Burned Out on Church

Periodically I will talk with people who are burned out on church.  I'm not referring to the people that are dissatisfied with their current church and are contemplating going somewhere else (statistics say that this is approximately 10% of any congregation), but rather the people that are really, really burned out on church.  

These people are so burned out that they don't even want to go to church anymore.  They see church as full of politics, hypocrisy and judgment.  Many of these people still love God but they don't love His church anymore.

Barna talks about a whole segment of the population that is pursuing Christianity outside the walls of any traditional church.  I would guess that there is a segment of this population that are burned out, but there are a number of them that are just trying something different.

Whenever I talk with these people, it saddens my heart.  They have lost a love for the Church, the bride of Christ.  There is no doubt that church is full of all the things they say.  But the problem is that there is no other bride of Christ.  There is no other place that Christ has set up on earth — no other institution that functions like the church.  

Where are we to go?  There is no other place.