416 Did You Give Up Christianity for The Sake of Your Church?

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Did You Give Up Christianity for The Sake of Your Church?”, originally shared on June 5, 2026. It was the 416^th  video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   Are you a follower or a leader? You probably think of yourself as a leader, and that could be your problem. Today, we’re going to find out why.

   I read a story a long time ago about a young man who had sent off his college applications and finally got a reply from the registrar at one of the colleges.

   It began, “Dear (applicant). I am pleased to report that you have been accepted to (fill in the blank) university!

   I must say that the committee was not very impressed with your application, except that you indicated that you thought of yourself as more of a follower than a leader.

   And, since all the other applicants described themselves as leaders, the committee felt that this year’s class should have at least one follower. You’re it.”  😊

   When Jesus invites people to “follow me”, he meant it literally.

   An outer circle “follower” might just follow Jesus to see a miracle or to get fed or healed and then go home.

   A disciple, or “learner”, would literally follow their Rabbi, or “teacher”, around wherever the teacher went. 24/7. They learned from their teacher’s teaching, but they also observed and sought to imitate their teacher’s way of life. They were like an apprentice or an intern. Their goal was to become teachers, too.

   Jesus’ inner circle disciples were with him for three years, 24/7. The early Christians required three years of training (36 months) before one could be fully admitted to a church. Seminaries used to require, and some still do, three academic years of specialized training after college or university, plus an academic year of internship (36 months). Confirmation classes for young people used to, and some still do, last for three school years of preparation before full congregational membership. 

   Being a disciple of Jesus required a serious commitment. Today, in the Gospel reading that will be shared in the vast majority of churches all over the world this coming Sunday, we will see one disciple, Matthew, being called to follow Jesus as a disciple. We will see what he lost and what he gained, and we will see examples of what the disciples heard Jesus teach and what they saw Jesus do, in Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26.

   Matthew was a tax collector. He was also the Matthew who wrote the first book in the New Testament: the Gospel of Matthew.

   There are four gospels, or proclamations of the good news of Jesus Christ, in the New Testament: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and they all tell the same story for different groups of people. They are also known as the four evangelists, because they told the story of the evangel, the Good News.

   They were all inspired by the Holy Spirit. When you read any of those gospels, you aren’t just processing words on a page. You are in the presence of God. God is speaking to you, to your true self, through what you see on the page.

   Matthew tells the story of how he came to be one of the 12 disciples of Jesus Christ in the third person, as an observer, as “he” not “I”. Why? And what does this tell us about what it means for us to be disciples of Jesus Christ?

   Here’s the scoop, in Matthew 9:9,

⁹As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him.

   That’s it. No details on how he felt, how it changed his life, why he got up and did a complete 180 in his life, or why he did it just-like-that.

   Maybe he didn’t know the answers himself. There was just Jesus, and Matthew followed Him.

   There was certainly a reaction from the Pharisees, members of a religious party among the Jews. They were the good people who everybody else looked up to. They were lay people who had devoted their lives to studying what we would call the Old Testament and living according to its laws. Every Jewish man, and only men could be Pharisees, of Jesus’ generation hoped to be in the financial position to be a Pharisee one day.

   And Jesus was almost always knocking heads with them.

   Why? Because they were devoted to keeping the letter of the religious law, and often looked down on those who didn’t, but they had not recognized the spirit of the law. They were ignoring it.

   It’s like when a mom baked a cake and told her two little boys, “Don’t eat any of the cake. It will spoil your appetite before dinner.

   She leaves the room, and comes back, and finds the boys eating cookies.

   The letter of the law was, “Don’t eat any of the cake.” The spirit of it was, “Don’t spoil your appetite before dinner.”

   Here’s how they responded to Jesus associating with guys like Matthew, in Matthew 9:10-11,

¹⁰And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with him and his disciples. ¹¹When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

   Why was being a tax collector considered to be on a par with being a publicly known sinner at that time?

   The Jews knew that their tax money wasn’t going to go to their representative government, it was going to serve the interests of the occupying Roman Empire and the tax collectors.

   When the Romans occupied Israel, they put out a job notice, looking for literate locals.

   The Romans had divided the country into tax districts, and they invited people with the necessary accounting skills to apply for the job of tax collector in each district.

   The Romans asked for bids. Whoever submitted the highest amount of money that they said they could extract in taxes from that district got the job.

   The Empire gave the tax collectors coercive power and personal protection by assigning Roman soldiers to them, and anything that the tax collectors “collected” from the populace beyond what they had bid would go into their own pockets.

   So, the tax collectors were hated as traitors to their own people. They got rich by extorting money from them. And they were feared because they were agents of the foreign occupying Roman Empire.

   And here’s how Jesus responds, in Matthew 9:12-13,

¹²But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. ¹³Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”

  The Pharisees were the very definition of being self-righteous. They were full-time religious law-keepers, so they believed that their need for forgiveness was little to none. They were respected for it!

   Jesus condemned the Pharisees for caring about their image more than their reality, their human traditions over the commandments of God. Of them, he says, quoting Isaiah, in Matthew 15:8-9,

⁸        ‘This people honors me with their lips,

but their hearts are far from me;

⁹        in vain do they worship me,

teaching human precepts as doctrines.’ ”

   Could such things be said of us?

   What do we care about?

   Matthew had to feel the hatred of his community. He knew that he had no claim to righteousness in himself. He knew that he was a sinner. When Jesus showed up at his tax booth, perhaps he saw in Jesus the chance for forgiveness that only comes to those who know that they need it. He saw his chance and he took it.

   Maybe that’s why the story of himself that Matthew puts in his gospel about his sudden career change is so short. It’s obvious to him that he needed a Savior.

   And it’s obvious to all those who know that when something is wrong with their life, they need a Savior, even if they can’t put it into words themselves. Perhaps they know that they are separated from God by their rebellion against God, their sin. And perhaps they know that when you come to know that Jesus offers you redemption, a new life, you take it.

   This part of the Gospel of Matthew is a selfie, it’s a picture of himself.

   Matthew’s Gospel is written in the third person, as a description of himself from the outside, because it’s the story of the person he used to be, not the person he is now, the person writing this Gospel.

   Pastor Rick Warren once said that God doesn’t call the qualified. God qualifies the called. And, like Matthew, God has called, equipped, and sent us into the world with a vocation.

   That vocation, or “calling”, like the calling of Matthew, is lived-out as a particular consequence of our relationship with God. It is a natural expression of who we have come to be in the presence of Jesus Christ.  T he invitation Jesus extends to each of us is to follow Him, in the Holy Spirit.

   We are, no matter who we are or what we’ve done, valued by God. God makes of us a new creation. We are born again. We are loved. This is a message that we are privileged to share with those we know who need to hear it most today.

   One of my favorite examples of this comes at the end of an article by John Updike  about the early 20^th century evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson in the “The New Yorker Magazine”. Sister Aimee, as she was known, was a pioneering and popular figure in the United States. Her life was filled with success and scandals. She founded Angeles Temple in the Echo Park district of Los Angeles and the international Foursquare Church denomination. She at one time fled the country.

   Charges against her had been dropped in LA and she traveled to New York. She went to Texas Guinan’s popular speakeasy (fun fact Whoopi Goldberg played a character named Guinan who ran the bar on the Starship Enterprise in Star Trek: Next Generation).

   Sister Aimee entered the club in a yellow suit and furs. A reporter called for her to speak. The proprietress agreed and Sister Aimee calmly walked to the center of the dance floor, smiled, paused, and said, “Behind all these beautiful clothes, behind these good times, in the midst of your lovely buildings and shops and pleasures, there is another life. There is something on the other side. ‘What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?’ With all your getting and playing and good times, do not forget you have a Lord. Take Him into your hearts.”

   Texas Guinan walked over to Sister Aimee to the applause of the crowd, put her arm around her, and stood there to the ongoing ovation of the club-goers.

   That is the good news we have been given to share with the world.

   We are no longer sinners alone, we are saints and sinners, still not perfect except in the relationship with God in Jesus Christ that was earned for us on the cross.

   We are God’s imperfect but redeemed people, not by our own efforts or successes, but by the recognition of our failures to be the people that God has made us to be, and that we need a Savior. We are weak, but it’s simply God’s call that makes us strong.

   Matthew’s selfie is a picture of God at work. It is powerful in its simplicity.

   It is our selfie, too, the story of God ‘s grace at work in us. We who were lost have been found. We have been given newness of life and we, like Matthew, get up to follow Jesus.

   How well have we responded? We could do better.

   The most that many of our churches today can muster is to be an attractional church. We offer programs, gimmicks that degrade our message, potlucks, social services, concerts, food give-a-ways, a “friendly family”, worship that offers little and expects less, political and social policies that conform to our neighborhood’s values. We have become community advocacy groups using religious language and aesthetics. We are a tradition, not a living Christian community, because we believe in our programs and not in our people, the people of God.

   Not that people don’t find Christ through programs. It can happen. But it often doesn’t happen because we don’t ask ourselves what my hero in church development, Lyle Schaller, said was the most important question to ask when planning a program: “What if it works?” 😊

   Do we have a plan for helping someone who wants to follow Jesus into mature discipleship?

   Do we offer any process, any series of classes, mentorship, or modeling that leads to life transformation in a living relationship with God now and forever?

   Evangelism is sharing the good news of Jesus Christ. Most people can’t fathom it because they’ve never heard the bad news. They don’t know that they, like Matthew, are sinners who are cut off from God, but who have been given a Savior, a Reconciler and Redeemer in Jesus Christ. But we’ve made a bargain with our culture not to rock the boat, because we don’t want anyone to accuse us of being intolerant.

   I remember Penn Jillette, of the Penn and Teller magic act, who are also hosts of the “Fool Us” TV show, telling about a young man who approached Penn after a live show in Las Vegas one night. Penn is an atheist.

   This young man, who Penn described as “polite, honest, and sane”, gave him a pocket-sized Bible, with a personalized note inside and his contact information. He wanted to share his faith.

   Penn said, later, that he respected that this young man really cared enough that he didn’t want to see him go to hell.

   He said that it was like seeing a truck bearing down on a blind person. If you cared about that person, you’d push them out of danger.

   How well does that describe the kind of ministry that our churches actually provide?

   The alternative to the attractional ministry model is the model given by Jesus to those who followed him and is described in this week’s Gospel reading.

   It’s to be a missional congregation.

   You may have heard it said that “The church isn’t a museum for saints, it’s a hospital for sinners.” I used to say that. And that’s as far as some churches get. Their attitude, if not their expressed policy, is “our doors are open. Let people come, if they want to.”

   But I once heard an alternative model that went, “The church isn’t a hospital for sinners. It’s more like the paramedics. We go where the sick and broken people are.

   That’s what we see in the rest of this coming Sunday’s Gospel reading, Matthew 9:18-26,

¹⁸ While he was saying these things to them, suddenly a leader of the synagogue came in and knelt before him, saying, “My daughter has just died; but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live.” ¹⁹ And Jesus got up and followed him, with his disciples. ²⁰ Then suddenly a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his cloak, ²¹ for she said to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well.” ²² Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.” And instantly the woman was made well. ²³ When Jesus came to the leader’s house and saw the flute players and the crowd making a commotion, ²⁴ he said, “Go away; for the girl is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him. ²⁵ But when the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took her by the hand, and the girl got up. ²⁶ And the report of this spread throughout that district.

   Is God indifferent to our fallenness, to our frail bodies, to our brokenness, to our death? No.

   God has power over all those things that we bring into the world by our sinfulness. Jesus has won the victory over all those things. They have no ultimate control over us, and one day all things will be made whole in Jesus.

   Meanwhile, we are called to follow Him, and to do what we have been called, equipped, and sent to do to make this world more like the world that it was created to be and, one day, will be again.

   We used to do more church planting, building new churches, and it was found to be more effective at bringing new people to a living faith in Jesus Christ than revitalizing a shrinking congregation because, as it was said, “It’s easier to have a baby than to raise the dead.” 😊

   But, in today’s text, Jesus is showing us that God is interested in both, and more!

   Jesus gives Matthew new life in His call to follow Him.

   He restores the woman whose flow of blood would have made her ritually unclean and restores her to her community by healing her.

   Jesus raises a little girl, the daughter of a leader of the synagogue, from the dead!

   That is the power of God that we proclaim!

   We aren’t Jesus, but we can tell people about Jesus.

   We aren’t the light, but we can be reflectors of the Light.

   We aren’t leaders in our lives, we’re followers of our Savior. And that means everything!

   Are we so desperate for survival to preserve our name and legacy, to have our funerals, and to maintain a culture, that we will downplay our faith to get people to join our heritage club, to maintain our dying museum?

   Did you give up Christianity for the sake of your church and are finding neither?

   If so, Matthew, inspired by the Holy Spirit, has Good News for you today! It is the blessing that comes with following Jesus.  

   Today we see the brokenness of our fallen world, and we see the ultimate wholeness won for us and all who believe and are baptized by Jesus, at the cross.

   Let us live and call everyone we know to stop being the leaders of their present lives, and to follow Jesus forward into God’s perfect restoration of what was and what will be forever.