The Passive Church

I have been a follower of Jesus for nearly 50 years. For most of that time, I have been a participant in the local church where music is sung, and sermons are preached. During my 38-year tenure as a campus pastor, the gatherings of my ministry featured singing songs and me or others giving messages on biblical teachings. Never once did I question this practice. Until a year or so ago.

It was if I stood back and looked at the local church and my own campus ministry with fresh eyes, and I was actually amazed at what I saw. I saw a passive church.

Think about it for a minute. In the typical Sunday morning at a local church, the worship service likely starts with announcements or music. Given the type of songs that are often sung, songs written for radio and concerts, many stand and listen but don’t sing because the key is too high. Thus, they are not actively participating.

Prayer time (if there is one) is typically led by a church leader with no prayers (or requests) being voiced by anyone else. Prayer practiced in this way is, too, passive.

Then we move on to the sermon. The pastor preaches for 30-60 minutes, and everyone sits and listens. There is rarely, if ever, any interaction between the preacher and the congregation, except some nods of agreement or laughter at a joke told. As has been practiced for decades or even centuries, the sermon is basically a monologue. There is little or no interaction with the speaker.

And if the church has a Sunday School, typically classes are led by a teacher who teaches a lesson. There may be a bit more interaction, but still the teacher dominates the class time.

Moving outside the local church, Christian conferences exhibit the same traits. For one to three days (typically), attendees see musicians, singers, and speakers on stage with little participation from the audience. Workshops are similarly conducted, with the speaker doing almost all of the talking.

We are, in practice, a very passive Church. That is in contrast to the biblical descriptions, such as those found in Matthew 28:19-20, Acts 4:32-35, and Acts 8:26-40. What we see is an active Church, listening to teaching, yes, but taking that teaching and applying it to their lives in tangible ways. Somehow, the messages they were hearing were penetrating their hearts and leading to action.

In most churches today, the messages are heard and then forgotten. Who remembers last week’s sermon or the one preached last month? Very few because there is no interaction with the teaching. Attention spans today are not comparable with the 1st Century. People in the 1st Century were literally able to remember preaching they heard because the culture was one of oral tradition. Only the most educated could read, so hearing became essential to learning. Not so much today. People are distracted by a myriad of things that cause them to lose focus during sermons and conference messages. They just don’t penetrate like they once did.

Yet, churches continue to practice a model that is wholly insufficient for our time. What is needed is more engagement, not less. The Church needs songs of worship written to be sung by ordinary people with little or no musical ability and average singing voices There are plenty of opportunities to attend Christian concerts. The music worship portion of a service doesn’t need to emulate the concert experience.

Prayer is something to participate in as a community. Learning how to pray comes from praying, not from merely listening to someone else pray. The Church needs to be a praying church, so it is important that people get practical experience praying.

The Church needs sermons that are not merely monologues but are much shorter and incorporate interaction with the congregation—questions and discussions about what was preached. People need help to integrate biblical teaching into life. The more they are encouraged to interact with biblical teaching, given ways to apply it to their lives, and be able to ask questions, the greater the chances are that these teachings will take root in their lives.

The Word of God is described by the writer of Hebrews as “living and active” (4:12). Thus, it is incumbent upon the Church to be the same—the living and active body of Christ. Our passive approach needs an overhaul.

© Jim Musser 2025 All Scripture references are from the New International Version, 2011.