The folks over at Stupid People Church, the blog/podcast that I’m falling in love with and highly recommend, pointed me to this article, entitled “Escape From Consumer Church,” a GREAT article that says a lot of things that I find myself agreeing with with where the church is today and where the church is going and where the church needs to go. Worth a read, for sure.
And you love her
But you know you’ve got to leave her
She’s leaving you with no way out - Derek Webb
So my family’s time at Buffalo Baptist Church has come to an end. The politics of church have taken over the love and community that once was. People who I thought loved and supported us turned their back on us, then turned toward us again, only to spit in our faces. It’s been a rough couple of weeks. I may post a rundown, but it’s not something I feel I can relive now.
Tonight was the first time I attended a church other than Buffalo in five years. It was a strange feeling. To go somewhere, and not be the worship leader. To not be the preacher’s kid. To just be a visitor at this church. I don’t know if I liked it or not. It was so different from where I’ve been for so long now. I hope I can get back to where I can lead others in worship weekly….somewhere. I need that. It’s where I found my strength every week.
To all of those who may read this…please pray for me, my family, and what was once my church. The rebuilding process will be an interesting one for us all.
Are we as a church in the twenty-first century too concerned with being relevant?
Oh dear sweet Jesus, yes we are.
Am I the only one who’s tired of hearing the “The Bible is a what-to, not a how-to book” argument made as an excuse for using unBiblical methods of churching?
Seeker-friendly churches scare me, b/c when it comes down to it, none of us are seekers.
GOD is the seeker.
In our preoccupation with being relevant, we’ve forgotten one thing. The Bible was never irrelevant.
For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. 2 Timothy 4: 3-4
This is short in hopes it will spur discussion. Carry on.
I’m sitting alone in my bedroom, listening to David Crowder’s “You Alone”.
I listen to a lot of praise and worship music, and I’m always trying to find new songs that we can do in my youth group (seeing as how I’m the music guy and all). You Alone is by no means a new song. We’ve been doing it for years. But it never fails that every time I hear it, every time I sing it….I start crying. I don’t know why. Just the amazing profoundness of those statements. “You alone are Father, you alone are good, you alone are savior, you alone are God”. And the bridge, the “I’m Alive” part always gives me chills.
I’ve always heard complaints (and at times have supplied the complaints myself) that a lot of worship these days is too man-centered, focusing on us rather than God. This song always encourages me when I complain about that. It’s about HIM alone.
The pastor stands before his congregation, passionately bringing the gospel before them. He’s not yelling. He’s not sweating. He’s not hacking with every breath. But he is passionate and compassionate in his delivery. He is God’s messenger.
The congregation sits in silence. A deacon sits in the front, arms crossed, checking his watch every few minutes. The football game starts at 12:30 and he wants to be home on time. A mother sits about midway through the congregation, pondering what she should cook for lunch for her family of four. Spaghetti? No. Sandwiches? No. Hot dogs…no. Ah heck, let’s just go to Shoney’s. A twenty-something college student sits in the back, nearly asleep. He only came because his mother expected him to. It pleases her for him to show up once a month. He can’t wait for it to be over so he can go party with his friends. A small group of teenagers sits together, whispering and passing notes, oblivious to the pastor’s words. They’re concerned with the latest gossip, who’s dating who, and how Mary Sue Watson got her hicky.
A child sits next to her mother, listening quietly to the words the pastor is saying. She doesn’t understand it all, but she knows one thing…what he’s talking about. She wants it. That love. It sounds good. Her father is gone. He left her mother before she was born. But the child hears the pastor call God a “father to the fatherless.” In the middle of the chaotic silence, the quiet noise that was the congregation, the child stood up and shouted, “Hey preacher! How can I get to know this God you’re talking about!”
The deacon is disgusted. How dare a child interrupt the service. The mother is embarrassed. She can’t believe her child has done such a thing to her, drawing attention to her family. The twenty-something is startled from his fragile slumber, and is trying to figure out what’s going on. The teenagers are broken from their chit-chat and notes, and turn to see who yelled at the pastor.
The pastor calmly stepped down from the pulpit, and walked down the aisle to the young child. “Hello,” he said. “Hi,” she faintly replied. The girl was obviously embarrassed at the attention she had brought on herself, and wished she could crawl into a hole.
The pastor explained to the little girl how she could come to know the God he had described. “Now, would you like to meet Him now?” The little girl replied, “I think I’d like that.” The pastor held out his hand, and the two walked up to the altar together. He sat her down on the steps, and they began to talk and then prayed. An hour later, the deacon was furious. He’d missed the first quarter of his game. The mother was now too late for the buffet at Shoney’s and was trying to figure out where she could take her family for a “celebration” dinner for her daughter’s decision. The twenty-something was asleep again, and the teenagers were back to their notes and chit-chat. But the pastor and the child were no longer the same. That encounter changed them both.
And all it took was a shout in the silence.
GOD, your God, will cut away the thick callouses on your heart and your children’s hearts, freeing you to love GOD, your God, with your whole heart and soul and live, really live. — Deuteronomy 30:6 MSG
I’ve been reading Deuteronomy 30 over and over again.
I love how the Message translation puts the person of God as “GOD, your God.” First of all, he’s all caps GOD…the sovereign LORD, the almighty, the KING. But that’s not all…He’s YOUR God. He’s not just some impersonal deity, he’s THE personal God…YOUR personal God. He is in you, and you in Him.
This commandment that I’m commanding you today isn’t too much for you, it’s not out of your reach. It’s not on a high mountain–you don’t have to get mountaineers to climb the peak and bring it down to your level and explain it before you can live it. And it’s not across the ocean–you don’t have to send sailors out to get it, bring it back, and then explain it before you can live it. No. The word is right here and now–as near as the tongue in your mouth, as near as the heart in your chest. Just do it! — v. 11-14
I love these verses here. He’s telling us that what He’s giving us to do is doable. In fact, it’s right in reach. I love the way this is worded in the Message too.
Go here to read the whole chapter…I hope you are encouraged by it as I was.
Sitting silent wearing Sunday best
A sermon echoes through the walls
A great salvation through it calls to the people
Who stare into nowhere
And can’t feel the chains on their souls
So I’ve been thinking a lot about church, and the present condition of the church.
Derek Webb’s album She Must and Shall Go Free and the second verse to Jars of Clay’s “Love Song For a Savior” (see above) have spawned a lot of this thinking.
I began singing “Love Song…” at church a couple of months ago. I had never really thought about the words to the second verse until I began singing it in church and watching the folks in the congregation as I sang. It made me wonder how many people in that building were actually there. How many people were really there for the right reasons. It also made me wonder how many people were there out of habit, or because their parents or husbands or wives dragged them there. It made me wonder how many people’s minds were wandering to that afternoon’s game, or NASCAR race, or what they’d be having for dinner.
It made me wonder how many people in that building were sleeping.
I don’t mean sleeping in a literal, physical sense.
I wondered how many people were spiritually asleep.
All my life in church as a preacher’s kid I’ve heard deacons and trustees talk about church business. But I wondered and tried to remember how many times I’d heard them discuss God’s business. I wondered and tried to remember how many times I’d seen those people break down in tears out of conviction, or out of pure worship of God.
I wondered how many of them have become totally desensitized and calloused that the Gospel doesn’t affect them anymore.
I was like that a few months ago.
Church was a social thing for me. An event I was involved in three times a week simply because I’d been doing it my whole life.
I wonder how many of those people are there for the same reasons?
Come back to your senses as you ought, and stop sinning; for there are some who are ignorant of God–I say this to your shame. (I Corinthians 15:34)
When I was younger, I used to hope for the day when I could take a shower. You see, for the first few years of my life, I had to take baths. My older brother and sister got to take showers, and mom and dad got to take showers…so I wondered why couldn’t I? Anyway, now that I CAN take showers I find myself frequently wanting to take baths more and more. That’s right. I, a 17-year-old man…take baths. I’ve found that the time I can spend in the bathtub, alone with a dripping faucet, a ticking clock, and my Bible, or a Brennan Manning book, or (dare I say it?) the latest John Grisham novel, is a time better than most for contemplation and introspection. I get more thinking done in half an hour in the tub than I do an entire week at school sometimes.
Today, I was taking a bath and thinking. I was listening to the dripping faucet and the ticking clock, and I noticed that the two were beating perfectly off of each other, forming a “drip tick drip tick” sound. The sound reminded me of a drum beat. I got to thinking about how a master musician dissects a piece of music, how he/she breaks it down into 4th notes and 8th notes and 16th notes, making into a perfectly timed masterpiece. The best musicians are often known more for their virtuoso skills than for timing, but is the impeccable timing that separates great music from great noise. I began to realize that, much as a master musician forms notes into music, using the perfect timing, or as a master mason forms bricks into the perfect formation, making the perfect wall, God forms us together, and everything happens in the perfect timing. What an epiphany! It was God who set that dripping faucet and that ticking clock apart from each other, a perfect “drip tick drip tick” beat, and it was God who planned my entire life out, causing everything to happen at a SPECIFIC time for a SPECIFIC reason.
God truly IS awesome.
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