Interesting interview by Gary Shavey at Resurgence of Anthony Bradley, Assistant professor at Covenant Semenary. Below is an excerpt. The link for the rest of the interview is at the bottom of the excerpt.

GS: What do you think is the biggest issue the Church is facing today?

AB: Fear, pain, passive men, and love. We fear the power of the gospel story, we fear the implications of the Missio Dei, we fear the Enemy, we fear transformation, we fear change, we fear questions, we fear doubts, we fear new leaders, we fear new realities, we fear people not already like us, we fear culture, we fear the Truth, we fear liberation, we fear healing, we fear mission, we fear living like Jesus lived, we fear being the people of God in a broken world, we fear facing our fears, we fear the healing of our fears, we fear risks.

Christians can be some of the biggest posers in America. We have failed to communicate to the world that being a Christian does not mean that “you have it all together.” We are all broken people following Jesus on a journey to figure out what it means to live lives that truly have meaning beyond the mundane. Many traditions have reduced sin to rebellion and have skipped over the fact that people have been sinned against in ways that have left people living as the walking wounded often acting out sinfully as a way to self-medicate pain. As Jesus does, we need to bring the gospel to both pain and sin. We need the gospel to heal the whole person. The fact is that, we’re all on a journey of becoming the kinds of people Jesus is making whole and living lives that matter in full harmony with God. We need to embrace the pain of others as if it were our own because Jesus meets people amidst there pain as well.

We have a crisis in the West of pathetically passive men who are managing their passivity in ways that are reeking havoc in marriages, families, work places, neighborhoods, schools, the internet, and so on. For decades now our church culture has produced a feminized, emasculated vision of what it means to be a man which has left a huge vacuum for the kind of missional movement needed for the Kingdom.

Finally, there’s a problem with how we love people. Christians don’t love people intimately whether they are Christians or not. We don’t love Christians enough to commit to walking with them no matter what, challenging them when needed, comforting in times of despair, rejoicing in the other’s success. We need vulnerable relationships with those close to us grounded in committed love. The Scriptures call us to live lives of transparency among those that Jesus loves because God uses that to continue to transform us into the very image of Christ. So many people are missing out on a powerful source of transformation, healing and mission.

Get the rest of the interview here. For those of you in the midst of starting a church you may find the next question and response very interesting. Courage friends!