American Christianity is criticized so broadly and often that the phraseology is already cliché. This reinforces the sentiment that I have expressed here and elsewhere that our culture believes that at least Christendom — the culture of Christianity — and maybe Christianity itself has failed. We believe it so much so that even within the religion there is now a feverish attempt to wake a church that is assumed to be sleeping, or worse, apostate (or else, why are we declining?). Much of the objections of our culture have to do with church more than Jesus (see comments in “500 Pound Gorilla“) and so 22 million Americans claim some kind of belief in Jesus but no church attendance or loyalty to “organized religion” (see Barna’s Original at: http://blog.thetruthtree.com/?p=37.

This is the first post in a series called Following Jesus.

There is a 500-pound gorilla in the room. Can you feel him? He lurks in the shadows of our churches. When we look in our rear view mirrors on the way to work, he stares back. We can hear him give the occasional bored grunt from the next cubicle over at work. From sidewalks and grocery lines he glares accusingly, menacingly. He stubbornly takes up half the coach at home. You can almost feel his hot breath on your shoulder as you read this.

I was invited to speak at a conference of campus ministers a few days ago (see NCMS website). God had impressed upon me this deep sense that I should be there to listen. So I talked to the leaders...