AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY: “Three Dollars Worth of God, Please”

It is generally acknowledged that the church in America has some serious issues, is often in crisis mode, and that countless thousands of people are abandoning the Sunday-go-to-church model. It was George Barna’s observation years ago that the evangelical church is a mile long and an inch deep. I’m eighty years old now and have been around the block with evangelicalism and fundamentalism since 1964. I would like to offer some key reasons why the church in general is so shallow. By way of introduction to my observations, I would ask you to ponder three reflections by Tim Keller, Clyde Reid and Nicholas Van Hoffman.

In the course of a message on Romans 8, Tim Keller noted the following concerning religion in the USA:

This reviewer, his name was Desmond Ryan, writes for the Philadelphia Inquirer. It was just a very good thing he observed. He wrote this as an example of your typical American approach to God, which he thinks is mirrored in a movie like Cocoon. The average church-goer says. “I would like three dollars worth of God please, not enough to disturb me; not so much of him, that will change how I live; not so much that I have to love a person of another color or pick beets with immigrants or change the way in which I use my body. I want happiness, not transformation. I want the warmth of the womb, not the new birth, just a pound of the eternal in a brown paper bag, please.” And you see, he doesn’t know just how close he is to the reality of religious America. Christ is weighty, “glorious,” in the lives of true followers. You see, the whole idea of glory is weight. What Ryan is saying is a typical American doesn’t want God to be too weighty. I don’t want too much of him, just enough of something I can carry around. I would like him to be around when I need him. So when I’m in trouble, I can pray. I want enough of him to be available. So I believe that there is a chance of an afterlife, but I don’t want him to be glorious. I don’t want him to have weighty significance in my life. The work of the Spirit is always about bringing Jesus to be weighty in people’s lives.

(from by Tim Keller, “The Power of the Spirit: Rom. 8:12-17”)

In 1966, Clyde Reid correctly observed:

“Basically, we do not want anything to happen on Sunday morning that will upset our daily routine. We want to be ‘inspired,’ to come away with a warm feeling, but we do not want to be disturbed. So subconsciously we structure the service in order to assure safe, predictable, comfortable results.” (The God-Evaders).

Nicholas Van Hoffman exposed the cultural Mush God in 1978, The church in America claims many adherents, but why is it generally admitted that there little real growth, and a great deal of lethargy among those in the pews? Why do so few in church buildings actually follow Christ in their daily living? There are many contributing factors, of course, but I would like to point out three pivotal issues that must be addressed. In exploring these areas, I will be quoting from one resource (out of many) that covers the bases of concern: Dallas Willard’s The Great Omission, HarperCollins, 2006.

First, there is no ‘edge’ in what most churches teach about life in Christ. Willard notes that “so far as the visible Christian institutions of our day are concerned, discipleship clearly is optional . . . . Churches are filled with ‘undiscipled disciples’ as Jess Moody has called them. Of course there is in reality no such thing. Most problems in contemporary churches can be explained by the fact that members have never decided to follow Christ” (pp. 4-5). The tame Jesus that is portrayed in many churches can only result in nominalism and a continuation of the religious status quo. People want benefits from Christ without any commitment on their part to make him weighty in their lives.

Second, nominalism has been fostered and growth stifled by the structure of the traditional “worship service.” People can attend a church service and work through the steps of a church bulletin without any commitment at all to Christ or those sitting around them. But a totally different scenario occurred in the early church gatherings, as described in 1 Corinthians 14. It was an open, participatory meeting, where “each one of you has a song, a teaching, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation – let all things be done for building up” (v. 26). How could a person be in such a congregation without some level of commitment to share their portion of Christ with the others present?

As R.C. Sproul asserted, “in Protestant worship, for the most part, we sit and listen to a sermon” (“Church Life,” Now, That’s A Good Question! Tyndale 1996, p. 353). But in the early church there were no sermons given usually by the same person week after week. Instead, Jesus was expressed in a host of ways by all present. Worship services require no commitment to be present in the pew; commitment was built in to the very fabric of early church assemblies. As William Barclay observed: “the really notable thing about an early church service must have been that almost everyone came feeling that they had both the privilege and the obligation of contributing something to it.” The way we do church ends up being one mouth speaking to many ears. Why don’t we practice 1 Corinthians, where many voices bring portions of the feast to the Lord’s table? What reason do we have to believe that one person bringing a sermon every week is the mind of the Lord? If we say as disciples that we want to listen to the Son in all things, why do we functionally discard 1 Corinthians 14 as relevant to what we do?

Third, the Lord desired his ekklesia to be a counter-cultural display of his many-sided wisdom to a watching world and to the principalities and powers (Ephesians 3:10). As Willard put it. He was “forming a new kind of social unit never before seen on earth” (p. xii). Unfortunately, the history of what calls itself church has too often reflected worldly patterns contrary to Christ, which has resulted in the oppression of many people, especially women, “crusades took place, inquisitions were organized, Indians were enslaved, positions of great influence were desired, episcopal palaces, splendid cathedrals, and opulent seminaries were built, and much moral manipulation of conscience was engaged in” (Henri Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus, 2002, pp. 75-77).

Even Jesus was summoned to justify all types of worldly notions. As Hans Kung pointed out, “Jesus has often seemed to be ‘domesticated’ in the Churches, turned almost into the representative of the religio-political systems, justifying everything in its dogma, worship and canon law: the invisible head of a very clearly visible ecclesiastical machinery, the guarantor of whatever has come into existence by way of belief, morals and discipline. What an enormous amount he has been made to authorize and sanction in Church and society in the course of Christendom’s two thousand years! How Christian rulers and princes of the Church, Christian parties, classes, races have invoked him! For what odd ideas, laws, traditions, customs, measures he has had to take the blame! Against all varied attempts to domesticate him, therefore, it must be made clear: Jesus did not belong to the ecclesiastical and social establishment.” (Hans Kung, On Being A Christian, 1978, p. 177).

Many voices in years past have stated concern that so many churches were becoming like the world. Larger churches have become entertainment centers, and their worship services like attending a rock concert. The way churches are run resemble a large corporation rather than a spiritual organism. As Willard points out, “what the ‘church’ . . . really needs is not more people, more money, better buildings or programs, more education, or more prestige. Christ’s gathered people . . . has always been at its best when it had little or none of these” (p. xiv) .

“It is a tragic error,” Willard notes, “to think that Jesus was telling us, as he left, to start churches, as that is understood today . . . . But his aim for us is much greater than that. He wants us to establish ‘beachheads’ or bases of operation for the Kingdom of God wherever we are” (p, xiii).

Is it possible that we just need to revisit and reevaluate our whole concept of “church,” which is really better translated as ekklesia or congregation/assembly? In 1958, Elton Trueblood gave us a beautiful snapshot of the ethos of the early ekklesia. Have all the layers of human tradition led us to lose our way?

[Jesus] did not leave a book; He did not leave an army; He did not leave an organization, in the ordinary sense. What He left, instead, was a little redemptive fellowship made up of extremely common people whose total impact was miraculous . . . . It is hard for us to visualize what early Christianity was like. Certainly it was very different from the Christianity known to us today. There were no fine buildings . . . . There was no hierarchy; there were no theological seminaries; there were no Christian colleges; there were no Sunday Schools; there were no choirs. Only small groups of believers – small fellowships. In the beginning there wasn’t even a New Testament. The New Testament itself was not so much a cause of these fellowships as a result of them. Thus the first books of the New Testament were the letters written to the little fellowships partly because of their difficulties, dangers and temptations. All that they had was the fellowship; nothing else; no standing; no prestige; no honor . . . . The early Christians were not a people of standing, but they had a secret power among them, and the secret power resulted from the way in which they were members one of another . . . . Can you think of what it must have been like? One little fellowship was meeting in a home in Philippi . . . mostly Christians gathered in homes . . . . What occurred in the ancient civilization was the organic development of the fellowship, but never a merely individual Christianity. That would not have been able to survive. The fellowship was the only thing that could win. The early Christians came together to strengthen one another and to encourage one another in their humble gatherings such as are described in 1 Cor. 14, and then they went out into their ministry in the Greco-Roman world . . . . All of these parts [of the Empire] were touched because the fellowship itself had such intensity, such vitality, and such power . . . . If all the salt is washed out of [the fellowship], if all that is left is just the worldly emphasis of respectability and fine buildings, an ecclesiastical structure and conventional religion with the redemptive power gone, it isn’t partly good; it isn’t any good. Christ is saying that mild religion, far from being of partial value, is of utterly no value . . . . It is easy to go on with the motions; it is easy to continue a structure; it is easy to go on with a system. But Christ says it isn’t worth a thing (The Yoke of Christ, Harper, 1958, pp. 25, 26, 27, 28, 29).

— Jon Zens, September 27, 2025

• David Norington, To Preach or Not to Preach: The Church’s Urgent Question.
• Milt Rodriguez, Eyes Wide Open: Seeing the Unseen.
• Frank Viola, Rethinking Discipleship, https://www.frankviola.org/rethinkingdiscipleship/
• Jon Zens, Jesus Is Family: His Life Together.