sanctuary walls while feverishly battling the mosquitoes that buzz around us. And once we wake up and grasp the true danger—if we ever do—the damage done is often incalculable.

We wring our cultural hands over the de-Christianizing of America. We conduct massive studies to ascertain why we’re not attracting Generation X, Y, or Z. We school church leaders in the art of politics so they can run for office against godless rivals. We curtail the heresy of boredom by injecting some razzle-dazzle into our worship. We fight and fret over the election of less-conservative denominational leaders.

We strive, in short, to master the art of swatting mosquitoes. And all the while, we remain blind to the fact that in pulpit after pulpit, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is as rare as Merry Christmas inside a synagogue.

We are a sinning church with a preaching problem.
It’s cross-denominational.
It’s rampant.
It’s damnable.
The blame for it is shared by preachers and hearers alike.
And there’s only one way to change it.

This begins in an elementary fashion: by recognizing and acknowledging not only the problem, but its catastrophic nature.