Welcome to another Thursday UNFILTERED blog post, the only blog that believes the cloud is just someone else’s computer wearing a halo.
In addition to the countless sermons preached every Sunday that are too shallow to drown a fruit fly, here are five reasons why today’s Christianity is shallower than it was twenty years ago.
I hope this changes in my lifetime. Thankfully, there are some exceptions, which I’ll list after the five reasons why today’s Christianity is so shallow.
Reason 1: Almost nobody in leadership, especially the thirty- and forty-somethings, actually wants to connect with other leaders who can take them deeper. Co-laboring isn’t just neglected; it never crosses their minds. Developing relationships with those who have more spiritual experience? Nah, not interested.
Most leaders would rather be solo acts. And solo acts, it turns out, don’t build anything with depth. This is especially true for most lead pastors in their 30s and 40s in the USA and Canada. Sigh.
Reason 2: Hardly any Christians in their twenties and thirties are looking for a mentor to take them further. Here’s the uncomfortable part: without one, their growth halts. They plateau and call it maturity. They also spend years struggling with agonizing problems that could have been easily resolved with the help of an experienced mentor.
Reason 3: The genuinely deep stuff—the books, articles, and messages that unveil Christ in uncommon ways and give practical exercises on how to know Him in the depths—gets buried under an avalanche of paid ads and sponsored promotions pushing Christian fluff.
The fluff wins. And whatever isn’t fluff is usually content that’s been repeated a million times and has become background noise to mature believers. This is the content that dominates.
Reason 4: Most of God’s people still don’t know how to read the New Testament. They open it in its current arrangement, minus the sequence and the historical backdrop, and wonder why few things land right or make complete sense.
You can’t skip the historical context and expect to understand The Story. Misreading leads to misinterpreting, which leads to misapplying. Every single time.
Reason 5: Very few pastors will invite another voice in to speak and take their congregations further. The reason isn’t theological. It’s mostly jealousy, and the quiet fear of being outshined in their own house.
The Exceptions
There are always exceptions, however. They’re just not the norm. As someone who has been writing and speaking on what I call “the deeper journey” for many years, I’ve had a front-row seat in observing the exceptions.
Ever since I was sent out to the Lord’s work, my ministry has been laser focused on what Paul calls “the deep things of God.”
“These are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God” (1 Corinthians 2:10).
So here are the exceptions that I’ve observed and experienced firsthand.
Exception 1: Although they are a rare breed, lead pastors, teachers, and preachers who are finished doing it alone and want real, high-level mentoring and connection with other gifted leaders have registered for the Insurgence Experience Kingdom Mastermind. Most are in their 30s and 40s with some older and some younger. (There’s still room for next year’s Mastermind. Apply here if interested. I may not do it again in 2028.)
Exception 2: Those looking for mentoring actually do exist. For example, the people who’ve joined The Deeper Christian Life Network represent Christians who are hungry and thirsty to go deeper in Christ and who want mentoring. They also desire to find others walking the same road. Many people say they want that. These people mean it.
Exception 3: We haven’t spent a single cent on ads or promotion for anything we produce. And yet The Insurgence Podcast has reached almost 1 million downloads, and the Christ is All podcast has crossed 2 million. That’s a drop in the ocean compared to the podcasts that pay big money for ads, but it’s significant.
My hope is simple: that the people who’ve been stirred by the podcasts will recommend them to their friends. (If you’re not yet subscribed to the podcasts, you can do so here.) We run on word of mouth, not on the advertising machine that’s become second nature in the Christian world today. God’s people need to be exposed to spiritual depth. If not, they don’t know it exists.
Exception 4: Even though it’s not a megabestseller (remember, no paid ads), the Christians reading the new book The Untold Story of the New Testament Church: Revised and Expanded are watching the New Testament crack open in ways they never expected. That’s the precise reason why I wrote it. When you learn The Story, you come away understanding your New Testament afresh and with depth, and you behold the Lord Jesus Christ and His ways vividly.
Exception 5: Even though it’s uncommon for lead pastors to invite others to speak to their congregations—especially those who minister the deeper things of God—they do exist. I can only speak from my experience here, but one of the lead pastors from last year’s Insurgence Experience Mastermind invited me to speak to his church five times over a single weekend this fall.
This pastor is a rare kind of leader; not afraid to invite other voices in because he genuinely loves the people he serves and wants to see them go higher and deeper in Christ. Other pastors have also extended invitations in recent years. Pastors and leaders in Indiana, Arkansas, Michigan, and Mississippi have hosted seminars. Some of the messages I brought in those seminars are on the Christ is All podcast. I tip my hat to these leaders and hold them in high esteem. Sadly, they aren’t the norm. Not yet at least.
Final (Yet Important) Thoughts
Most of you subscribed to this UNFILTERED email list because you’re chasing the deep stuff. You want content with actual substance, not the spiritual equivalent of a motivational poster of a cat hanging from a branch. Good news: that’s exactly what’s coming your way in the near future.
Then there’s the rest of you. You have no earthly idea how you ended up here. One day you were Googling whether Big Pharma is hiding the cure for hiccups and noticed that an anti-vaccine activist is recommending my articles. And now you’re here, blinking at your inbox, wondering what happened because there’s no mention of vaccines, angel dust contamination in the food supply, and similar things.
“Not that there’s anything wrong with that” (to quote Seinfeld), but it’s not what I write about.
The people I’m writing to are serious followers of Jesus who are on the deeper journey as well as those who know in their bones that there’s got to be more … more to the Lord, more to the Scriptures, more to church, more to ministry, and more to all things spiritual.
Either way, I welcome the unsubscribe button. All it means is: “This isn’t for you.” No hard feelings. The door is right there (below), and it doesn’t even squeak.
For those of you who want to continue to read and hear about the deeper things of God, I’ll talk to you on Sunday.
Your brother in the deeper journey,
fv
Psalm 115:1
Why God Isn’t Nervous About Your Future