Where is your focus?

Over the past few months, I have seen a thought crop up from time to time in the various social media resources that I use.  It says something along these lines.  If you are leaving a church because you have been hurt by the people there, you have been putting your focus on the wrong thing.  Now, I will say that I agree with the overall idea of such a statement, though I also think such a statement does not fully grasp what it means to be drawn to Jesus through the message of Good News.

So let's tackle the first part first.  If you leave because you have been hurt by the people, you have been focusing on the wrong thing.  There is a way in which this is true.  We gather as God's people because of what God has done for us in Jesus, the Christ.  We are gathered as fallen, sinful people, whom God has redeemed through sending His one and only Son, who gathers people to Himself through His death and resurrection.  Our hope is not found in being a part of the Church, but instead, in being washed, redeemed, cleansed, etc., by Jesus.  We don't become part of the Church for the Church's sake, per se.  We become part of the Church because we are rescued from sin, death, and the devil by Jesus.

That means that, when we gather with the Church, we are gathered with people who are just the same as us.  Sure, their sins and temptations and weaknesses and flaws may be somewhat different in presentation and scope from ours, but really, we are all the same.  We all stand condemned because of our sin, and we all stand with the eager expectation of forgiveness and life because of Jesus.  Not a one of us should look upon another with pride, as though we are doing better in our walk with Jesus than another. 

Our reality in the Church is that, as gathered sinners, we WILL hurt each other.  We are not suddenly immune to sinning against our fellow members of the Church.  Our human sinfulness and weakness will inevitably reveal itself in those relationships.  Now, our hope is that we handle those occasions with humility, confessing our sin, asking for and granting forgiveness readily.  Yet, we will not always do so.  But our hope is not in how "right" we are with other people.  Our hope is found in how God has made us right through Jesus.

So yes, we can fix our focus on the wrong thing, on people instead of the Savior.  And even though we should remember that we are gathered because of Jesus, we also remember that we are gathered together with other sinful people in the Church.  We cannot escape that reality.  Jesus calls us to Himself within the Body of Christ, which means that we are in connection with others.  We have brothers and sisters in Jesus, and the expectation is that we will live our lives in fellowship and connection with them.

That means that we cannot simply dismiss our relationships with others, as though it is just "Jesus and me."  Our reality is that Jesus redeems us, and as redeemed people, we live out that redemption with other redeemed people.  Now, part of being redeemed means that we strive to love our neighbor as ourselves.  We put the needs of others as more important than our own.  We practice humility, as though others were of greater concern than us.

That means we remember, when we hurt another through our sinfulness, that we are called to reconcile with each other.  We don't pretend nothing happened.  We don't let anger fester and build.  Instead, as Jesus says, we leave our gift at the altar, and first go and be reconciled to our brother or sister.  Jesus Himself suggests that our act of reconciliation is more important than our act of worship.  And so, when we realize that we have hurt another, or that another has hurt us, that reconciliation with that person takes precedent, even over our worship of God.

While the "ideal" church (notice the small "c" this time) does not exist in this world, we are gathered into God's Church to practice the same reconciliation that has been given to us in Jesus.  If we leave the church (small "c" again), perhaps it is that we have lost focus on what is of most importance.  It's on God's redemption in Jesus, and in living as reonciled people together.

A Question of Expectations

As many of you know, I happen to have a Facebook account, and so, on those occasions where I sign on, I get to see many of the memes that make their way across such social media accounts.  I can recall one recently which said something along the lines of this: If you find that you have had your trust in your church cause you to consider leaving, you have put your trust in the wrong place.  In many respects, such a sentiment is spot on.  The main point of this gathering of people we call the Church is that we rejoice that we are a people redeemed by Jesus Christ, and thus, made right with God.  Our hope and trust is in God and in His gracious action toward us, in forgiving us, in renewing us, and in giving us a place to strengthen that belief.

Yet, I believe that this sentiment also somewhat misses the point.  The big point I want to raise for us right now is that, when God brings together this thing called the Church, He brings together people who are broken and tainted by sin, and who may strive valiantly against that sin in their lives, but who remain sinful people nevertheless.  That means that it is inevitable that we will hurt each other through our sinfulness. 

Our hope and trust is in the God who creates this Church.  It's not in the people of the Church.  And yet, we also have to admit that the people of the Church will inevitably have an impact upon us and our faith in Jesus.  For example, if we see the leaders of the church engaged in gossip, or slighting a member of the congregation intentionally, that has an impact on the people who see and hear such a thing.  Distrust is created, which truly can harm the faith of some. 

So, that means that we strive to remember that everything we do as Christians does indeed have an impact in our lives together in the Church.  Our hope is that we mature enough to learn how to deal with our fellow sinful believers who have been redeemed by the blood of Jesus.  And that leads directly to the question of the day.

What do you expect from your fellow Christians in the Church?  If you are expecting a holy life, you will likely be severly disappointed.  If you are expecting them to give and give, and not need in return, you will probably also be disappointed.  However, if you expect that you are going to see great demonstrations of faith as well as great demonstrations of sin in their lives, you may have a more realistic expectation.  After all, they are there, as are you, because they are a sinful human being, who just happens to have been redeemed by Jesus, and who now is engaged in a lifelong struggle with the sin that still lives within them.

So what do you expect when it comes to your fellow Christians?  How you answer that question could have a great deal of impact on your experience with them when you gather togeher with them.

Whose Building Is It?

"But will God indeed dwell on the earth?  Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you; how much less this house that I have built!...the place of which you have said, 'My name shall dwell there'".  1 Kings 8:27-30, excerpted.

We are in the world, but not of the world.  Yet, as we live in this world, we are called to practice good stewardship of everything that God has given to us.  As Christians, this also goes for the place where we gather as God's people.  While it truly is, in many respects, nothing more than a simple building, we call it our church.  It is a place to be together with God's people, to grow with each other, and to grow in our faith.

Yet, there also becomes a possessiveness over this place that is God's house, and not our house.  You hear stories of teachers who demand "my" space for "my" things.  When groups other than the membership of the congregation want to make use of the space, God's people sometimes will not want that, as they see it as an intrusion into "our" church.  Sure, we want to deal wisely when others may want to make use of the facility, as it may truly have an impact on what happens in the life of God's ministry there.  However, far too often, the congregational members simply do not want outsiders in their space.

That shows some of the first signs that we are forgetting whose place it is.  Just as Solomon recognized in the prayer above, it is God's dwelling place, even as God is much larger than the dwelling place.  Another part of thinking about this is that the space isn't to be used as we want, it is to be used as God would desire, honoring His name, serving people, and extending the Gospel message.

Whose building is it?  It is God's, entrusted to us for wise use, a use which truly should bring honor and glory to the God who makes His dwelling place among humankind, serving them, and looking to draw them to the Father.  Perhaps that makes a good guide when we consider the use of God's place.

Devoted...to the teaching...and the fellowship

Upon the heels of Peter delivering his great Pentecost day sermon, the people who listened and were touched by God's Spirit responded.  Luke tells us that about 3k people were added to their number that day, as they heard of God's care and forgiveness to them through Jesus.  And then, even as those were added, we see something else happening, as well.

These people become devoted to this new calling in their lives.  That's the word that the ESV uses in verse 42.  They devoted themselves.  And before we move much further, think about what it means to be devoted to something.  I would say that we often water down this word among ourselves.  We think about daily devotions, something that is a good thing to start the day or end the day, or fall somewhere in between.  Yet, these are often a few moments, and then we are on to the next thing.  Again, a good thing for us to be including in our lives, and a sign of our faith.  But in many ways, that seems to be how we come to consider our new life in Jesus.

They were devoted.  This was something that filled them and their days.  God's Spirit filled them, and they devoted themselves to this new endeavor.  So, we should look at what they then devoted themselves to.  The apostles' teaching.  When Jesus told those original apostles to go and make disciples, He also told them to teach everything that He had commanded to them.  So, as God's Spirit brought people into belief, they were devoted to learning more about what Jesus taught, and what that meant for their newly created lives in Jesus.

That's not the only thing to which they were devoted, either.  They also devoted themselves to the fellowship.  They were devoted to the others who believed as they did, who had received the same Spirit and same gifts as they had.  They weren't devoted simply to a church, or a particular place of gathering, but to all the people whom God had called in Jesus through His Spirit, as we see in the verses that follow.

Being devoted to the teachings and to the fellowship.  In our day and age of church hopping, and of looking for a church that fills "my needs", this kind of thought is rather provoking.  That God might call us into a fellowship, and then have us show such devotion, no matter what may happen, even to the point of selling our things to support our brothers and sisters in Jesus, is truly a radical thought for many.

And yet, isn't that the devotion of our God toward us?  He who would give all good things for His people, who is so devoted that He not only sent His Son, but who gives them their daily bread, who daily renews them in their baptism, and who promises them a new, renewed life with Him that will never end.  Why wouldn't He look to see that same kind of devotion from His people, especially toward one another? 

So, how would that look in your life?  Are there ways in which this kind of devotion could be played out in your life even more?  Perhaps it's the first time you have considered this kind of devotion.  Perhaps it seems kind of intimidating, and even impossible.  And yet, it's all created by the one who sent a messenger to a young virgin about to have a child through the Holy Spirit, with that simple message being, with God, nothing is impossible.

Creating Connections

Okay, time to debunk a myth before I really get into my point today, though debunking the myth helps set the stage.  There is this thought out there that people want a friendly church.  Now, to some degree, this is an understandable thing.  Very few people want to go somewhere where the people are unfriendly.  If a person goes to a church and is basically ignored or made to feel a stranger or an inconvenience, then there is a problem.  As God's people, we do want to be friendly toward others.

However, the myth says that people want a friendly church.  Why is this a myth?  Simply being friendly is not enough.  I've encountered people that are friendly at various places such as the DMV, the dentist's office, and a variety of other places.  That doesn't mean that I want to regularly go there and hang out.  Sure, they may be very friendly, but I'm not going to come back just because the people are friendly.

So if it's a myth that people want a friendly church, what is the reality, then?  It's more along these lines.  People don't want a friendly church, they want a church where they can find friends.  Yes, there is a significant difference in that statement.  Friendly means you greet them with a smile, but you don't lose anything if they don't come back.  Being friends means that it matters to you that they are made comfortable, that they know what to expect, and that you want to see them again, repeatedly.  Being friends means you care about them, that you want to get to know them better, and want to spend time with them.

Okay, so we've debunked the myth.  But the thing is, what I've just typed could easily be said about the country club, the fitness center, or any other place that you go to regularly.  The reason we connect with those who make their way into our places of worship and fellowship is not merely to become friends, but to become connected together in Jesus.  We connect as friends, but we connect in the one who has connected us to Himself.  We connect in worship because we are refreshed in the one who is the vine for all of us varied branches.  We connect in fellowship because Jesus sharpens us and strengthens us for His work as we come together, and as we are then sent back out into the community.

Think about that the next time you see someone outside of those 30 that I had you name yesterday.  How can you connect with them as a friend, and as you do that, how do you also see God working to connect them even deeper to the one who is the vine for their branch?  Tomorrow, we'll think a bit about what this might look like.

Whose is it, Anyway?

As I've been perusing the thoughts of what it means to be inclusive this week, I think that there is an underlying thought that we need to examine a bit to guide us in this.  We often will talk about the church we attend as "our" church.  We hope and pray that God will grow "our" church.  When we invite others to walk along with us, to grow in knowing what God has done in Jesus, it's typically with the hopes that they will join "our" church and that "our" church will grow.

You may have noticed that there are a lot of quotes in that paragraph around the word "our".  That is intentional.  While using "our" helps us to differentiate between the church we attend and the one down the street, an unintended side effect of this is that we start to think of it as "our" church.  But there is a big reality that we may know, but can sometimes forget.  The church is God's.

So what does that mean?  Do we throw out the word "ours" completely?  Well, perhaps not.  But one thing we do need to change is how we view God's work in the church that we happen to be part of.  It doesn't belong to us.  It belongs to God in Christ Jesus.  That means that God is going to do with this church what He will.  Yes, you and I play some vital part in what happens with it, but the truth behind that is that God is going to do with it what He designs and wills. 

That's why I would suggest something a little bit different than how we typically think.  When we ask God to grow the church, let's ask Him to grow the full number of those who belong to Him in Jesus.  That may or may not include people coming to our local gathering.  But guess what?  That doesn't matter.  That's in God's hands.  Sure, we can hope that He will send them our way, and He likely will.  But our focus is to be on the bigger kingdom and to trust that God will do with our local gathering what He will.

That doesn't mean that we stop planning programs, or growing in how we can draw people to God in our particular gathering.  But as we do that, we keep our eyes open to the eternal kingdom, knowing that God is going to care for us.  It may not be what we want, or what we hope, but if our eyes are focused on the right thing, then we may just discover that God can do far more than we could ever do if our eyes were fixed on too small a thing, such as "our" church!

You want me to do WHAT?

"...so that through the Church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made know to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places."  St. Paul in Ephesians 3:10

Who as the last person with whom you talked about your faith?  I don't mean the last person you saw at church with whom you talked about the things going on there.  I mean the last person with whom you discussed why you believe in Jesus and what He has done for you.  Chances are, if you are like so many Christians in our nation, you may not actually be able to remember when that last conversation took place.

I don't say this to make you feel bad (though there is a place for us to feel righteous guilt at failing to do the things God would have us do).  Rather, I want to look at this from another standpoint.  If God wants to communicate the message of Good News to the world, how is He going to go about doing that?  He could show signs and wonders in the skies, but we have a way of explaning those thing away.  He could speak individually to every person on the planet, but it seems that He does that kind of thing fairly rarely. 

Instead, God has chosen to spread His message through those who belong to Him.  That's what Paul wrote about to the Ephesian Christians in the verse above, a verse which still speaks to our role in the spread of the message of Good News.  God spreads His Good News through the Church.  That's you and I.  It's not merely those who are called and gifted to be evangelists, or pastors, or missionaries, or the like.  It's all of us.

I would argue that the reason so many of us are uncomfortable with that thought is simply because we haven't regularly done it.  Really, all I say we need is to practice at it.  True, it's going to the Spirit who guides the response on the part of the other person, but our sharing of the Good News is something that becomes less frightening when we actually do it.  We may never get over the butterflies in the stomach, but it gets less daunting when we've actually done it a few times.  Sure, we'll find that the conversations will go in vastly different ways, but only doing it, only practicing it, will get us used to doing what God created the Church to do.

The Individual and The Community

Very early on in the history of mankind, an interesting story occured.  A young man named Cain had his sacrifice to God rejected.  Meanwhile, his brother's sacrifice was accepted by God.  Cain was in a bit of a fit after this.  He invited his brother, Abel, out to the field with him, and then took out his anger at God on his brother.  Cain killed Abel.  The first of countless murders in the history of mankind took place.

Later on, Cain was confronted by God.  God asked him where his brother Abel was.  Cain responded with a vital question.  "Am I my brother's keeper?"  Cain wanted to dissociate any responsibility to and for his brother.  He wanted to make it more about the individual rather than the community.  And from that time forth, humankind has tended to lean more toward our lives as individuals rather than our lives as community.

Yesterday, I posted how the American worldview is very focused on the individual, while the Christian worldview is very focused on the community.  It becomes extremely difficult to bring these two together.  In fact, I would even argue that it's impossible to do so.  We cannot focus on our lives as individuals and expect the community to flourish.  Likewise, if we focus on the community, we simply cannot exalt the individual.  And yet, these two worldviews exist in North American congregations, often not being dealt with very well.

This gets played out in a lot of ways.  From worship style to the book of the Bible we study, we each have our individual opinion.  We want to get something out of it personally.  While that's not necessarily a bad thing, it's also not the point.  Throughout the Bible, God makes it clear that what is of benefit to the building up of the community and the extension of the community is foremost.  What we get out of it as individuals is important, but is not to be sought after at the expense of the community.  Everything that the Church does together should always be put through the filter of, 'Is this for a few individuals, or for the building up of the greater community?"

What do I want you to take away from reading this today?  More than anything, I would like to have you asking a few simple questions when it comes to the things of the Church.  In general, a good question to ask of everything is, does this highlight us as individuals, or does this highlight our life together as community?  If it leans more toward the individual, then it likely needs to be rethought.  So take that question, and walk through your typical "Church experience".  How would you answer that question?  If you don't like what it says, what can be done to change the focus?

Christian or American: One or the Other?

There are times where you take a critical look at things, and discover that two competing world views come together that really shouldn't be combined, but nevertheless get mashed together.  Usually, when that happens, one will overpower the other, or both will get twisted and mangled to the point where neither one is readily recognizable.

Over the past decade or so, I've come across any number of books by Christian authors that have demonstrated how being American and being Christian are two very different things.  Yet, one of the problems that Christians in our nation face is that so many of our churches try to be both.  And yet, when we take a critical look at the basis of each of these worldviews, we find that there are many respects in which the two simply cannot exist well together.

As Americans, we are taught that our individual lives, rights, and freedoms are foremost.  While this may not necessarily be what the founding fathers of this nation intended, the current day reality is such that individualism is highlighted.  The role of the community is minimized, as is our responsibility and accountability to one another.  We are taught that we can do whatever we want, we can achieve whatever we want, and what we do is our business and not any else's.

Contrast that, now, with the Christian worldview that comes to us from God's Word, the Bible.  In there, we are taught that we are our brother's keeper.  We are taught that the two things of most importance in our lives are to love God (who loved us with a great, sacrificial, giving love that goes far beyond emotion) and to love our neighbors as ourselves.  As part of the community of faith, we are told that the community should be of the foremost importance, even to the point of laying aside our rights, considering the needs of others as greater than ours, and in sacrificing for the good of others.  We are responsible for one another, accountable to and for one another, and utimately, our lives are not based upon achievement, but upon what God has achieved for us in Jesus.

Just reading those two paragraphs should highlight how much these two clash when they encounter each other.  This conflict gets played out in many different ways in our nation and time.  Matters such as worship become more about our personal preferences than in the building up of the community.  Bible study becomes less about building each other up, and more about attaining greater knowledge and understanding on a personal basis.  We tend to sacrifice less for the good of God's community, and put a much higher priority on our own personal comforts.

I have no desire to repeat what has been written about so much in our Christian bookstores.  I am thankful that the call is going forth to bring awareness to this, and to bring about changes.  Such changes are difficult, especially when you consider the difficulty of changing a person's world view.  In the next few blog entries, I'll be focusing a little bit on this.

What motivates you?

In life, there are many different things that motivate us.  Let's take, for example, me and my garage.  It needs to be cleaned out a bit.  There are quite a few boxes in there that could be stacked up better, and a few odds and ends that need to have some permanent places found for them.  There are times when I am motivated to go out there and do something about it, but you probably would expect that my motivations differ from time to time.

For instance, last week we had some severe weather moving through.  My motivation for cleaning the garage up was to get my car in there in case of bad weather.  I wanted to protect my car.  But there was another time, earlier in the week, where my wife had said she wanted me to work on it.  So I went out there to take care of some boxes and bins, not so much because I wanted to, but because she wanted it done.  And then, there have been times where I just wanted something to do, so I found myself in the garage.  And yet, another time where I just got tired of having all those boxes sitting out there unorganized.

Different motivations for the same activity.  And now, I want to pull this into the realm of our Christian worship times together (yes, a rather narrow focus, but it's where I want to start).  Different people are motivated to be there when we worship together for different reasons.  When I first became a pastor, I had this idea that everyone came together because we had the right theology, and that was the most important thing to them.  I have since learned that not everyone attends a particular church merely because of the theology that is taught there.  Some people come because it's the church of their childhood.  Others attend because they like the particular structure or style, or it's what they are used to.  Others attend because they like the person who is the pastor.  Others attend because they have friends in the congregation that they like to see, and yet others see it as their duty to God.  And still others come because of some of the programs that the church offers that happen to fit their particular stations and roles in life.

Of course, none of these are the sole motivation for gathering for worship.  People are rarely that one-dimensional.  I would suggest that we find ourselves attending our local gatherings for worship for a mixture of these and other reasons.  Some of them are more "correct" than others.  And yet, if we simply assume that someone is going to attend our congregation only because we have the correct theology, we're either going to be surprised to find that they don't necessarily think that way, or we're going to have a fairly small group that not only believes the right things about God, but gathers for the correct motivations as well.

Don't get me wrong.  I would love for everyone to be motivated purely by the correct theology and the proper understanding of God and His grace.  But I recognize that the motivation for gathering for worship will hardly ever be that cut and dried.  But here's what I see that I can do.  I can properly teach and preach about God.  I can make sure that the words that I say, and the order of worship that is followed, is one that teaches accurately about God and His grace and will.  I may not be able to change people's motivations, but I can make sure that they hear what God says loudly and clearly.  Sure, a few of them may not like what that has to say, and others may embrace it wholeheartedly.  But as I think about the things that I can do which pertain to people's motivation for worshiping together, I know that the only part of that which I have any control over is the words that I speak from God.  And that is no small factor in how I approach my chosen career.

Why did you come back?

I realize that there are some very pressing issues that our country is facing, one in particular which is approaching the level of the Supreme Court.  I do plan on tossing in a couple of pennies worth of thoughts on it, but that will most likely be next week or so.  It's not that I'm avoiding the subject, but that I just hate interuppting my thoughts when I'm on a roll of sorts.

In my last few posts, I've been thinking out loud about what repels or doesn't repel people from places like our church facilities.  As I've been thinking out loud on this, I hope you've seen that I'm slowly working from one side of the coin to the other.  I started off simply looking at what we can do that doesn't turn people away.  Clean facilities and a warm welcome are things that likely won't turn people away, while trash in the corners and stony silence may cause someone to reconsider ever coming back.  Again, as I see it, those are obstacles to hearing the Gospel message that we can do something about, and I firmly believe that we should do something about.  I'll even go so far as to call it sinful if we know those things about ourselves and yet refuse to change.  It's hardly loving to our neighbor to do things that they find offensive and which serve to drive them away, rather than letting the scandal of what God has done in Jesus being the obstacle to their faith.

So let's say that someone enters our place of worship.  Our building and our friendliness don't repel them.  But are those things sufficient to bring them back the following week?  Are they going to come back just because we have a clean building?  I hardly think so.  Something else has to be at work to bring them back.  (Yes, I believe that God's Spirit is at work to bring them back, but I'm looking at the reasons that they are more likely to recognize before they come to see that it was the Spirit's work in their lives.)

When I first entered the ministry, I assumed that everyone went to a particular church to worship for the best of reasons.  I assumed they went because I was teaching the best theology out there.  But in the years of ministry I have under my belt now, I realize that people go where they go for a variety of motivations.  Some regularly attend because it's where their friends are.  Others attend because they like the particular style of worship.  Some attend because they like the pastor, or how he preaches.  And yes, there are some that choose churches because of the content of what they preach.

I would love to assume that everyone who enters the doors of our church do so because they want to hear a very clear message of the true teachings of God.  However, I recognize that most people are here for a variety of reasons.  Sure, part of that may be what the church teaches.  But I know enough to know that a person who has never entered a Christian church before probably isn't attending because they know the true theology of that church.  They probably have far different motivations.  So tomorrow, I'll start to think out loud again about how we encourage them to come back so that they come to see that it is God's Spirit who was the driving force behind their presence in our worshiping community the whole time.

"What makes you stay?"

Continuing the theme from last week's last couple of posts, I'm still examining the idea of things such as the attractiveness, or lack thereof, which can serve to drive people away from churches.  Again, to repeat myself, it is not the message of the Gospel when I say that people are less likely to be driven away when facilities are nice and clean, and when people are warm and friendly.  At best, I would say that we merely hope that they will not be driven away by the things we can control.  Our goal should always be to allow one thing only to drive them away, that being the scandal of the Gospel message.

Now, I don't know about you, but I notice when a building is fairly well-kept when I enter it.  I notice when the people there are warm and welcoming.  I also notice when the place is unkempt, and when the people are less than joyful to interact with.  If I have to return to the place, I would much rather return to the place where the people are friendly and the upkeep is noticeable, and I would rather not have to return to the place where the people are distant and the surroundings are less than admirable.

However, I have never found myself returning to a place simply because it was well-kept, or simply because the people were friendly.  I don't find myself driving around, suddenly inspired to return to a place simply because it was neat and clean.  Unless I'm feeling really bad about myself that day, I also don't stop at a place simply because there are people there that will say hi to me.  I need something more than just a clean place to make me want to return.

Likewise, as we think about the condition of our churches and facilities, I whole-heartedly believe that we should strive to have nice, clean facilities, as well as warm, welcoming people.  However, I do NOT believe that people will return simply because we have a nice looking building.  I do NOT believe people will return simply because someone said hello to them.  These are more along the lines of things that we can do to avoid turning people away.  These are not the kind of things that will keep people coming back again and again.

So what is it that makes you want to come back to a church or to a worshiping community?  I'll start looking a bit more at those in the coming posts.

Getting in the Gospel's Way

Over the years, I have read a lot of books and materials that attempt to help congregations be better about reaching out with the Gospel.  I've noticed a bit of a theme to many of them.  They tend to say something along the lines of, 'do this, and people will just naturally begin to come to your church.'  If you go to a local Christian bookstore, many of these kinds of books are located in the section usually labelled "Church Growth."

There have been a large number of churches that have embraced these principles and put them to work in their congregations.  There have likewise been a great number of churches who have claimed that these things are not the Gospel, and might confuse the Gospel with tactics for simply having more people attend. 

As I've reflected on these things, I've come to a couple of conclusions.  You may or may not agree with me, and I'm okay with that.  I happen to be of the mind that walking together as God's people doesn't mean that we see everything exactly the same.

There are things about churches (both the building we call "church" and the gathering of God's people) which can actually serve to deter people from entering and hearing God's Word.  I would be one of the first to admit that if I entered a church that had a lot of junk laying around, I probably wouldn't be all that eager to go back there.  In this case, it's not the Gospel message that is turning me away from hearing.  It's the condition of the building.  That's not God's work in driving me away.  That's something that God's people can do something about.

In a similar way, if I were to enter a church, go to worship, and leave without any of the people there welcoming me, or at least indicating that they are glad that I was with them, I'm probably not going to return there.  Friendliness and a warm welcome are not the Gospel message, but as in the first example, I'm not being driven away by the Gospel message.  I'm being driven away by something that God's people can do something about.

In my mind, I see that a lot of churches can do something in this regard.  There are things that are not the Gospel which drive people away, and God's people can remove those obstacles.  The only obstacle that we should strive for should be the obstacle of what God says.  If we are doing things that serve as obstacles to even the hearing of the Gospel, that's not God's obstacle.  That's ours.  That's something we can remove.  Sure, it may not necessarily mean that they will hear the Gospel message and stay, but if we are the ones who introduce the obstacles to the Gospel, that's our sin that needs to be dealt with.

Conflicted Views

Quite a few of you who read this blog know that I am part of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.  This particular church body has been known by this name for around a century and a half in the United States.  It's a church body that strives for an accurate understanding of the truths of the Bible, and then works toward a common practice in bringing that understanding to bear into the world we live in.

As you read that paragraph, you may realize that there is an impossible task that the church body has taken upon itself.  I said that the body strives for an accurate understanding of the truths of the Bible, a word which we call "doctrine."  We aim to arrive at a common understanding of the truths that God gives to us in the Bible.  That alone is a task that simply cannot be accomplished while we still live in this world.  Not only do we believe the teaching (the doctrine) that declares that we are all sinful, and therefore unable to have perfect understanding of the things of God, but we also recognize that not everyone understands the meaning of various parts of the Bible in the same way.  We already find ourselves with an impossible task of discerning those meanings and then coming to agreement on them.

Then, we add another impossible task to the challenge.  We take that group of teachings (doctrines) that we cannot ever fully agree upon, and then we try to apply them into the way we minister to a sinful, hurting world.  This is the "practice" of the ministry of God's Word to the world.  We realize that every pastor and every Christian and every congregation faces unique challenges, even as we also realize that there are challenges that are common to all.  And so, when we work to apply a group of teachings (doctrines) to situations that vary widely (practice), we often find ourselves at disagreement about the right and proper thing to do.

It's a distressing situation, and one that the church body has worked on together for a long time.  It's also a struggle that we would be wise to admit will never come to an end.  Until Jesus reappears and unites all believers into the one holy, perfect, pure Body of Christ in the new creation, we simply cannot arrive at a place of perfect agreement, either on the doctrines or the practices.  We may find that we actually share a great deal in common with one another, but we shouldn't be surprised when we find that we still don't always fully arrive at the same place.

Some of you who read this may not be part of this particular church body.  Shoot, some of you may not even be Christian by your faith.  I don't write this blog entry up as an apology for anything, but simply to shine some light upon things that you may come across in the news, or in various online forums.  It saddens me that the church body I am part of only seems to get national press when negative events come up.  We actually do agree on a significant portion of our teachings (doctrines) and their applications (practices).  We actually do engage in many ventures to share God's grace and mercy with a sinful, hurting world, and seek to speak God's truth into those situations.  We do so knowing that we won't get it perfect, but resting in God's forgiveness through Jesus, and looking to share that same forgiveness into the lives of those we minister to. 

I heard a wise person once say that if you are looking for the perfect church home, you better get used to disappointment.  There is no such thing in this world.  Thankfully, through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, we have a connection that will one day come to its full realization, where we will then live forever in that perfect church home.  Until then, we're going to fumble and stumble along the way, and fully relying on God's gift of forgiveness through Jesus.

Being Noticed

"Thanks for noticing me."  Eeyore

"Let the one who is taught share all good things with the one who teaches."  St. Paul

I have to admit that there are a lot of things that I do in life that very few other people ever notice.  In some cases, I really don't want or expect to be noticed for them.  An example of this is when I change one of the candles at my church every Saturday morning.  It's a small task, and one that relatively few people notice when we worship, but I just enjoy doing it.

However, there are also times when I do something and hope that other people will notice.  It's not necessarily that I need an ego boost or something like that, but that it's just nice when it gets noticed.  When I cook a nice meal for my wife, or when I do some of my regular chores around the house, it's nice for me when she notices and tells me that she appreciates what I do.  (I should also remark that she does this quite often and quite well!)

I believe that we all want to be noticed at certain times in life.  Maybe it's for something that we do, or maybe it's because that person is very important to us.  We may not even want to be noticed ourselves, but sometimes we only want others to notice what we did.  Hearing a word of appreciation for how clean the kitchen floor is may be just the thing that we want noticed, rather than personal notice for ourselves. 

Since God created us to be in community with one another, noticing each other and the contributions that each of us bring to the community are important parts of our life together.  When we do as Paul wrote and share good things with one another, we notice them as people.  We notice that they are important to us.  When we do this, we also notice that they play an important role in our life.  This makes our life together very personal, and shows us the importance of being in the community and being a part of the community.

Who can you notice or share something with today that just might be waiting to be noticed?

"I'm religious, but I don't like organized religion"

The statement in the title is one that seems to be the "new" reason on why many (who claim to be Christian) do not attend regular worship times or participate in a local church or congregation.  The claim is that they believe in Jesus, but they really don't want any association with the organizations that have sprung up as part of God's Church in a more national or international sense.

I will admit that I have some sympathy when someone makes a claim like this.  One of the sad realities is that organizations can forget their reason for existing, and start to make their continued existence of the utmost importance.  When a church starts to exist simply to be a church (rather than to be the bearer of God's message of Good News), then a problem has developed.  I can understand someone who wants the purpose of the church to be God in Christ Jesus, and not merely maintaining itself.  The local congregation should not exist merely to exist, but to be the place where God's people are fed, encouraged, equipped, and prepared for their life and the circumstances of life.

However, there are also times where I am less than sympathetic to someone who would speak this phrase.  Let's say that a person or family has found something or someone that they don't like within the congregation.  Rather than make an effort to deal with the situation or person in a loving, grace-filled way, it may become easier to simply disassociate from the congregation, and then make this claim.  In this situation, the claim is made simply because the person didn't want to go through the challenge of working through a disagreement or a struggle.  In my mind, this equates to something like running away from a situation rather than dealing with it (which has led to all kinds of things in our society, such as high divorce rates, people changing jobs at a rapid rate, and other similar things), and so I tend to have less sympathy toward that person, simply because they are choosing not to deal with a situation rather than having a "problem" with the church or with God.

The reality is, we are all tempted to have our own version of our faith life.  The way that God paints the picture, that is a very dangerous thing for us as Christians.  The last verse of the book of the Judges in the Bible says that everyone was doing what seemed right in their own eyes, and in the context of that book of the Bible, this is a very disturbing thing.  It's not the way God created us, since He created us for community, and to be in fellowship with each other.  He created us to live in a community, which means that we have responsibilities to care for others around us, and at times, to put their needs as higher priority than our own.  It means that we live by God's words and laws as we love our neighbor as ourselves.  Keeping ourselves isolated in our faith life doesn't show that love to others, who may need our presence just as much as we need to hear God's message.

The thing that really strikes me about this statement is the selfishness that it seems to convey.  It seems to make the claim that what I want and what I desire is far more important than being with my brothers and sisters in Jesus.  Satan is the one who wants to isolate us from our brothers and sisters, who can encourage us, equip us, challenge us to grow beyond what we are now, but who, most importantly, can share the love of God and the forgiveness and life of Jesus with us. 

There are always dangers when the need to organize comes up (which happens once more than one person is involved).  Yet, God chose to make us part of a community, despite the dangers, because He knew of our need for each other.  While I will always sympathize with someone who thinks this way, I will also challenge them to think about the reasons why they make this claim, and hopefully, lead them back into the local body of believers for the strengthening of their faith.

Connections and Church

In Ephesians 5:21-22, Paul writes about how a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and that the two become one.  But then, Paul completely changes direction.  He says that this is a mystery, but that he is referring to Jesus and the church, not to a husband and wife.

Today, I was reading from a book titled "Essential Church" by Sam and Thom Rainer, a couple of pastors and researchers on religious matters.  In the chapter I was reading, they made this statement: "Trying to be a Christian with a connection to the local church is like trying to have a marriage without interacting and communicating with your spouse."  I was struck by the depth of that statement. 

None of us who are married can imagine being married to our spouse and yet not ever seeing or being in touch with that spouse.  We wouldn't even call that a marriage, but something more like a divorce or a separation.  Yet, sadly, that is how many people seem to be in their relationship with God and with the local gathering of God's saints.  It's almost an attitude of "they'll be there when I need them, but only when it's good for me."

God made us all to be in connection with one another, and those connections are a vital part of our faith.  While it may be our personal, individual faith that brings us into God's reign and the kingdom of heaven, God has never intended for that faith to be held in isolation.  The Good News is something that is shared and rejoiced in among one's fellow believers.  It is a cause for joy and celebration, that we have been rescued, and so have others, and we all have that in common.

Sadly, there are many reasons for this disconnect, far too many for me to go into today.  But perhaps it shows us the very simple, yet very profound truth.  For the local gathering of God's saints in Jesus, personal connections with one another are vital to keeping the unity and the faith with one another.  Without those closer, personal connections, faith is damaged, unity is damaged, and we succumb to the American isolation that our society so fervently proclaims as ideal.