Is Your Church ‘Quiet Quitting’? The Danger of Spiritual Lukewarmness
By now, you’ve probably heard about “quiet quitting.” It’s not about actually quitting your job and then trying to keep quiet about it. It’s about coasting in the job you currently have. Advocates see it as “looking to draw firmer work-life boundaries after two years of pandemic overtime.” In other words, no more burnout.
Critics, such as Arianna Huffington, write that quiet quitting “isn’t just about quitting on a job, it’s a step toward quitting on life.” Or as Kevin O’Leary, co-star on ABC’s “Shark Tank” and chairman of O’Shares ETFs, said in a CNBC video essay, quiet quitting is a horrible approach to building a career: “You have to go beyond because you want to. That’s how you achieve success.”
If you define “quiet quitting” as saying “no” to extra work without extra compensation, then it’s hard to push back against simply doing the job you were initially hired to do at the pay you agreed to do it for. But if it means coasting through life, then I agree with Huffington. And the idea of “quiet quitting” began as people posted videos of themselves on Instagram and TikTok talking about how to slack off on the job.
The entire debate (and there has been nothing quiet about the differing viewpoints) got me thinking about how it’s not just individuals who can quietly quit, but also churches. And here, there can be no debate on the merits of doing so. For a church to quietly quit – to coast, to do the bare minimum, to refuse to engage the mission with every fiber of its being – would be unthinkable.
Yet one can’t help but feel it’s the norm. Churches content with their size, content with their impact, content with status quo. Pastors who mail in their messages and lead at the pace of greatest ease. Attenders who are more concerned with their needs being met than seeing someone far from God come to faith.
There is simply no intensity.
The word intense is an interesting one. When it comes to movies, they are rated R for intense violence; when it comes to sports, we talk of intense rivalries; when it comes to business, we speak of intense competition; when it comes to war, we speak of intense combat. When we talk about something being intense, we mean that it exists in a high degree.
The word itself is built off the word intend, like when we intend to do something; to stretch out for something, to aim at something. So the idea is that if you intend on doing something – to reach out for something, to aim at something, to strive for something – then intensity is the degree to which you actually do it.
And Jesus has no stomach for churches that are not being intense.
Literally.
