Church is too easy

I think a lot of people have friends who say the reason they don't go to church is because they are too busy. But according to the last Australian church life survey the real reasons are that church is boring and that people just don't believe what Christian’s believe.

My contention is that church isn't to hard but rather it is too easy. Stick me in a world were there are only kids books and I'll tell you that I don't like reading. Seriously I think to be warmly embraced as got it together Xn in a typical western church you only need two things (1) to only have sex with the person you are legally married to (2) to turn up every week to church.

Compare this to a person who reads the Bible, prays and has given everything to the poor (unlike the rich young ruler), visits people in prison, gives money to world vision, (like the sheep in Matt 25) and doesn't criticize the immorality of others (take the speck out of your own eye first) (I could go on but you get the point). But, yet is living with their long term girlfriend and doesn't regularly go to church. Mmmm?

Churches often majors on the minors. To me church seems to consist of communal singing (where we sing to God lots of stuff that we don't actually do eg: praising God no stop, trusting only in God, giving everything to God, etc...) listening to sermons where instead of working out how to apply the Bible to our lives a preacher applies it to their life and we secondarily apply it to ours. Then someone prays for things that they think we might all want to pray for, we have announcements (encouraging people to be part various teams to make this all happen next week).

Apart from turning up on Sunday to do the above we have no spiritual disciplines and church is too easy to get into, anyone can join! Which actually limits how intimate we can actually be with each other, so we have no idea how each other are actually going.

Church numbers falling? I think the solution is not to make church easier but to make it harder.