I can almost picture Martin Luther, standing before the Catholic Church leadership at the Diet of Worms, under immense pressure to recant his convictions, boldly uttering a modern phrase to drive his point home: “Sacred cows make the best hamburgers.” Had he said it, what would he have meant? That sometimes the most fiercely protected beliefs and practices—the ones treated as untouchable—are the very things that must be reexamined, challenged, and even dismantled. These “sacred cows” represent traditions elevated to near-divine status, even when they drift from the heart of God. Turning them into “hamburgers” means breaking them down and redeeming what’s good to nourish something better—something more faithful to the gospel and the mission of Jesus.

Luther wasn’t trying to destroy the Church. He was fighting for its renewal. His resistance wasn’t about rebellion—it was about returning to the firm foundation: Christ and His Word. In that same spirit, the church today must face a sobering question: Are we still building on faulty assumptions and inherited models? We must test everything—our structures, traditions, and methods—against the full counsel of Scripture, the real needs of people, and the long-term fruit of our practices.

Too often, spiritual leaders are unwilling to take an honest look at the systems they’ve inherited. But why not revisit the foundation? Why not hold our approaches up to the light of God’s Word and the test of real human impact? If we fail to do this, we risk stewarding something other than what Jesus entrusted to His Church.

So what are these “sacred cows” we need to bring to the altar? Here are five:

1. The Illusion of the Priesthood of All Believers

We say we believe in the priesthood of all believers—but our church structures tell a different story. In practice, ministry still revolves around paid professionals who are seen as the “real” ministers. Instead of equipping the saints for the work of ministry (Ephesians 4:11–13), we’ve created spiritual spectators who depend on a handful of leaders to carry the weight.

The average believer is rarely trained, empowered, or released to walk in their God-given calling. We affirm the priesthood in theory, but in function we’ve sidelined the body.

2. Neglect of Inner Healing and Emotional Restoration

The Church—and the world—is filled with emotional wounds and unresolved trauma. Though Jesus came to bind up the brokenhearted, many churches treat inner healing as optional or outsource it to the few existing parachurch ministries.

Even when inner healing ministries exist within the church, they are often slow to grow, overly cautious or hesitant to truly raise new facilitators.More so,  too many of the few trained are stuck in limbo—trained but never trusted, equipped but never deployed. Yes, this ministry requires skill, maturity, and experience,—but with clearer, streamlined pathways, intentional equipping, and a willingness to release others, we can meet the deep backlog of broken hearts longing for healing.

3. Discipleship That Doesn’t Multiply

Jesus didn’t say, “Make converts.” He said, “Make disciples of all nations.” Yet in many churches today, discipleship stops at some level of personal growth. We celebrate “transformation”—which, in practice, often means attending regularly, avoiding major sins, and talks about personal spiritual growth.

But without clear biblical markers of maturity—like obedience to Jesus, love others well, and the ability to make reproducing disciples—we risk mistaking participation for transformation. It’s like a student who hasn’t mastered even the most basic of grade-level skills but is still celebrated at the end of the year culmination ceremony as moving on to the next grade. Great ceremony but no substance.

Discipleship isn’t complete until it multiplies. While it is a lifelong journey, not a short-term program, we cannot claim maturity if it doesn’t result in ever maturing disciples and disciple who makes disciples.

4. Come and See > Go and Tell

In much of the Western church, evangelism has been reduced to a marketing strategy: “Come to our church.” We invest in better services, better branding, and better events—hoping people will show up. But this model often produces growth by addition, not by mission—pulling in already-believing churchgoers from other congregations, while the lost remain unreached.

We must return to the way of Jesus: carrying the gospel into our neighborhoods, workplaces, and everyday spaces—meeting people where they are. And these new disciples must be made within their own relational networks so that the outward movement doesn’t stop with them but extends through them. Finally, we cannot claim someone has been discipled into maturity if that maturity does not include becoming a disciple who makes disciples.

5. The Church Building and the Exclusive Pulpit: The Most Sacred Cow of All

Perhaps no sacred cow looms larger than the modern church building—expensive, impressive, and often viewed as the ultimate sign of God’s blessing. Alongside it stands the exclusive pulpit: a platform reserved for the few while the many watch from their rows.

Rather than activating the body, this model reinforces passivity. The result? A culture where believers consume religious content but rarely step into their own callings. That may sound like an exaggeration, but consider this ststistic: the U.S. church spends an average of $1.5 million for every new baptized believer. That’s a staggering figure, much of it tied up in buildings, staff, and production—while the return in disciple-making fruit remains minimal. Shocking? Yes. But it reveals what we truly value. We’ve poured our treasure into maintaining sacred spaces, while neglecting the sacred mission to reach the lost.

And it wasn’t always this way. The early church didn’t invest in buildings—they gathered in homes. Community happened around dinner tables and shared space, not stages and sound systems. What they needed wasn’t millions—it was open doors, simple hospitality, and faithful people. The gospel spread not through cathedrals, but through couches and courtyards.

Everything changed in the 4th century when Emperor Constantine made Christianity the religion of the empire. Believers were moved from homes into state-sponsored church buildings. They sat in rows. They listened to professionals. And slowly, the active body of Christ became a passive audience. Do you see it? This “building tradition” didn’t empower the church—it domesticated it. It replaced movement with maintenance, participation with passivity, and mission with ritual.

The early church turned the world upside down without buildings or budgets—they did it in house churches at no cost. Perhaps we should ask: Are our sacred spaces keeping us from sacred obedience?

This is a call to church leaders, disciple-makers, and everyday believers: Will we cling to sacred cows—or lay them down to build something better, something truer to Jesus? Will we evaluate everything—not just what we do, but how and why we do it—in the light of God’s Word and His eternal purpose? Because if we do, we may just discover that what we’ve been protecting all along isn’t holy at all—it’s just a familiar, sacred cow. We’ll, I believe it’s time to make burgers out of them.