“Jesus’s teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, in the main, our churches today do not have this effect. The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did.”
- Timothy Keller
I have a very short theory on why this is the case, namely paid church staff . . . career Christians. Their very existence and livelihood depends on the “conservative, button-down, moralistic people” paying the bills. So, church ends up looking like THOSE people. It’s just smart to run your country club well if you want your patrons to continue to pay their dues.