Somewhere along the way, the church began to trade the real for the polished. Faces gave way to masks. Grace gave way to image. And what once made the people of God alive, raw honesty, fierce love, and dependence on Christ, was slowly replaced by performance.

It was not always like this. In the beginning, believers were not respected or applauded. They were outnumbered, misunderstood, and sometimes hunted. Yet in those days, the church burned with a kind of power the world could not explain. Why? Because they had nothing but Christ. No programs. No platforms. No political clout. Just Christ in them, their life, their hope, their strength.

But when Christianity became popular, when it gained numbers and cultural respect, something dangerous happened. We began to rely on ourselves.

Competition crept in. Churches compared numbers, leaders measured success, and believers looked at one another sideways. Love gave way to rivalry.

Criticism hardened. Instead of restoring the fallen, we whispered about them. Instead of carrying wounds, we covered them up. Grace gave way to shame.

Unity fractured. Denominations fought. Christians split over details that did not matter in the light of eternity. We defended our image harder than we defended each other.

And in the scramble, political power looked more attractive than spiritual authority. We started chasing influence instead of intimacy. We believed that if we could control laws and elections, the Kingdom would advance. But the Kingdom of God never depended on Caesar’s throne. It has always rested on the shoulders of Christ.

Social media supercharged the decline. Arguments that once stayed behind closed doors now played out for the whole world to see. Outrage went viral. Division multiplied. Faith became performance, curated for likes and follows. We craved clicks more than Christ.

But peel back all those layers and you will see the deeper problem. We have forgotten grace.

We have forgotten that the Christian life is not us trying harder to live for God. It is Christ living His life in us. We have forgotten that we are already accepted, already loved, already complete in Him. When we forget, we scramble to prove ourselves. We polish our image. We perform for approval. We hide our flaws because we have lost sight of the One who bore them.

That is why the church often feels fake because we are trying to live in our own strength, which only Christ can live through us.

And strangely, that is why Alcoholics Anonymous sometimes looks more like the church than the church does.

Walk into an AA meeting. You will not find polish. You will not find platforms. You will find people sitting in a circle, telling the truth about their mess. No one is impressed. Everyone is broken. And that honesty becomes the soil where healing grows.

If someone relapses, they are not shunned. They are embraced with tough love and gentle grace. “We have been there,” they say. “Let’s start again.” No one pretends they are stronger than the rest. They know they are all powerless apart from help, and that shared weakness becomes their bond.

Now walk into many churches. Smiles are practiced. Sermons are polished. Pain is hidden. And when someone stumbles, the response can be silence, gossip, or exile. We preach grace but practice judgment. We promise to welcome but enforce the image. We call ourselves a family, but we treat failure as a scandal.

No wonder broken people sometimes choose the basement over the sanctuary.

Meanwhile, the persecuted church around the world does not have this problem. There is no room for masks when gathering could cost you your life. No time for quarrels when survival depends on one another. No space for pride when everyone is weak. There, grace is not an idea. It is air. Forgiveness flows freely because no one can afford bitterness. Unity is forged in fire. Love is costly, and that makes it real.

So where does that leave us?

It leaves us with the only way forward. Returning to grace.

We do not need bigger stages or better strategies. We do not need more polish or more politics. We need Christ, His life in us, His presence with us, His power through us.

That means pulling the masks off. It means leaders admitting they are as desperate for grace as anyone else. It means churches creating spaces where honesty is welcomed, not punished. It means treating the fallen as family, not failures. It means prayer over politics, people over polish, the cross over the crown.

And most of all, it means remembering the truth of the gospel. We do not live for Him. He lives in us. We do not fight for His approval. We rest in His finished work. The Christian life is not our performance but His presence.

That is why revival will not come through performance. It will not come through headlines. It will not come through image. It will only come when we stop striving and start resting in the One who already finished the work.

That is the life AA circles point to, the power of raw honesty and dependence. But it is what the church had first, in the gospel of grace. And it is what we can have again, if we will remember.

The world does not need a church that looks good. It needs a church that loves well. Not a church that hides weakness, but a church that boasts in weakness, because Christ’s strength is made perfect there.

When we drop the masks, when we give up performance, when we return to grace, the church will no longer feel fake. It will feel alive. And the world will no longer see our striving. They will see Christ.

The church grew loved, her halls grew wide,
She learned to polish, learned to hide.
The masks replaced the open face,
And image stood where once was grace.

She traded cross for crown of gold,
Forgot the story once so bold.
Her voice grew sharp, her heart grew cold,
And mercy lost the grip it held.

She fights for power more than prayer,
Seeks clout and crowns but finds no care.
Her children argue, split, divide,
While broken souls are pushed aside.

And then the screen, its endless glow,
Turned whispers into public show.
With every like and viral fight,
She lost her love, she dimmed her light.

Yet in a basement, low and small,
A circle waits, no mask at all.
With trembling hands and honest eyes,
They speak their mess, they drop disguise.

No one is greater, none above,
They bind their wounds with toughened love.
And when one falls, they do not shame,
They simply say, “We’ve been the same.”

Far off, in places marked by pain,
Where following Christ may cost a name,
The persecuted kneel and sing,
And grace becomes their everything.

No polish there, no stage, no show,
Just Spirit-fire in hearts that glow.
No petty fights, no masks to wear,
Just broken saints with love to spare.

So what of us, so loud, so proud,
Performing faith to please the crowd?
The call is clear, the truth is plain,
The church must find her soul again.

Not polish, but His presence near.
Not politics, but humble prayer.
Not masks, but faces touched by grace.
Not crowns, but crosses to embrace.

The world is aching, hearts are sore,
They do not need our stage or floor.
They long for mercy, real and true,
And they will see Him—when they see you.