What would happen…
What would happen if pastors, preachers, leaders, ministers and whatever other titles their maybe be for church leaders would put aside whatever they are teaching and focus on getting the message of God’s amazing grace and love across? Is it just me or are those topics somehow avoided?
Personally, I think if this would actually happen, with the full inspiration of the God’s Spirit of course, amazing things would happen. The churches would grow and mature so fast that they would have to expand drastically, Christians would put aside their egoism and self-centered pleasures of wealth and “toys” and focus totally on HIM.
OK, so what’s to stop this from happening? ummmmm… it’s aahh, well…yeah…OK, it’s Satan.
Oh, but it isn’t not nearly so direct as it sounds, he’s rather subtle… making leaders and their churches slip into the rut of organized religion, legalism and conformism, of course, with the occasional shove if it’s not to his likening. He especially loves it if the poisoned people get really mad at the ones that aren’t conforming to their type of lifestyle. Sing the same songs, same topics, same falling asleep to boring sermons heard for the upteench time about “thou shalt not do this and that”.
Now, let’s say there’s a group of people within the church that isn’t happy with how it is… I don’t mean the music worship style or songs or even the style of clothing or if we kneel, sit, stand or jump and shout when worshipping him in prayer. I’m talking about the subtle waves of feeling boxed-in in church, the sermons themes planned weeks, months or even a year ago, the not giving the Holy Spirit room to work, the demeaning looks of congregants when someone lifts up their hands in prayer or tells an experience that takes longer that two minutes to tell. I’m talking about youth attendance dropping as fast as their parents let them make up their own choice to go or not, about almost zero participation in Sunday schools, about old mister Y falling asleep every Sunday, about making a big deal for weeks if some local talent does a rap song in church, about condemning people that don’t come on Sunday without even knowing the reason why they didn’t coming, about… OK, you get the idea, I hope.
Now this is what I’ve experienced, not all in the same church, but definitely a feeling I’ve felt in different churches. I would sooner go to math class in a kilt than feel comfortable enough to share something with everyone in the church I go to.
Ain’t it sad? Now, a lot of the stuff I mentioned has to do with my own experience, but not only, a lot of friends of mine feel the same way. The services are planned, first a song, than a scripture reading followed by a short prayer and another song. Than Sunday School, followed by announcements and sharing by the congregation (usually the same people every Sunday), than another song or two, followed by the sermon and a prayer with an ending song and then WOOOOOOOOHHHHOOOOOO!! IT’S DONE!!! The fact I can precisely tell you how it works is because it doesn’t change, never with extremely remote chances of being different than like that.
So, putting the negatives aside… I’ve learned not to be ticked off to much, I mean, look at history and you’ll see there has always been some killjoys along the way. No, just keep your focus on Jesus, showing his love and grace to the people you encounter whenever. All it takes is a smile, a word of encouragement, helping them with some project or inviting them over for terere (tee, coffee, coke, water, etc.) and just show them (doesn’t take much effort on your part) God’s love and let his Holy Spirit inspire you. YOU WILL BE AMAZED!
Live it! Live HIM!
Consumerism
We live in an era of consumerism.
I don’t just mean the buying, borrowing to buy, stealing to buy, trading to buy, to consum, to have more, to fill that empty place inside. No. I mean the consumerism we experience within a “christian” community, in church, at Youth groups and bible studies and meetings, festivals and concerts. These things are actually all good, if they do what is biblical and God pleasing. But how many time do we just listen and not give it another thought.
For example, sitting it church beside me on Sunday are tons of people that go to all or most of the events I mentioned above, yet they don’t bear the fruit Jesus told us we would recognize them by (Matthew 7:15-1), although he was talking about the false prophets, it applies basically to anyone that calls themselves Christians. These are the consumerists that “buy”, as in listen, yet don’t “need” it. Not that they don’t need it, just that they don’t apply it to their lives. Bear with me in this, just trying to compare the spiritual consumerist to the material one.
The question is, can we blame these people for that? Doesn’t it happen to everyone sometimes? How to we solve this problem?
Making the preacher or speaker say that “you should apply this to your life” isn’t going to help. Now, what would happen, if churches and youth groups would get more practical? Sometimes it’s like taking a Chemistry class in theory, but you really don’t quite grasp it until your actually mixing the stuff in test tubes. Our leaders and people like me that want to get more practical need to get creative at a whole new level. Getting more practical doesn’t mean having more worship services and having more sharing time, it means doing things for people in the community and being a light wherever we go. Now, not nearly all the people in church would be exited about going to old Missus Agis to help her with gardening and cleaning and painting her house. But if the people that are exited and feel challenged to get more practical, the negativists will see their enthusiasm and might just come along and get their lives changed in some way. It’s amazing when you find out that even though Missus Agis doesn’t come to church because of her arthritis, she still prays everyday for a lot of people she has met over the years.
Let’s be open to change, open to let God use us as tools, to better his kingdom. Why do so many “Christians” resist being fully used by God? Their putting up a barrier between themselves and God that is going to do more damage to themselves than the Creator. Why be afraid of the Creator, the King, the ultimate Father and brother?
I’ll cite an experience that I had with a girl in our community. I was talking to her about joining a prayer group a bunch of people had started (whole ‘nother story) and asked, not for the first time, why she didn’t want to come. She’s recently baptized, a mature Christian to some point, yet she admitted to having a fear that she might get a “high” or something and be depressed afterwards because it ended. I’m not sure where she got this idea, but the Mennonite background seems to encourage it. “Let’s not get to close to Jesus, or we might end up feeling down afterwards, because we can’t always feel good, blablabla”. What’s up with the so little faith that we put in Jesus to help us always, through the time when we feel close to him and when we don’t? Feelings are tricky anyways, but God gave them to us and we can’t just ignore them, just like we can’t ignore pain or a runny nose. We can try to master the, but we’ll probably never succeed. So what can we do?! Turn the over to Jesus. That’s what he’s there for, he love you no matter what, and handing over another part of what he has created back to him will please him a lot more than just sitting at home and going to events and consuming and not really living a “close” relationship with him.
At this point I’m really starting to feel like this is a sermon or something. Hope it’s a good one and that whoever has taken time to read the whole thing will feel challenged by it’s content. Please don’t just be a consumerist. Ask God to guide you and lead you in absolutely “everything”. If there is one little thing that you want to manage your self, you probably won’t feel good when you mess up.
God can actually do something for you, especially when those barriers are broken to bits as small as dust and thrown into the ocean… You will know what I mean.
