Why Church Sucks: And No One Really Wants To Go

By Jon Richards

In Why Church Sucks - And No One Really Wants to Go, Jon R. Richards unapologetically examines the God of Grace and His earthly representative, the church. He invites the reader to fully engage the Father and His outrageous claims of scandalous grace, while also considering why most Americans, if being honest, would rather eat dirt with a stranger than endure one more lifeless church service with their peers.

This book will make you laugh outloud, cry and also ponder the most valuable and honorable aspect of God, His sovereign grace. It will also make you sad, angry and exhilaratingly happy. But you will not be bored.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jon Richards
• Release date: Oct 30, 2013
• ISBN: 9781311224019

Jon Richards

Jon Richards is a sinner, a father, a brother, adventurer, lover of God and author. He resides with his two children in southwest Missouri. He is the founder of Sovereign Grace Revolution, a writing and speaking ministry of God's grace and truth. His blogs and stories can be found at SovereignGraceRevolution.com. To contact Jon for speaking engagements or questions or just to say hello, email [e-mail]

Book preview

Why

Church

Sucks

And no one really wants to go

JON R. RICHARDS

Proudly published by Jon R. Richards - Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 Jon R. Richards

All Scripture quotations are directly or modified from the New American Standard Bible (NASB).

This book is also available in print at most online retailers.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

For my mom, Shirley Richards. Not a word of this could be written without your faith. Your Father is proud of you, and I’m proud of you.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 – Real Freedom

Chapter 2 – The Real Jesus and the Real Us

Chapter 3 – The Real Gospel

Chapter 4 – Is God in Church?

Chapter 5 – Jesus Has Left the Building

Chapter 6 – Sovereign Grace

Chapter 7 – The Father

About the Author

Bibliography

Introduction

To be read first

At the outset it's imperative to note several very important things. One, I am not a church-basher. God loves His church. I also love the Body of Christ and I am endeared to her for life. God's church is to be the primary expression of His love in the earth and I am committed to doing whatever it takes to be a part of that expression. This book is primarily for those who belong to that beautiful mess of a spiritual woman, the Bride of Christ. Those whose hearts have been arrested by His love, but may not necessarily hear Him calling out to them kindly anymore. However, may it speak to anyone who wants to listen. You may yet to hear Him call your name, but when He does, you’ll know. It may happen here.

I'm passionately in love with God, because God is passionately in love with me. His grace is astounding and His love toward us is without end. I don't believe there is any such thing as cheap grace, nor am I interested in providing hard-heartedness a place to land in me or anyone who reads this book. I am not disgruntled. But I am disheartened by what I see in the church. I do believe as God reveals more and more of His grace to us, we realize how much we’ve imprisoned ourselves by the invisible walls of guilt and condemnation that He never put there. Church culture perpetuates it. It sucks. And the suck must stop.

I don’t have all of the answers. Like many of us, I’m a broken and hurting pursuer of God, who is the Immeasurable Treasure of our desire. In this spiritual trek I’ve fallen down hard and by grace I get back up. He renews my hope that He will continue to let me find Him in my search for Truth. There have been many seasons in this journey with God when I didn’t have a single thing to say to Him that was faith-filled or reflective of His majesty. During those dark times I’ve called Him every name in the book. There have been many days and nights of prayer when I’ve hated Him for what is happening to me. It reminds me of Lieutenant Dan’s stormy raging shrimp boat challenge to God in the movie Forrest Gump. I’m so very thankful He never accepts my challenges. I’ve beaten my head against the Gibraltar Heart of Grace so many times you’d think I would get it by now. But I don’t. I still doubt. I still lack faith. I still succumb to the liar in and around me that every so often successfully whispers, God isn’t real. You are all alone. You are a fool. You should give up and just go with the herd.

But God remains steadfast in faithfulness to me despite my outright rage and immature arm-crossed stances. Even when He defies my airtight logic and seemingly leaves me to die in my pouting state, He is kind and good and faithful in the end. No one is like that but Him. No one can suffer such childish sinful rants against Himself like God and be lovingly unmoved. If you’ve ever wanted to know someone who can take every ounce of your real garbage and not blink an eye, but instead give you a hug….well…..God is the one. He is grace. And we seldom hear it in the one place it should be powerfully and perpetually proclaimed. In church.

For that and several other valid reasons …I don’t like church. Not the Body of Christ mind you, but the current church culture and religious system that exists as a result of accepting condemned and guilty thinking as normal. There is a glaring lack of the gospel of grace being expressed in every area of Christianity today. I literally hate it, I am free to do so and I make no apology for it. It is for that reason that church sucks. And no one really wants to go.

Jon Richards – Bolivar, Missouri, 2013

There are some who have no understanding to hear the truth of freedom and insist upon their goodness as means for salvation. These people you must resist, do the very opposite, and offend them boldly lest by their ungodly views they drag many with them into error. For the sake of liberty of the faith do other things which they regard as the greatest of sins…use your freedom constantly and consistently in the sight of and despite the tyrants and stubborn so that they may learn that they are ungodly, that their law and works are of no avail for righteousness, and that they had no right to set them up.

~Martin Luther

Chapter 1

Real Freedom

I was full of fanatic zeal when I was in college. Although I had experienced at least a partial grace awakening several years prior to my first semester, I was fired up for God and ready for action. I knew my bible backwards and forwards. I was also an integral part of a radical church plant led by young people who wanted to tear down the religious demons of the town through radical worship

...and boy was it radical. We blew shofar trumpets, banged tribal drums, soaked in the spirit for hours, pressed on walls, ran, danced, sang, and shouted until our lungs, legs and most of our dignity gave out. We cut our teeth on immature and sometimes hurtful expressions of prophetic gifts, spoke in tongues whether we interpreted them or not, went on missions local and international, and poured our very own blood, sweat and tears into everything that fledgling church was or could have been.

I look back with mixed feelings on those days. They are part of my history and heritage. While I gained some valuable experience from that church plant, mostly I learned how not to do church. Or love God. Or love people. Or most anything. Actually it really wasn’t all that great. But I appreciate it much more now than I did then; now that I can smile about it.

During that time I was also getting my undergraduate degree in Pastoral Preaching and Counseling at a conservative Baptist university. My charismatic church and traditional education didn’t always mix well, but I made it through the four years of required religious classes and later went on to receive an MBA from the same school. To the tune of an unmentionable amount of debt.

While in college I began to feel a black cloud of concern about church, God and life. Something just wasn’t gelling. I was racking up a LOT of student loan debt to sit in classes that were not teaching me anything I considered to be valuable or relational about God. I was not hearing about the God of astounding grace, but more about how God measures us and that we needed to be constantly measuring ourselves. It was disheartening. It was stifling. It was legalism and it made me angry.

One particular week I had seen and heard enough. I had been in college over a year. The sense of having to work for God’s approval was evident in every discussion, class lecture and meeting on the campus. I remember lamenting to God how vile this was to me (Oh, did I forget to mention I was also proud and judgmental?)

Then God (true to Fatherly form) showed me a way to express it. After thinking and praying about what I had been shown in my heart, I put together two big pieces of poster board on a wooden stake, found a Sharpie and made a sign. In large black bold letters on a background of fluorescent yellow, I wrote the following bold words...

SALVATION IS FREE

Except it didn’t look as good as it does on this page. It looked more like a yard sale sign. Both sides said the same thing. Just that. Salvation is Free. As I constructed the sign I wondered where in the yard I would hammer it into the ground for display. Maybe some people who lived nearby would ask about it and I’d get a chance to talk to them about grace and freedom. But God (true to radical form) said, That’s too safe. I want you to carry it around to your classes every day for a week. All over campus.

So I did. For a week.

And it was a long week.

I was a non-traditional student, having gone back to school after a few years of working various construction jobs after high school. So I was already in the minority among the students. I was one of the older ones. I didn’t live in a dorm. I didn’t participate in freshman Welcome Week, or hazing or any of the normal socialization activities of the traditional 18 to 24 year olds. As a result of my zeal and charisma, I did have some small amount of respectability in the School of Theology. Then God had me show up with this squirrelly sign to provoke everyone with.

Thanks God. Now I’m really going to be non-traditional.

After several days of stares and glares and barely any real conversations from students or professors other than, is this for a class project?, I was feeling like a big doofus and starting to question why I was even doing it. At one point I was walking through the commons with my fluorescent Norma Rae placard and a group of pretty girls walked by. One of them looked at my sign and mistakenly called out, Salvation is FUN?

I countered, "No. Free!" They giggled off