Planting Churches in Radioactive Soil

Planting daisies in toxic dirt is no way to grow a garden

Photo by Berkan Küçükgül on Unsplash

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No matter how often we plant and replant Chernobyl daisies, they will wither and die. The problem lies neither with the flowers nor the gardener but with the dirt itself. On April 26th, 1986, reactor No. 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded, spewing radiation for miles and contaminating the ground for the next thousand years.

The problem is not making disciples. The problem is not the church’s role in making disciples. The problem is that the church in the United States is trying to grow kingdom disciples of Jesus in the radioactive cultural dirt of American expressive individualism.

Replacing cultural dirt with kingdom soil

It is possible to blame nuclear energy for Chernobyl’s dead daisies because there would have been no explosion or soil contamination if there were no Chernobyl plant.

But irrespective of one’s view on nuclear power's dangers and potential environmental impact, the immediate problem of Chernobyl was not the energy produced by the reactor but its explosion and radioactivity.

So it is with the church. Though we set visionary benchmarks for planting new congregations, the contaminated cultural soil kills whatever tries to root. The problem is not with the Lord’s church but the American soil in which it grows. Blaming this ailing national culture is tempting, but the problems with the church are far more significant.

The church is called to make disciples, but we make service-going members. The church is supposed to mentor pastors and leaders from within, but instead, we outsource their training. The church is supposed to multiply as all living things do, but instead, we franchise congregations as if they were corporations. No wonder the church is sick.

We do not need more church franchises; we need to plant healthy congregations in healthy soil to make disciples who follow Jesus.

“Dirt” is not “soil”

“Dirt” and “soil” are not the same. Dirt is inert, lacking the life-giving nutrients of bio-rich dark, moist decaying soil. The nutrients for more growth come from the natural bioprocess of life and decay. Disciples of Jesus grow in the rich soil of pain, suffering, and life’s failures. His power is made perfect in our weakness. Life is filled with challenges and defeats. They are necessary to grow faith. Pain and suffering are potting soil for spiritual growth.

Yet, we tend to grow church members in the dirt of American culture, where we minimize responsibility, challenge, and suffering. Salvation is freely given, but we have designed the corporate church experience to be free from obedience and challenge. Rather than the diligence of worship and obedience, or prayer and fasting, we offer a smorgasbord of attractions and programs to keep the members coming and supporting the church institution.

The dirt of American expressive individualism

Complicated systems may break over a single flaw (such as the infamous O-rings causing the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion), but rarely are the causes singular or disconnected from contributing factors (such as the chain of events and failed warnings that caused NASA scientists to ignore the defective space shuttle O-rings).

The failed O-ring of the American psyche is its “expressive individualism” that allows radioactive cultural narcissism to leech into American soil.

Sociologist Robert Bellah defines expressive individualism as the national belief that the individual’s psychological well-being is at the core of society. The individual’s happiness and psychological well-being supplant any higher calling given by the divine Creator to love Him and others.

Everything that stands in the way of individual expression is oppressive. And so, in the pursuit of never-fulfilled happiness comes the $8.5 billion self-help business in all its forms (c.f. Sham: How the Self-Help Movement made America, 2006) and today’s “cancel culture” to destroy competitive ideologies that threaten our happiness.

Professor Carl Treuman gives an insightful analysis in “How Expressive Individualism Threatens Civil Society,” published online in Backgrounder (No. 3615 May 27, 2021). The published summary gives us what we need to know here.

A society’s understanding of the notion of “self” has broad implications for the cultural, moral, and political spheres. The modern notion of self, which can be called “expressive individualism,” to use Robert Bellah’s term, lies at the heart of current cultural conflicts, including abortion, pornography, the ethics of life and death, radical racial politics, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion. Expressive individualism holds that human beings are defined by their individual psychological core, and that the purpose of life is allowing that core to find social expression in relationships. Anything that challenges it is deemed oppressive. Building a society based on a true understanding of the human person begins with an acknowledgement of the situation in which we find ourselves.

American expressive individualism is nuclear fuel powering post-World War II American exceptionalism bringing unparalleled prosperity and the coronation of the Consumer King. We have engineered the ultimate ME-FIRST consumer society.

To think the church would be unaffected by this cultural radiation is as naive as crawling under a school desk for protection from a nuclear bomb.

Since the 1980s, we have seen the growth of the megachurch, which offers services and goods ranging from inhouse congregation-specific worship music to daycares, schools, indoor physical fitness facilities, and packaged teaching and curriculum.

Big is not necessarily bad

Big is not necessarily bad. The question is not necessarily one of congregation size but one of health. Are we making disciples who follow Jesus, or are we making church members? Are we providing a first-class Sunday worship experience while ignoring the spiritual poverty and moral slum in which believers in our culture live daily?

Do our recovery programs (a hallmark of expressive individualism) actually produce spiritual health and vitality in Christ? Is the goal to set people free from addictions or to set people free from addictions in Christ? Have we lost the ability to know the difference?

Do our small groups and Bible studies grow us together in the Word while we encounter God within the messy reality of touching one another’s pain and burdens? Or are these groups social organizing mechanisms for Evangelicals? Do our lives significantly intersect after the fellowship potlucks or Super Bowl parties?

Neither the size nor the programs are the core issue. The question is what we are producing. Are we making feel-good members in the dirt of expressive individualism, or are we growing disciples in nutrient-rich kingdom soil?

One way to discern the difference between disciples and members is to listen to their conversations. Put simply—“Where is Jesus?” Do people talk about Jesus, how He has changed their lives, and how they love Him? Or do conversations focus on the church organization and efforts to bring change to the world?

Do sermons administer a weekly spiritual shot-in-the-arm, or do they herald Jesus and the gospel of eternal life? Have we changed our focus from following Christ at all costs to feeling good, getting by, having a perfect marriage and family, and having a successful career? Are we calling people to give away all and follow Christ? Is it cheap grace we peddle? Or grace that cost our Lord His life?

If Jesus is not central, we plant another congregation of Chernobyl daisies.

Fear of Relatives

Expressive individualism produces fields of narcissists growing in beds of relativism. Disconnecting truth from reality allows our society to distort, bend, or deny what is and make it what we want it to be. We deny facts, reinterpret history, believe what we want, and make morality dependent on the views of the majority or the next Supreme Court decision.

Relativism is the handmaiden to this form of cultural narcissism. It prevents us from seeing the truth and keeps us in a state of constant self-worship where the goal is to maximize our own happiness.

In our happiness culture, the perpetrators become the victims as we refuse to take responsibility or assign blame. The entire society adopts a victim mentality that supplants obedience, duty, or responsibility that might threaten our unfettered happiness.

At the heart of relativism is the denial of absolute truth. When this contamination infects kingdom soil, the church will not look to the Bible as God’s truth. It becomes a powerful elixir to proclaim justice by remaking the sinful world in our own image. The problem of sin disappears. The Bible becomes a handbook or collection of fortune cookie aphorisms to get us through the day or make the world better and happier.

American expressive individualism places the individual on life’s throne, makes happiness the ultimate drug of choice, and uses relativism to deny the truth that we have a problem. We are dying under the delusion that nothing is wrong.

For the church, that means being in a perpetual handstand to keep Jesus from being the Head, and it means closing our ears to the truth as we become more biblically illiterate but “culturally relevant” every day.

The critical issue is whether we design the church to meet members’ needs or grow together as disciples who follow Jesus, whatever the cost, pain, or suffering. Are we a community living by faith for another kingdom that is not yet fully here? Are we following Christ as He intends? Or do we want a divine life coach to guarantee a happy life?

Only kingdom soil grows disciples

The church is a people of another kingdom. We live out of phase with the priorities of this world and American culture. We are a people of a future time, here too soon but right on time to proclaim a kingdom that is already here but not yet fully come. The church has no mission to woo the world to make it more attractive. We offer the gospel of life and reconciliation with God through Jesus Christ. We are not here to make Rome a better city.

Growing healthy disciples who wholeheartedly follow Jesus requires kingdom soil. Disciples require an environment that is continually tended and watered. They need weed-pulling, pruning, and bathing in enough sunlight of His Word to jump-start the spiritual photosynthesis and ultimately reproduce other disciples.

After all, who goes to church to suffer or to forgo having every real or perceived need met? Disciples do. But rarely will church members tolerate poor service.

Now, Wait a Minute!

It is easy to pick at faults and overlook those who till the daisies faithfully laboring in the Chernobyl sun, never realizing that the dirt itself is bad. Churches are filled with faithful members who labor hard and love the Lord and leaders who serve the Lord and His people. Many people labor faithfully while not realizing the problem lies with the dirt.

Apart from the church, there is no other game in town, so to speak. The church is the Lord’s people, and it is His design for His people to model His love and reach the world with the gospel. Period. With all its sometimes misguided efforts, it nonetheless carries the authority of Jesus to make disciples of all nations. It is His vehicle to effect lasting change worldwide and within the heart of every individual who believes in Jesus. We cannot bypass the church even if it is sick.

It is far easier to curse the wilting daisies than lovingly remove the toxic dirt and tenderly replant them in healthy kingdom soil.

The problem is not that church is a failed experiment. The problem is the toxic dirt of expressive individualism in which the church attempts to grow kingdom disciples who crave happiness and refuse to see the truth of its delusion.

What do we do about it?

Recognizing the cultural radioactive dirt is one thing, but it is another to replant in kingdom soil while we live in a world ever-covered by a radioactive cloud of sin.

Our next articles will focus on “how shall we then live?” (with a nod to Francis Schaeffer). But there are some important ground rules as we advance in our pursuit.

Ground Rule #1: Love Governs

It’s far easier to hate than to love. It’s far more tempting to burn down the mission than to replace the dry rot in its joists and beams.

Even Martin Luther (one of the Fathers of the 16th Century great Reformation) had no intention of burning down the church. His Ninety-Five Theses nailed to the church door in Wittenburg, Germany, was a list of theological grievances, not a call to a Peasants Revolt where shifting cultural tectonic plates crushed hundreds of thousands of people. That was not Luther’s intent, but it was the recognizable calling card of the devil working through lies, hatred, and murder.

Luther didn’t call for the destruction of the church. He rather called for the truth at a time and place that would not or could not receive it.

One does not stage a Reformation. Neither does one burn down the church. It is neither ours to burn nor to judge. The church is the precious possession of Jesus, who died to redeem it.

Speaking truth in love may hurt and often triggers the worst passions in people who mistakenly believe they need to defend God. We are to speak the truth, but the soil of truth is love. Healthy disciples are always rooted in the soil of love.

Ground Rule #2: Scripture Stands

Speaking the truth about the church in love is not license to speak what we think is the truth, but rather what actually is the truth.

How do we know the difference between truth and opinion or even fallacy? That is where Scripture stands. I am not saying interpretation is always easy, but Scripture is the standard.

We live in a culture where truth is relative, where a person might argue that what is true to one is not true to another. That thinking is folly at best and lying at worse. That thinking claims to be wise but becomes a fool (Romans 1:22).

Opinion and tradition are key tenets of the church washed in American expressive individualism. They provide proverbial hot buttons for division. Some of our most closely held practices may be debatable, but others may not be biblical.

We say that Scripture is the source and judge of truth. But does the church yield to tradition or the loudest opinions? It would not be the first time the church has done that.

That is why in any discussion of change, love must govern, and the truth of Scripture must stand.

For Such a Time as This

The Lord promised Peter that the gates of hell would not prevail against His church (Matthew 16:18). Throughout its history, the church has wandered from its path and may even be said to have flirted at the gates of hell. But the Lord is faithful and has tended, nurtured, and defended His church despite our waywardness, lethargy, and rebellious desires.

The Lord defends and corrects His church. Our responsibility is to obey. The culture of American expressive individualism has poisoned the church’s soil and left us with radioactive and contaminated dirt. We gaze at fields of church members in a country once a lush garden of Christianity, and we wonder why those members continue to whither and die. We see there is a problem but are blind to the truth.

In the next articles, we will take a loving but truthful look at what it means to be the church and make healthy disciples. How do we replace cultural dirt with kingdom soil? How shall we then live?

[*n.b. “Chornobyl” is in Ukraine, and that spelling is correct. However, the rest of the world adopts the alternative spelling, “Chernobyl.” I have edited this article to please the rest of the world.] :-)