The Modern Church is Misaligned with the Jesus I Know
- Donald V. Watkins
- 1 day ago
- 4 min read
By: Donald V. Watkins
Copyrighted and Published on April 14, 2025
An Editorial Opinion
Yesterday, while I was taking my daily 2-mile walk around my beautiful Sacramento neighborhood and talking on the phone to my sister Tina Minott, she asked me why I did not attend Sunday morning church services anymore. She reminded me that our family was raised in the church.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was my childhood Sunday School teacher, pastor, BTU instructor, and Crusaders Club leader in Montgomery, Alabama in the 1950s. We also spent considerable time attending Dr. Ralph D. Abernathy's Montgomery church.
What is more, my maternal grandfather, Rev. Willie L. Varnado, was a powerful Baptist minister in his day. My dad's first college presidency was at Owen Junior College in Memphis, Tennessee, which was founded by and named after another famous and powerful Baptist minister -- Rev. Samuel A. Owen.
My Spirituality Embraces the Teachings of Jesus Christ, Which are Often Ignored or Diluted in the Modern Church
I am a very spiritual person, but I no longer view the Modern Church as a spiritual home for me. The Modern Church is quite often misaligned with the teachings of the Jesus I know. Here’s why:
1. Jesus lived simply. The Church often doesn’t.
Jesus: Nomadic, minimal possessions, often homeless, reliant on hospitality and donors. His most famous teachings warned against storing up earthly treasures and made it harder for the rich to enter the Kingdom of Heaven than a camel through a needle's eye.
Modern Church (especially in the West):
Some churches own mega-campuses, private jets, and media empires.
Others are modest and community-centered, but even small churches often invest heavily in buildings, tech, and paid staff.
2. Jesus was supported by women and the marginalized. The Church has had a history of excluding both.
Jesus: His financial and relational backbone included women, outcasts, and social “nobodies.” He elevated their voices, healed them, praised their faith, and entrusted women with the first resurrection announcement.
Modern Church:
Some denominations still bar women from leadership.
LGBTQ+ people and others on the margins are often judged or excluded, despite Jesus’ radical inclusivity.
3. Jesus was anti-institutional. The Church is an institution.
Jesus: Criticized the religious elite, flipped temple tables, and warned against hypocrisy, legalism, and spiritual ego. He never founded a religious organization.
Modern Church:
Often structured with hierarchies, titles, doctrines, and rules.
Sometimes more focused on preserving power, tradition, or membership than pursuing the risky, liberating truth that Jesus preached.
4. Jesus taught radical, inconvenient truths. The Church often ignores or dilutes them.
Jesus: His teachings were often disruptive -- calling out injustice, hypocrisy, and corruption. He said things that got him killed.
Modern Church:
In some circles, teachings are reduced to self-help slogans or prosperity messaging.
Others go too far in the opposite direction -- fire and brimstone judgment without grace.
5. Jesus prioritized the poor, sick, and broken.
Jesus: Spent time with lepers, prostitutes, beggars, and demon-possessed individuals. He literally said, “I came for the sick, not the healthy.”
Modern Church:
Many still serve the poor through soup kitchens, shelters, and missions.
But others seem more focused on attracting the middle class, raising money, and avoiding discomfort.
Final Thoughts
In his August 1963 Letter from the Birmingham Jail, Dr. King said:
“There was a time when the church was very powerful. It was during that period that the early Christians rejoiced when they were deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was the thermostat that transformed the mores of society. obey God rather than man…..
Things are different now. The contemporary church is so often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch supporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's often vocal sanction of things as they are.
If the church of today does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authentic ring, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century.”
From what I have seen in the last 10 years, the Modern Church has lapsed into an "irrelevant social club"that is often led by growing pool of silver-tongue "street hustlers" who masquerade as modern-day disciples.
Finally, many in the Christian nationalist and evangelical communities have ascribed to a deeply flawed Donald Trump a quasi-messianic status, portraying him as divinely chosen or anointed by God. Others have elevated Trump to "Jesus Christ" status. This sacrilegious behavior is too much for me.
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