The Church Answers Podcast

#165 Why Do We Even Have CHRINOs (Christians in Name Only)?

Thom takes six episodes to take a deep-dive look at the demographic groups that claim they are Christians but are likely not true believers. In this episode, he looks at the cultural and church-related factors that caused this large demographic to form.

Duration:: 11m
Broadcast on:: 29 Mar 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

Welcome to the Church Answers podcast presented by Chaney & Associates. Chaney & Associates are the accounting firm for the church. Now get ready for fast-paced insights on key issues affecting the local church today. We release three episodes each week, so make sure you've seen or heard them all. And now, here is the CEO of Church Answers, Tom Rayner. If you have had the opportunity to listen to the previous two episodes, and I'm referring to episodes number 163 and 164, we have been talking about crinos, C-H-R-I-N-O. And if you want it plural, you put a little S on the end. It's an acronym that means Christian, in name only. And the two previous episodes, two episodes ago, which would be episode number 163, we gave foundational information, profile of the crinos. And then episode number 164, we looked at the three subgroups, at least one way of looking at the crinos from the position of three subgroups. Unchurch, cultural, and church crinos. Now we're going to take episode number 165 as we continue to dig more deeply and to this issue of the crinos, Christian, in name only. And we're going to attempt to answer the question, "Why do we even have crinos?" We partially answered it last time, but we're going to dig a little more deeply this time. As always, we are grateful for our Chaney and Associates. Steve Chaney, I hope you're listening to this. If you're not, maybe some of your team is out in California. We appreciate you. We appreciate your ministry. We appreciate the way you love the church. And that's why you have become the accounting firm for the church. That is why you're making such a difference in so many churches. You're providing them bookkeeping services, payroll services, tax services, my goodness. It is wonderful to see how you serve the church. And that's why when I invited you to be a partner with us, I did so with enthusiasm and I did so knowing that I could recommend the type of firm that is best for the church. Chaney and Associates, the accounting firm, far the church. Why do we even have crinos, Christians in name only? I alluded to some of the issues in the previous episode that I want to give a bit more specificity this time. But one of the clear reasons that we have crinos has been historically cultural pressure. Cultural pressure means that if you really wanted to be accepted, and particularly in the American culture, to be a Christian was almost a necessity for a long season of our history. So there has been this cultural pressure to come to the point where people would say whether they've had a personal conversion experience with Christ or not, to say, yeah, I am a Christian. And here's the danger in attempting to evangelize these people or just to get information from them. If you say, if you ask someone if they're a Christian and they say, yes, and you walk away, there's probably a one in two chance that they are not. And so you're missing an opportunity to evangelize if the question ends with them just simply affirming that they are Christians. One of the reasons that they have affirmed this is cultural pressure. And that's what has been going on with a number who say, I am a Christian. Another one that I alluded to, and I'll dig a little bit deeper as well, is family ties. There are people who are Christian in name only. It's true in Protestantism, it's true in Catholicism, who say, I am a Christian. Some will say, well, I'm a Catholic or I'm a Baptist, or I'm filling another denomination there. And they think because their family or someone who has been a part of a denomination or some type of religious movement, because of that, they claim the name of Christian. So they have family or familial ties. And it's for that reason that they say, okay, if my daddy and my granddaddy and my mom and my grandmama were Christians, then so am I. So there is the familial reason as well. So we have the cultural reason, we have the family or the familial reason. But another reason is the church and specifically the church not asking the right questions. The church not asking the right questions. Now, let's just talk about that specifically. I have a book coming out, I think it's coming out in early August, and it's called, Where Have All The Church Members Gone? Love writing this book is my first fiction book. In fact, it is a fable kind of in the spirit of business fables that have been written similar to those. And there's one person in the early one character in the early part of this book that has dropped out of church. And people are asking, you know, what about her? Where has she gone? And as they begin to seek answers to that question, they find out ultimately when somebody meets with her that she's not a Christian. Why did you ever come to the church? Well, I thought it'd be a good place to make social ties. But I found out that, no, y'all have certain beliefs that I don't believe in. And here's the bottom line. She became a member and no one asked her basic questions about her faith. That is a fiction story. It is a fable kind of like in the Patrick Linchione way of writing business fables. I did this for this book that is coming out, but it's not only in fables. That is reality. I have talked to a person after person who who have told me that they were members of the church for a long time before they finally became a follower of Christ. So the church is not asking the right questions. We don't have that. And this would be a subset, but I'll put it as a fourth reason. The church does not have a good enough entry point. Now, what I mean by an entry point is something like a new members class. But you know what we do in most new members class? Most new members classes, we give the perspective new member information. If we're really on top of it, we may give them some expectation. And that expectation would be how you're going to come to worship. You're going to be a generous giver. You're going to be in a group in the church. We review all of these type of things when we look at the simple church model. But that many, many churches do not ask basic doctrinal questions of new members. Some I'm really excited about the church answers are doing. We have a project that is almost completed and the release date of this podcast is April 18th. So I don't know for sure if it'll be released, but if not it'll be really shortly after. And it's another one of the know your tools. We have know your community, know your church, know yourself, know your budget. And this one is an additional one called know your beliefs. And it helps you to understand where your church is and what they believe. We see this as ideal, ideally to be used in new members classes where you can find out what people believe. So we think it's fascinating. We think it is troubling at the same time. Many people are coming into our churches because we do not have an entry point. We do not have a class. We do not have a place to ask the right questions. And since we're talking about resources, let me mention my own book. I am a Christian. The purpose of that book was to communicate to new members and to members when it means to be a follower of Christ, recognizing that there's a large swath of people within our churches who are not Christians. I had the opportunity over the years to meet with the late Billy Graham. Every time I did, I was so humbled by just being around him and listening to him because of his own humility. And one of those times that I met with him asking him what troubles him the most about church and Christianity and America today. And he said, I feel like we have a lot of church members who have never truly professed Christ. I believe we have a lot of people in our churches who are not Christians. Well, he was talking about the crime those. We didn't use that word that acronym was not around at that time. But he was talking about those who are Christian in name only. And he said, one of his burdens is to reach the loss around the world. But another one of his burdens is to reach the loss within the church. So why aren't they coming? Why are they coming if they're not Christians? It's culturally pressure. It's familial background. It's the church not asking the right questions are the questions at all. And it's not having some type of entry point into the church where you can ask those questions. We're going to continue to dive into this next week. If you're listening to this when it's released on April 18th and forward next week beginning on April 25th, 2024, we'll start answering questions about reaching the chronos, getting the gospel to the chronos. We'll dig again a little more deeply. Hey, let me mention this before we go. We have a new directory that has been released. It's called everything church resources directory. It's totally free. You can download it and print it out if you want to on a PDF or you can look at it online. It's flippable. We'll we'll give you a connection to that a link to that totally free. You don't even have to download it and print it out. If you don't want to, you can just look at the page turner flippable version online. We have attempted to get every church resource provider that we know of in there. Obviously, we've missed some, but we'll continue to add them. It'll be a tremendous resource because one of the great, one of the most voluminous questions we get at church answers is what is the best resource for or what is a resource for? This answer is something that you will want to have. Bookmarked or printed out, whatever you want to do, the everything church answers resource directory is now available and it is free. As always, thank you for being a part of the church answers podcast. Thank you who are watching us on YouTube. Thank you for giving us a thumbs up and thank you for subscribing. And for those who are listening on their audio app, give us a rating and review and hear my thanks for being a part of this community as well. We'll continue the discussion of the chronos. We got three more of these that we will begin to dig into next week as we talk about getting the gospel and reaching people who are claiming to be Christian, but who are not? We'll see you next week in those three episodes. You have been listening to the church answers podcast presented by Chaney and Associates. Chaney and Associates are the accounting firm for the church. You need to focus on ministry. Chaney will focus on finances. Also, please subscribe and give a review to the church answers podcast on YouTube and on your favorite podcasting app.