Everything Else Is Theater
Kierkegaard once observed that the church and the theater had more in common than either institution would care to admit — and that in certain respects, the theater was the more honorable of the two. Actors wear masks, yes, but they have the decency to remove them when the curtain falls. They do not insist on the illusion after the house lights come up. To expect the same candor from a priest or a pastor is, apparently, a ghastly proposition, even when the hypocrisy has already been exposed. The theater, Kierkegaard noted, even posts a sign at the entrance warning that dissatisfied patrons will not receive refunds. The church rarely offers such transparency.
Kierkegaard was writing between 1834 and 1855, with the Danish Lutheran establishment firmly in his sights. What is curious — and troubling — is how little the underlying dynamic has changed. In 2026 America, where church and state are formally separated and no single denomination holds cultural dominance, the institution has carried forward the same reputation and, in many cases, the same methods. The theater metaphor still fits. What it does not fit is anything Christ actually modeled.
I want to be clear about where I am standing when I write this. I love the body of Christ because I love Christ, and to separate the two in one’s affections is a form of self-deception. It is to live in a kind of fantasy. I have spent my entire life building the local church and intend to keep doing so until the Lord calls me from working in His field back to His glorious Kingdom. It is precisely this love that compels me to speak out against her, not the contrary.
The body of Christ and what we have come to call “the church” are not the same thing, though I believe Christ meant for them to be.
I have an entire section written about what the church (Ekklesia) was intended to be by Christ in my book The Invitation. I won’t labor over it here, but I encourage you to go read it.
What we typically mean by church today is a local house of worship where a group of people gathers, somewhat regularly, though not nearly often enough, to sing songs (some may also worship) and to hear someone provide a motivational speech, lecture, or some other kind of presentation. Hopefully, whatever is delivered contains truths that lead to maturation.
Attendance, or even formal membership in a local congregation, does not automatically equate to membership in the body of Christ. In like manner, membership in the body of Christ does not require attendance at a local house of worship, though it does require regularly gathering with other Kingdom citizens; these are not inherently the same. The fact that church attendance does not automatically equate to membership in the body of Christ should not be the case, but it is, because our churches are no longer functioning as an ekklesia. They function as a kind of Christian theater. People arrive, consume, feel something move in their chest or stomach, participate in the familiar rituals, and leave. A week or two later, they repeat the same process. In the meantime, they cheat, steal, rage, lust, speak profanities, divorce their spouses long before they ever leave their spouses, and engage in every other vice so long as they can rationalize justifiable reasons to do so. The same people do all of this while equating attendance, chair-stacking, door-holding, and small group leadership with the actual work of discipleship. They have not been equipped to live within the kingdom. They are not equipped and trained unto righteousness or godliness, that is, faith working through love as Paul considers it. They have instead been entertained, and in being entertained, deceived into believing that borrowing a little of Christ’s blood licenses the rest of life to proceed on their own terms.
What Christ actually commanded was not “go and build a church.” He commanded us to make disciples. He said He would build the church out of the disciples we were supposed to be producing. The local church is not sacred in itself. It is a method, a strategy for fulfilling the Great Commission, and the only honest question is whether or not it is doing that job. The evidence crying out against her is overwhelming.
I am not calling for the dissolution of the local church model, far from it. It accomplishes genuine good. But it is a most terrible system for making disciples, and the proof is the visible immaturity of the people it produces year after year, generation after generation. The immaturity and fruitlessness of the bride are an indictment of the local church model’s ability to disciple well. Fruitlessness on this scale is not a random outcome; it is an indictment of the leadership.
One must now question the motive of every church pastor who runs the same model week in and week out without evaluating whether or not it’s accomplishing its mission. Either the leaders are negligent, or they are not in it to make disciples. Though they say with their lips discipleship is the aim, they deny such ambition with their priorities and choices. And if their top priority is not the spiritual maturation of their people, evidenced by fruitful, righteous, kingdom living, then what is their motive? To grow power, influence, money, numbers? Why? What’s the point of those numbers, which represent souls, if they do not mature? Are we not burdened as Paul was that Christ would be formed in those we disciple? Do we not share the same burning tension as Paul to present everyone fully mature in Christ? Does the fruitlessness of those whom we shepherd not break our hearts and drive us to our knees?
Jesus called us to create students of His “kingdom way of living” who mature into kingdom citizens - that is discipleship. Dare I grieve that our churches are filled with men leading multitudes who lack this burden, this ambition?
Indeed, that which drives someone to begin a church is instead usually something rather different. Their aim is not to make disciples as they claim. They know Christ’s priority but find it hard to admit their priority is not aligned with His. They would be most delighted to see disciples created if it happened to work out while chasing after their true desires. But to sacrifice their true desires to make disciples is not of interest. In this we see “for the kingdom” or “to make disciples” as but only a cloak to conceal their real ambitions.
Some are driven by their desire to teach. These men are gifted teachers who love a room full of people more than they love the hard, slow work of transformation. Furthermore, they are most often men who have not been transformed by that which they are so eager to speak about; thus, they don’t know how to lead anyone else into maturation (i.e., discipleship). They do, however, know an awful lot and have learned how to charismatically tickle ears and move people when talking. So people gather, and they think God is blessing their ministry, yet they fail to recognize their fields have no fruit, only more plants which cover the legion of weeds breeding underneath.
Others have served long enough under someone else’s vision that they have grown restless. They feel, as they put it, that God is calling them to start something of their own — somewhere they can set the direction, control the finances, and do the speaking without deference to another man’s priorities.
Still others simply replicate what they have seen. They lack either the creativity or the faith — or both — to imagine a different structure instead of trying to develop a new model that more effectively produces disciples; they simply repeat the model they’ve seen from their elders. Doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different outcomes is, by any honest accounting, a kind of insanity. Who in the secular world innovates and creates a more successful product or technology by simply replicating that of the past? Where are the innovators of the Kingdom?
And some have chosen the model primarily because it has proven to produce a decent income. I believe a pastor who genuinely gives himself to the formation of others deserves to be supported by those he serves. But to select a model of ministry based on its revenue potential rather than its capacity to make disciples is to have already answered the question of whether one’s faith is really operative. A person who needs the model to generate the income has not yet learned, in any practical sense, that God is their provider. They still rely on their own effort and wisdom. Does this type of person even possess enough faith to be called a leader of the flock?
Shall I go on? The reasons are more numerous than the stars, but there is only one right answer: to make disciples of Christ — people who understand his kingdom and have been genuinely shaped into the kind of human beings who live from it, naturally, as a matter of who they have become.
Everything else is theater.