Why efforts to renew the church are often misguided

This post is from the defunct blog “Dying Church”

By Brian McLaren, found through Jordon Cooper:

Could it be that the church is as it is in so many places not because of a lack of effort or a lack of sincerity or a lack of spirituality (or even a lack of money, commitment, or prayer), but rather because our sincere efforts, passionate prayers, and material resources are all aimed in the wrong direction – the direction of self-preservation, self-aggrandizement, self-improvement? What if saving the church is a self-defeating mission?… It has been said that the greatest obstacle to the coming of the kingdom of God is the church, preoccupied with her own existence. Could our preoccupation with making better churches rather than better blessing the world be the heart disease that plagues us? And could our Clause-A theological systems be the high-fat cause of that heart disease?