Based on the following message:

There is an old Hebrew word tucked into the pages of 1 Samuel that carries more weight for modern American Christianity than most people realize. The word is Ichabod — and it means simply this: the glory has departed.

The story behind it is devastating. Israel had gone to war against the Philistines and was losing badly. In desperation, the priests Hophni and Phinehas carted the Ark of the Covenant onto the battlefield like a lucky charm, as though God could be brought in a box to guarantee a victory. It didn’t work. Thirty thousand Israelites were slaughtered, both priests were killed, and the Ark was captured. When the aged high priest Eli heard the news, he fell backward, broke his neck, and died. And when Phinehas’s wife gave birth in the chaos of that dark day, she named her son Ichabod — no glory — because the glory of the Lord had departed from Israel.

It is worth asking, honestly and without flinching: could that same word be written over the door of the American church today?

A Church That Has Lost the Word

The first sign that glory has departed from a congregation is the absence of the Bible. Not physically — plenty of churches still have Bibles on the pews — but functionally. The preacher has stopped preaching it, and the people have stopped expecting to hear it.

The Apostle Paul’s final charge to Timothy was urgent and unambiguous: Preach the word. Be ready in season and out of season. He warned that the time would come when people would not endure sound doctrine, when they would accumulate teachers who told them only what they wanted to hear, and would turn away from truth toward myths. That time is now.

The statistics are sobering. Pew Research data from 2023 and 2024 shows that only 62% of Americans now identify as Christian, down from 78% in 2007. Mainline Protestant denominations — Methodist, Episcopal, Lutheran, Presbyterian — once represented half of all Americans. Today they represent roughly 11%. The common thread running through nearly every declining denomination is theological liberalism: a slow drift away from the authority of Scripture, a willingness to let the culture’s values override the Bible’s teaching, and ultimately a pulpit that no longer declares “thus says the Lord” but only “it seems to me.”

When a church stops believing the Bible, it stops preaching the Bible. And when it stops preaching the Bible, the glory departs.

A Church That Pretends to Be Alive

Jesus’ letter to the church at Sardis in Revelation 3 is haunting in its directness: You have a name that you are alive, but you are dead. Sardis had a reputation. The services were still running. The doors were still open. But the Lord, who sees past outward appearance into the heart, called it exactly what it was.

Dead churches are not hard to recognize once you know what to look for. They worship their past — the freshest testimony in the room is thirty years old. They are allergic to change, mistaking tradition for faithfulness. Their leadership has stopped pressing forward and started coasting. They have stopped reaching young families, which means they have quietly accepted that there will be no next generation. And most tellingly, they have traded the real gospel — the one that says people are sinners in need of a Savior — for a social gospel that offers soup and sympathy but no salvation.

As one pastor put it plainly: if all you give people is soup and soap without salvation, all you do is make this world a better place from which to go to hell.

A Church That Is Lukewarm

The church at Laodicea received the harshest letter of all. Jesus said their tepidness made him want to vomit them out of his mouth. They were wealthy, comfortable, and completely blind to their own spiritual bankruptcy. You say you are rich and need nothing. You do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked.

Lukewarm Christianity looks a lot like American Christianity in 2026. It is Christianity that has stopped being bothered by the sin around it, that has made its peace with the culture, that is neither hot enough to cost you anything nor cold enough to be honest about its unbelief. It is Christianity as lifestyle accessory rather than as life-transforming allegiance to a risen Lord.

The Remedy Has Not Changed

The word Jesus repeats to nearly every struggling church in Revelation is the same word Peter preached at Pentecost and the same word the prophets thundered for centuries: repent. Return. Open the door. The glory is not gone permanently — it is waiting to be welcomed back.

The Ichabod church is not inevitable. But the road back requires honesty about where we are, humility enough to turn around, and the courage to once again say — whatever the cost — thus says the Lord.