The complaint he probably hears most often is that the Church is anemic when it comes to discipleship. “Usually, the reference is made to a lack of depth, or a lack of time spent in one-on-one discipleship.”

As editor and online facilitator of a website that includes a global community of 80,000 pastors and church leaders registered with the site, Pastor Brandon Cox has read his share of criticisms of today’s Christian Church.

And he’s tired of it.

Two years ago, Cox was recruited by Pastor Rick Warren’s team at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., to help with its already well-developed global online community of pastors. His mission: take the church’s website which is dedicated to equip pastors, Pastors.com, to the next level.

In doing so, in “connecting our community to itself” and growing the number of church leaders, Cox has read enough books, blog posts, tweets, Facebook comments, and emails to learn that the Church is its own worst critic.

To counter all the negativity, he recently wrote a blog post titled, “What’s Right With the Church in 2011.”

Cox lists several positive trends about the modern church, but first writes: “I’m exposed to a very wide variety of thinking within the modern church. I read blogs by the reformed, the missional, the fundamental, the emerging, the evangelical, and the conservative points of view. I read books about theology, church growth, business, leadership, culture, and life.

“So I hear it all. And I’ve noticed that for a couple thousand years now, the church has had this tendency to be quick to point out what is wrong with the church, but slow to affirm what is right.”

Cox moved back to his home state of Arkansas several months ago to plant a church and be its pastor. However, he remains the editor of Pastors.com. He told The Christian Post that the complaint he probably hears most often is that the Church is anemic when it comes to discipleship. “Usually, the reference is made to a lack of depth, or a lack of time spent in one-on-one discipleship,” he said.

“We are an opinionated church culture. We have all kinds of feelings about how the church is doing too much or too little of the things we feel most positively or negatively about,” said Cox, who is also author of Twitter for Ministry.

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