4.76 out of 5. What am I missing?

I have been recently reading and studying through the Revelation.  This time as I am reading through I am attempting to do so with the specific application of being a disciple and not so much about symbolism and eschatology. Making this study about what this teaches me about the church and my life as a disciple.  Forgive me if I am playing anachronistic with the church, but I was wondering if Jesus wrote a Google review of the seven churches how would they do on a scale of one to five?  My guess is that a couple would get a four or five, but most of the churches wouldn’t do so well.  That caused me to wonder how would our churches do?  Which caused me to chase down another rabbit trail. 

I looked up on Google “Churches in (city name withheld)” and looked at their reviews.  I reviewed the first 20 churches to populate the list and to my surprise they all rated pretty high, the lowest score being a 4.4.  The churches in this city rated on average 4.76 which struck me as a bit odd because I seemed to be missing something.  This community has a crime problem, a drug and alcohol addiction problem, there are rumors of corruption in the local government, wide spread educational problems, not to mention a not very well-hidden problem with lovelessness hiding as racism.  How is it that in a community that is suffused with the symptoms of sin every church is extremely good?  One would think that with every church being great that the powers of darkness would be receding if not vanquished.  How can this be?  I have a few ideas of what may be happening.  I do not mean to ridicule or degrade the church, but I am bothered by what I see in the church. 

When Jesus looked at the churches listed in Revelation only the churches at Smyrna and Philadelphia got what we might call 5 out of 5 and those church don’t look much like our churches.  The rest of the churches received less than impressive reviews.  But we judge all our churches as nearly 5’s.

I was preparing to share them and make that the point of this composition.  But I changed my mind because I want your opinion.  I would like for you to take just one or two minutes and tell me, in your judgment, why we as Christians in the church in America are experiencing high levels of satisfaction with our churches while at the same time our churches are for the most part static or in decline? 

By sending an answer you are giving me permission to reproduce your answer (name redacted) in a future blog.  Please try to be brief, most of the readership are preachers and I know we have trouble with brevity, but I hope to share your thoughts and to do them justice I want to keep them in their context which is easier to do if the answer is very short.

Please let me know what you think.  I really want your answers. 

Charlie@colemanssi.com