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The church growth movement and the Homogenous Unit Principle (see Donald McGavran) that drove it beginning in the 1970s was an attempt to Christianize something that violated the aspect of the gospel reflected in both the Lord's Supper & Pentecost. /1 https://www.christianitytoday.com/pastors/2010/august-online-only/down-with-homogeneous-unit-principle.html
Aside from the obvious result of encouraging church goers to remain racially segregated, it also divorced church planting & church growth from disciple-making. The scale of the movement laid the groundwork for development of religious subcultures not deeply formed by Scripture./2
Now, we have huge numbers of people who self-identify as Christian & have tremendous religious zeal but whose faith is shallow. They've never been meaningfully challenged to obey all of Jesus' teachings that require them to repent of idolatry, prejudice, legalism, greed, etc. /3
They don't understand the Bible or its call to a cruciform life, so they abuse it with not only America-as-Israel readings of it but also Me-as-Israel readings of it, using it to justify egregious hyper-individualism, tribalism, and militarism. /4
They use Jesus as a mascot but don't know Jesus at all, so it's no surprise that when they have visions, dreams, or impulses inconsistent with Scripture, they can't discern that it's not Jesus' voice speaking to them. /5
