Why the Holy Spirit Has Left Many Churches Today

A powerful sermon, inspired by the teachings of Kathryn Kuhlman, warns that many modern churches are suffering from a spiritual famine—not a lack of theological knowledge or engaging communication, but a profound absence of the manifest presence and power of the Holy Spirit. The core issue is the church’s strategic decision to prioritize human control, rigid programs, and congregational comfort over the unpredictable, wild, and consuming nature of God.

The message serves as a strong indictment against the idolatry of intellectualism and organizational tyranny, revealing that the systematic “scheduling out” of the Holy Spirit has left the church spiritually sterile and powerless.

The Tragedy of the Scheduled God: Quenching the Spirit

The presence of the Holy Spirit is often characterized by a “holy, pregnant, powerful silence” that falls when human activity ceases. However, the modern church is terrified of this silence because it is an element the bulletin did not schedule and the stage manager cannot control.

Trading Power for Predictability (The Golden Calf)

The church has traded the “wild, beautiful, and unpredictable movement of the Holy Spirit for the cold, dead, predictable security of a script”.

• Tyranny of the Service: There is a “quiet tyranny” in the average order of service, welcomed because it promises efficiency, professionalism, and ending on time. This script has reduced the King of Kings to a “15-minute slot between the second worship song and the announcements”.
• Missing Divine Appointments: Pastors, often “slaves to the clock,” cannot pause their sermon when a “sudden unction from the Lord” gives a word of knowledge for someone suffering a broken heart, because the schedule does not permit it. The prompting is quenched, and the divine appointment is missed, leaving the service “smooth as glass and dead as a doornail”.
• The Idolatry of Procedure: This meticulously planned production has become the church’s “golden calf”—a god of its own making that is safe, predictable, and will never convict or surprise anyone. In building this idol, the church has told the Holy Spirit that He is no longer welcome to lead.

The Withdrawal of the Gentleman

The Holy Spirit is a gentleman who will not force His way where He is not wanted. If the Spirit is scheduled out, He will quietly, respectfully withdraw.

• He will not compete with timing, shout over dramas, or interrupt announcements.
• The result is a church left with its program—three songs, three points, and a closing prayer—maintaining a “form of godliness” while denying the power thereof. Scripture commands believers to turn away from such forms.

The Idolatry of Intellectualism and Academic Arrogance

The church’s greatest error has been confusing the map for the territory, and the menu for the meal.

Head Knowledge vs. Heart Transformation

The focus has shifted to intellectual ascent, prioritizing “head knowledge over heart transformation”. Believers have become:

• Scholars of a Ghost Town: Experts on the description of the river of God (its depth, width, and chemical composition) but have “never ever stepped into its current and felt its power to sweep us off our feet”.
• Lecturers, Not Introducers: Preachers often deliver messages based on Greek lexicons and systematic theology, “explaining God” but failing to introduce people to God. There is no “fire in his bones” or “after glory of the presence”.
• Educated, Not Liberated: People leave informed but not transformed, with notebooks that are heavier, but spirits that are “no lighter”.

The Folly of Caging God

This idolatry of intellectualism attempts to make the “glorious, mysterious, and often terrifyingly simple gospel” a subject for academic debate.

• The goal is a God who fits neatly within doctrinal statements, but the God of the Bible “will not be caged by our cognition”. He is a consuming fire who burns up the “petty little boxes we try to put him in”.
• Pharisees, Not Disciples: The accumulation of biblical facts divorced from the “heart-crushing, life-giving, will-shattering work of the Holy Spirit” yields Pharisees, not disciples; critics, not worshippers.
• Lost First Love: Christ commended the church in Ephesus for its doctrinal purity and hard work, but charged them with forsaking their first love—losing the passion, the fire, and the presence of Christ despite having the truth.

The Fear of the Supernatural: God in a Museum

Modern churches have taken the “scissors of our own discomfort” and cut out the pages of God’s story that make them “squirm”.

The Denial of Power

There is a profound fear of the move of the Holy Spirit—they want the God of the still, small voice, but run from the God of the mighty rushing wind.

• Chaos and Embarrassment: Anything outside the circle of acceptable divine moves is labeled as “chaos, fanaticism, as embarrassing”.
• God in a Museum: The mighty acts of God have been placed in a “museum behind glass with a little plaque that reads ‘Do not touch historical exhibit'”. They want a safe, predictable God who is a slave to His own creation.
• Prayer of Apology: Believers pray “safe, sanitized, powerless prayers” that require no faith, rather than commanding the fever to flee or the cancer to wither. This is the “prayer of apology”—praying to protect God from the potential embarrassment of an unanswered prayer.

Quenching the Gifts

The beautiful, mysterious, and powerful gifts of the Spirit have been theologically explained into oblivion.

• Ultimate Arrogance: Doctrines have been constructed to explain why God doesn’t do that sort of thing anymore. This is the “ultimate arrogance”—acting as if the Holy Spirit was a temporary spiritual trainer, and now that the church has its bylaws and budgets, it can manage just fine on its own.
• Human Cost: People in the pews need a touch from the living God, but the church has sent the Great Physician away, offering only a pamphlet. They need discernment to cast out anxiety, but they are given philosophical debates.

The Cult of Comfort and Consumerism

The church has forgotten its identity as a temple and a body, beginning instead to operate as a business and a corporation.

Pleasing the Customer

The driving force behind church decisions is: “Are they satisfied?”. The focus has shifted from the approval of heaven to the approval of the audience.

• Frictionless Journey: The whole machinery is designed to make the journey from the parking lot to the pew as frictionless as possible. This consumer mindset has turned God into a divine butler whose prayers are orders placed with a “celestial delivery service”.
• Loss of Awe: This cult of comfort has led to the complete loss of the fear of the Lord. There is no sense of awe that they are standing on holy ground; God has been brought down to a “sentimental, domesticated sense”.
• The Sanitized Cross: The gospel is offensive, beginning by telling a man he is a sinner. But the church has sanitized the message, seeking a crown without a cross, and building a Christianity that requires no death, sacrifice, or surrender—a “comfortable, cozy, and utterly powerless imitation”.