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Tim Stevens, pastor of Granger Community Church, has a great write up called "Why I'm not giving up on the Church." I want to repost it here:

Last
week my friends, Jack and Molly, poured out their hearts to me about
their church experience. They love their church in Ohio. They have been
there for more than ten years now and are involved up to their
eyeballs. Jack is a deacon and helps with some of the worship arts.
Molly has been on the praise team and volunteers as she is able. They
love their pastor and want to support him, but sadly, they would never
think of inviting a friend. Not again.

They gave it a shot once. A few months ago, Molly invited a friend
from her workplace to church. This was a close friend, and they knew
she would be honest about her experience. During the entire service,
Molly was wincing. She was more keenly aware than ever that the music
was bad, the message was completely irrelevant, and it was all
excessively long. When she asked her friend a few days later what she
thought, the answer came back, "Molly, your church sucks." It was crass
and was hard to hear, but Molly knew she was right.

A lot of churches know this, but they keep doing what is
comfortable…what they enjoy. It is just too painful to diagnose what
is not working, so the leaders continue to focus on the areas (such as
fellowship, worship, or Bible study) they find easier to accomplish.
Oh, they still pray for their unchurched friends. They want them to
meet Jesus, but they have no idea how that might happen. Unfortunately,
over time, as their Christian community becomes more ingrown, the chasm
between their "lost" friends and them grows larger and larger.

Is that what Jesus had in mind when He dreamed up this thing called
the church? When He came to earth to give His very life so that we
might experience His love and grace, do you suppose He pictured
churches where the people He died to save would feel like outsiders?

It's not that people around us aren't pursuing their faith. There's
a growing percentage of people of faith in our communities who love God
the best they know how-they just see the church as completely
irrelevant. It does not even cross their minds to go to a church
service to figure out the next spiritual step they should take. They've
been to church. They've seen so-called Christians who are no different
from their other friends. They have sat through one too many songs that
are written like funeral dirges and talk about raising your Ebenezer
(doing what to my what?). They have listened to some pastor drone-on
about living a sanctified life and being washed in the blood of Jesus
(are these people cannibals?). So they left, without hope, still trying
to figure out the answers on their own. They do this two or three
times, and soon they have been burned, and they begin to pursue their
faith outside the church.

But they are still spiritual beings. They still want to find hope,
purpose, and meaning. So they look for ways to fill the void, and often
turn to the only language they really understand at their core-where
they feel deeply and experience life fully. They turn to pop culture
for their answers.

They turn on the radio and hear Coldplay expose their pain, singing,
"…when you lose something you can't replace, when you love someone,
but it goes to waste," and it touches them. It marks them in a deeply
personal way. They view a movie such as Little Children (2006) and
watch the tormented lives of four individuals who are trying to make
sense of their humanity and yet continue to make one bad choice after
another. They identify with the struggle of the actors and it moves
them to take a step-to do something differently.

It is not that people are turning to culture just to learn a
different angle about God or faith. In truth, the culture is actually
shaping the values and faith of most people around us.

What do we do with these two realities? One: Many churches are
ineffective. Two: People are pursuing God outside the church. Many say
we should give up on the local church.

I understand that sentiment. I have seen more impotent churches than
effective ones. I have seen plenty of churches that "suck," and it
makes me cynical. Sometimes it drowns out hope that it could ever be
different.

But I have also seen churches that get it. I have seen with my own
eyes what happens when the power of the local church is energized with
the creativity of the arts, utilizing the language of the popular
culture. I am jazzed about the spiritual longing I see in our culture.
And I love what happens when faith and culture come together in the
local church, so that people who were far from God hear for the first
time how much they matter to Him.

I'm not giving up on the church. I'm in for the long haul to figure
out better and better ways to "do church" in a way that has a real
impact on our culture and our communities. You with me?

Adapted from Pop Goes the Church: Should the Church Engage Pop Culture? by Tim Stevens (Power Publishing, 2008)