The Church Has a Credibility Problem (Not a Marketing Problem)

More people than ever are walking away from church — and the ones who haven’t left are often apologizing for it. Tell someone at a neighborhood barbecue that you’re a Christian, and watch what happens. A slight shift in body language. A polite change of subject.

We’ve spent decades trying to solve this with better programs, slicker branding, and more relevant Sunday experiences. But I don’t think we have a marketing problem. I think we have a credibility problem. And there’s a difference.

A marketing problem means people don’t know what you’re offering. A credibility problem means they’ve seen it up close — and it didn’t match the advertisement. (Is this church a “show” or an invitation to a new life?”)

The Question John the Baptist Was Asking

There’s a story in the Gospels I keep coming back to when I think about this.

John the Baptist is in prison, waiting to die. He’s been arrested for publicly calling out Herod’s scandalous relationship with his sister-in-law. John’s whole life had been devoted to preparing the way for someone — the one who would set everything right. And now he’s sitting in a cell, starting to wonder.

So he sends his friends to ask Jesus directly: Are you the One? Or should we be looking for someone else?

I find that question almost unbearably honest. This is the man who baptized Jesus, who called him “the Lamb of God.” And even he had a moment where reality wasn’t matching his expectations.

Jesus doesn’t scold him for doubting. He answers with what I’d call his kingdom job description:

“Go back and tell John what you see and hear — the blind see, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news preached to them.”
— Matthew 11:4-5

That’s the evidence. That’s what it looks like when the real thing shows up.

The Question the World Is Asking Us

Here’s the thing that haunts me: I think our neighbors are asking us the same question John asked Jesus.

Not in those words, of course. But in a thousand small ways, the people around us are watching and wondering: Are you the ones we’ve been waiting for? Because I really need someone to show up and help. Is this it?

Imagine a woman in your neighborhood. Her husband left her alone with three kids. She just found out her job is being eliminated. She’s scared and exhausted and she doesn’t know where to turn. And she’s heard that Christians are supposed to be different — that the gospel changes things.

If she came to your church this Sunday, would she find evidence? Not evidence that Christianity is historically defensible (important, but not what she needs right now). Evidence that it works. That the people sitting in those seats live differently. That they would actually show up for her.

Or would she hear: “We have three services now, a new children’s wing, and the best youth group in the county”?

I’m not trying to be harsh. I love the church. But I think we have to sit with that question honestly.

For more on this exact tension, there’s a post worth reading alongside this one: Stop GOing to Church. Start BEing the Church.

The False Advertising Problem

What John was really asking Jesus was a credibility question. “Does the evidence match the claim?”

And here’s the honest answer I’ve had to sit with about myself and about the church I love: often, it doesn’t.

It’s not that people haven’t heard the gospel. It’s that many of them have seen it up close — in how we treated them, in how we responded to their pain, in whether we showed up when things fell apart — and something doesn’t add up.

Most people don’t reject Jesus because of a well-reasoned theological objection. They’re reacting to a gap. They were told this Jesus-following thing was good news, something that transforms people from the inside out. And then they watched Christians live more or less the same way as everyone else — same anxieties, same self-focus, same conflicts, same indifference to the people right next door.

That’s false advertising. Not intentional, maybe. But false nonetheless.

“Maybe it’s not the gospel that’s lost its good news — maybe it’s us.”

If a short video helps, here’s a brief clip where I unpack this in everyday terms: Watch on YouTube

So What Does the Evidence Actually Look Like?

Jesus didn’t answer John with a theological argument. He pointed to changed lives. Broken people being made whole. The hungry being fed. The lonely being brought in. The forgotten being seen.

That’s still the evidence. And it still has to happen in ordinary life — not just inside our church buildings on Sunday.

If the gospel is real, it should show up in how we treat our neighbors when things are inconvenient for us. It should show up in how we respond to the single mom down the street. In how we spend our money and our weekends. In whether the people around us feel like they’d call us first in a crisis — or last.

Gospel fluency isn’t a communication skill. It’s a life pattern. It’s what happens when people who believe they’ve been transformed by Jesus actually live like it in the ordinary stuff.

The podcast episode Living As a Friend Of Sinners gets at exactly this — what it looks like to move toward people the way Jesus did, without an agenda, without performance, just because the love of God has genuinely overflowed into how you see people.

The Shift That Changes Everything

Here’s the good news (and there is good news): this isn’t unfixable.

But the fix isn’t a new program or a rebrand. It’s repentance and reorientation. It’s asking the honest question: Am I actually living as ‘good news’? And then, slowly and imperfectly, starting to live in a new way, led by the Spirit…I also see a little icon at the very bottom of the text. I also see a little icon at the very bottom of the text.

It starts with noticing. Noticing who’s around you that is hurting. Noticing the woman at the soccer game who seems like she’s barely holding it together. Noticing the neighbor who just lost his job. And then showing up. Not with a tract or an agenda, but with a casserole and a “how can I help?”

When we do that — when the blind are seeing, and the hungry are being fed, and the broken are being welcomed — we answer John’s question. We answer our neighbor’s question. We become the evidence.

The Holistic Discipleship: The Gospel In Everything episode is a great next listen if you want to think more deeply about how the gospel is meant to touch every corner of your everyday life — not just your Sunday mornings.

One Step Forward

If you’re feeling the weight of this, here’s one practical place to start: the Discipleship as a Lifestyle course. It walks through what it looks like to build the kind of everyday rhythms and gospel-fluency that turn ordinary life into a living testimony. Not theory — practical, week-by-week tools for living it out.

Because the world isn’t waiting for a better church advertisement. They’re waiting to see if what we’re advertising is actually true.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1: What if my church really is doing good things in the community — why does it still feel like people are skeptical?
Skepticism is often cumulative — it builds over years of watching the gap between Christian claims and Christian behavior. Even genuine good work doesn’t instantly undo that. The answer isn’t to do more impressive things; it’s to build the kind of consistent, relational presence over time that doesn’t look like a program. People trust people, not institutions.

Q2: I want to live this out, but I don’t know where to start. I don’t feel “gospel fluent” enough to engage my neighbors well.
Gospel fluency isn’t a skill level you reach — it’s a practice you start. Begin with curiosity and presence, not answers. Ask your neighbors questions about their lives. Show up when they’re struggling. You don’t have to have a perfectly crafted gospel presentation to be the good news to someone. Often the most powerful thing is simply being the person who showed up.

Q3: What if the people around me aren’t interested in church or Christianity at all?
Then meet them where they are. Jesus didn’t lead with an invitation to synagogue — he led with healing, feeding, seeing. The invitation to a worshiping community is often the last step, not the first. Start by being someone they trust, someone whose life genuinely reflects the love and wholeness of God. That creates curiosity. And curiosity creates conversations.