Seeing how about 90-95% of my readers are currently in a traditional church setting, I´m betting the title does one of two things: it either makes you uncomfortable, or you´re already deciding to ignore this blog as a rave against the traditional church. Let me assure you, I love the traditional church and I plan on attending my home church once I return to the States. In fact, last night I hardly slept at all thinking about this blog and how I could write it lovingly. I really feel led to write this and even asked the counsel of one of my team members about doing it.
Last night, my mind began racing with thoughts about my home church as I tried to go to sleep. Recently, as most of you know by now (I´d be surprised if you hadn´t heard... but that´s another blog), the senior pastor of my home church has decided to follow God´s direction for his life and that direction is leading him away from my church. It really got me thinking about the traditional church culture as a whole. I was reminiscing about the past when our former senior pastor left and ¨coincidentally¨ a surprising amount of members left as well. I wonder if that will happen this time too. Of course, those people will use a plethora of different excuses as to why their leaving coincides with the pastor leaving, but the truth is, everyone knows. ¨For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.¨ 2 Timothy 4:3-4 ESV Wow, that sounds remarkably familiar... Research shows that about 15% of the church members leave whenever an able pastor leaves that church (Weese & Crabtree, Elephant in the Boardroom).
This research alarms me because it points to a fatal flaw of the traditional church. I recently read something that struck me profoundly as true, ¨Members of the traditional church often mistake a leader´s charismatic personality for His Spirit.¨ So, when that charismatic pastor leaves, people feel free to leave as well. The flaw is that the vast majority of Christians in the traditional setting attend ¨their¨ church for one reason or another that has nothing Biblical about it... For example, ¨I go to so-and-so Church because I like the pastor (or the music, or the people, etc).¨ Fill in the blank with whatever the fad is at this current moment. It´s the ¨I/Me¨ focus that pains me; the point of church has become to please the attendee (i.e. hip music, impressive buildings, fancy stages and the ¨performances¨ of the worship leaders) and we have lost the point that church is to worship and praise our Creator. It doesn´t matter how we ¨feel¨ about it, but American culture has permeated and warped the meaning of the church from Him to ¨me.¨
So the point of this blog is to issue a challenge to all of my readers to examine, critically, the reason one attends your church. Please ask yourselves these questions, ¨Why do I go to ______ Church?¨¨Is it because I like the pastor, or the music pleases me, or the fancy stage presence?¨¨Or do I go because I can honestly feel a connection to the almighty presence of God while I´m there?¨ I earnestly pray that you can take the time to look deep inside yourself and, most importantly, ask God to show you the reasons you attend.
One disclaimer before I end this blog: this blog is not advocating that if you are unhappy with your church, you are free to ¨shop¨ other churches for one that fits you. Yet again, the focus of that kind of thought process is back to ¨me.¨ This blog is only asking that you find the right reasons for attending your church.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Friday, January 2, 2009
An Organic Appetite
The following entry was an article in a magazine I read this morning as part of my quiet time. When I read it, I identified with everything the author said… I just felt like sharing it with y´all since it affected me so much. It was written by Margaret Feinberg, and is taken from her book, The Organic God. Enjoy.
¨All too often I find myself tempted to live a distracted life. You know the kind—the one where within the busyness of life you still manage to perform the stand-up, sit-down, clap, clap, clap of regular church attendance, hope for a new nugget of knowledge or insight from the weekly sermon and check off a random, albeit short, list of acts of kindness.
That´s when the hunger appears in my belly and overtakes my soul, grumbling that there must be more. More of God not only to understand but to discover.
Deep down inside, I still hunger for a true, pure relationship with the Organic God—the One True God.
While organic is usually associated with food grown without chemical-based fertilizers or pesticides, organic is also used to describe a lifestyle: simple, healthful, and close to nature. Those are all things I desire in my relationship with God. I hunger for simplicity. I want to approach God in childlike faith, wonder, and awe. I long for more than just spiritual life but spiritual health—whereby my soul is not just renewed and restored, but it becomes a source of refreshment for others.
I want to discover God again, anew, in a fresh way. I want my love for Him to come alive so that my heart dances at the very thought of Him. I want a real relationship with Him—a relationship that isn´t altered by perfumes, additives, chemicals, or artificial flavors that promise to make it sweeter, sourer, or tastier than it really is. I want to know a God who in all His fullness would allow me to know Him. I want a relationship that is real, authentic, and life-giving even when it hurts. I want to know God striped of as many false perceptions as possible. Such a journey risks exposure, honesty, and even pain, but I´m hungry and desperate enough to go there.
In some regards, the journey to know God isn´t too different from a first encounter with someone you´ve never met. I want to know what God looks like and what His interests are. I want to know His likes and dislikes. I want to know what makes Him tick and also what ticks Him off. I want to fall in love all over again. I want to know God.
I want to know the Organic God.¨
¨All too often I find myself tempted to live a distracted life. You know the kind—the one where within the busyness of life you still manage to perform the stand-up, sit-down, clap, clap, clap of regular church attendance, hope for a new nugget of knowledge or insight from the weekly sermon and check off a random, albeit short, list of acts of kindness.
That´s when the hunger appears in my belly and overtakes my soul, grumbling that there must be more. More of God not only to understand but to discover.
Deep down inside, I still hunger for a true, pure relationship with the Organic God—the One True God.
While organic is usually associated with food grown without chemical-based fertilizers or pesticides, organic is also used to describe a lifestyle: simple, healthful, and close to nature. Those are all things I desire in my relationship with God. I hunger for simplicity. I want to approach God in childlike faith, wonder, and awe. I long for more than just spiritual life but spiritual health—whereby my soul is not just renewed and restored, but it becomes a source of refreshment for others.
I want to discover God again, anew, in a fresh way. I want my love for Him to come alive so that my heart dances at the very thought of Him. I want a real relationship with Him—a relationship that isn´t altered by perfumes, additives, chemicals, or artificial flavors that promise to make it sweeter, sourer, or tastier than it really is. I want to know a God who in all His fullness would allow me to know Him. I want a relationship that is real, authentic, and life-giving even when it hurts. I want to know God striped of as many false perceptions as possible. Such a journey risks exposure, honesty, and even pain, but I´m hungry and desperate enough to go there.
In some regards, the journey to know God isn´t too different from a first encounter with someone you´ve never met. I want to know what God looks like and what His interests are. I want to know His likes and dislikes. I want to know what makes Him tick and also what ticks Him off. I want to fall in love all over again. I want to know God.
I want to know the Organic God.¨
The Desolate Places
Yesterday morning while I was having my quiet time, I came across a verse in Mark that really struck me. I stopped reading, and just had to try to wrap my mind around what the verse was saying… It is amazing what the Lord uses to speak to us because I am sure that I had read that same verse many, many times before without giving it a thought, but this time it hit me. The verse is as follows: ¨But he went out and began to talk freely about it, and to spread the news, so that Jesus could no longer openly enter a town, but was out in desolate places, and people were coming to him from every corner (emphasis mine).¨ Mark 1:45 ESV
This phrase just made me stop and think for a while. It´s not a very striking verse, though. What I mean is that this verse hadn´t jumped out at me before yesterday; I would read it and just keep on going, but yesterday was different for some reason. I came to the conclusion that there was a reason Jesus was out in the `desolate places´ at that time. His fame had begun to spread as one who could heal people with a touch and cast out demons with a single word. I think he went to the desolate places because there, only the most desperate and believing people would come find him to be healed. Think about it: if Jesus were in the city, anyone with a cold or something slightly inconvenient could confront Jesus to be healed, and I´m sure He would (as time consuming as it would be). But if He´s out in the middle of nowhere, then people will think twice about going to see Him to be healed. The people with no hope (lepers, the blind, the lame, etc) would seek Him out no matter His location. I believe this is a test of their faith in His power to heal them. And the verse says that still people were coming to Him; I can picture the most broken and hopeless people being the ones to go to Him in that desolate place.
Many of us find ourselves in `desolate places´ at least once in our lives. It seems like nothing is going our way, we´re struck with a hopeless situation, everyone seems to desert us at a moment´s notice, or we just feel at our wit´s end. It is there that I believe that Jesus is waiting for us. He wants to help us at all times, but in those desolate places of our lives it seems to me that He jumps at the opportunity to comfort us with His presence. We sometimes forget that Jesus´ main goal while He was here on the earth was not to heal the physical infirmities He confronted, nor was it to cast out the demons He came across in His travels, and today it is not to make His church´s life easier; far from it. His main goal is to bring the lost and broken into His family, no matter the cost (His painful death being the ultimate one).
We, as followers of Christ, should be going to the `desolate places´ of others to reach them in the name of our Lord. All that this requires is our ability to be transparent with others and to be able to recognize when someone has reached that desolate place. It will take us looking beyond our own lives, and actively trying to empathize with our neighbors around us (neighbors being everyone…). My prayer is that I, for one, can look beyond my own selfish pity and be able to help a hurting human being out of their desolate place, or at the very least point them on the path to the One who can heal them of their woes.
This phrase just made me stop and think for a while. It´s not a very striking verse, though. What I mean is that this verse hadn´t jumped out at me before yesterday; I would read it and just keep on going, but yesterday was different for some reason. I came to the conclusion that there was a reason Jesus was out in the `desolate places´ at that time. His fame had begun to spread as one who could heal people with a touch and cast out demons with a single word. I think he went to the desolate places because there, only the most desperate and believing people would come find him to be healed. Think about it: if Jesus were in the city, anyone with a cold or something slightly inconvenient could confront Jesus to be healed, and I´m sure He would (as time consuming as it would be). But if He´s out in the middle of nowhere, then people will think twice about going to see Him to be healed. The people with no hope (lepers, the blind, the lame, etc) would seek Him out no matter His location. I believe this is a test of their faith in His power to heal them. And the verse says that still people were coming to Him; I can picture the most broken and hopeless people being the ones to go to Him in that desolate place.
Many of us find ourselves in `desolate places´ at least once in our lives. It seems like nothing is going our way, we´re struck with a hopeless situation, everyone seems to desert us at a moment´s notice, or we just feel at our wit´s end. It is there that I believe that Jesus is waiting for us. He wants to help us at all times, but in those desolate places of our lives it seems to me that He jumps at the opportunity to comfort us with His presence. We sometimes forget that Jesus´ main goal while He was here on the earth was not to heal the physical infirmities He confronted, nor was it to cast out the demons He came across in His travels, and today it is not to make His church´s life easier; far from it. His main goal is to bring the lost and broken into His family, no matter the cost (His painful death being the ultimate one).
We, as followers of Christ, should be going to the `desolate places´ of others to reach them in the name of our Lord. All that this requires is our ability to be transparent with others and to be able to recognize when someone has reached that desolate place. It will take us looking beyond our own lives, and actively trying to empathize with our neighbors around us (neighbors being everyone…). My prayer is that I, for one, can look beyond my own selfish pity and be able to help a hurting human being out of their desolate place, or at the very least point them on the path to the One who can heal them of their woes.
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