Sold Out
“I wanna be Your hands. I wanna be Your feet. I’ll go where You send me. Go where You send me.”
I have a serious question. How many books about religion need to be written or read this year? How many music videos have to be made by Christian artists? How many Christian magazines have to get recycled every month and how many t-shirts really need to be stamped with crosses and cute word plays? Seriously, at what point do we stop consuming Jesus and start being consumed by Jesus?
“Oh, but I am consumed by Jesus”, I tell myself. “I read the latest Brian McLaren and Erwin Raphael McManus books. I watch Christian TV for the news and only let my children watch Sky Angel. The only presets on my radio station are either Contemporary Christian music or Christian talk radio. I even went to Starbucks to try and get a coffee with a Rick Warren quote on the cup. And what’s more I go to church an average of seven Sundays out of every eight. So don’t tell me I am not sold out for Jesus.”
I recently saw a study by George Barna which revealed that 5 out of 6 people don’t think that the church is a place to deepen their spirituality. I am thinking that maybe their churches need a book store and a coffee shop. Actually, I am not thinking at all. My head is just sort of spinning. You see I love the Church and I wish mine had a coffee shop and a book store. I wish there was a place in my church where I could invite people that don’t know Jesus to talk and share a coffee in an environment that didn’t feel like the same irrelevant system they left years ago. I wish my church had a place where we could sit and discuss spirituality while listening to music that at least hints of Jesus with the sounds of a Hammond B3 rather than a pipe organ.
Yet even more, I wish there was something that I could invite someone to join me in doing that would instantly make them feel that their life was worth more than the any of the things they can buy. Something where their hands could be used for more than holding five dollar cups of coffee while discussing what is relevant in a post modern culture. I wish there was something I could invite them into doing that by the very nature of the activity drew out of their hearts the compassion that God put there before they were born. I wish there was an activity that I could invite them into that led to a discussion about the Kingdom of God as a life changing, nonviolent, social revolution where the revolutionaries daily had their lives changed even more significantly than those that they were reaching out to help.
But unless you find painting an old building so that it looks nice for middle to upper class Americans a life changing adventure, unless you find it fulfilling to go to a house with a bunch of people that look and act just like you and where you carefully guard your real self without quite looking like that is what you are doing while talking about Jesus, unless you feel that learning to play a bunch of rock songs about religious topics more significant that playing a bunch of rock songs about boy-girl relationships, then I don’t have much to offer you.
And my head is still spinning. My head is spinning because between now and the time I turn on the Christian satellite television tonight, 1800 children are going to die because they didn’t have access to clean water. My head is spinning because there are approximately 4000 families living on the street in the major city closest to where my home is located. My head is spinning because nothing on that Christian satellite television is going to even mention the genocide currently underway in Darfur or the fact that over 15 million of children in Africa have been orphaned due to AIDS. My head is spinning because the American church refuses to talk about let alone commit any real effort to address these massive problems that are tearing at the heart of God.
My head is spinning because there is a delicate balance. There is both the Great Commandment and the Great Commission. By the Great Commission, we mean “Go and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19-20) and by the Great Commandment, we mean "love the Lord your God with all you heart and love your neighbor as yourself", especially in the context of “Whatever you have done for the least of these.” (Matthew 25:31-46). Sadly too many churches have abandoned both the Great Commission and the Great Commandment to become the "Grand Country Club", but even discounting that majority those of us left are so focused on working out the Great Commission with people that we might want to sit next to in church that we don’t have any time or energy left for the least of these. And even were we to have any energy left, our churches are doing so little to provide a means to become the hands and feet of Jesus that, as an individual in the church, I would have to use what little energy I have left just to figure out where to start to help.
Don’t get me wrong, the gospel of salvation is crucial and the Church truly is the hope of the world. I find both of those statements both factual and compelling. Yet somewhere along the line, salvation became the end of the line, being the Church became going to church and discipleship became expanding your knowledge of words in the Bible. But in reality, salvation as critical as it is, is only the recruiting process. Jesus wants you. He wants you for eternity but He wants you to start working for Him now. Having a place to celebrate as a group and build each other up is significant, but being church is less about going to a building than going out of your comfort zone to help those who can’t help themselves. And discipleship isn’t studying a book, albeit a Holy Book, but rather allowing God to use a Holy Book as one of the tools in His arsenal to daily change your life to be more like His. And becoming more like Him has to become much more like giving your life away to heal and change a hurting world, than setting a preset on a car radio or subscribing to a podcast on iTunes. But wait, that Audio Adrenaline song is on now, so I have to go.
“I wanna be Your hands. I wanna be Your feet. I’ll go where You send me. Go where You send me.”
It’s so much easier to sing than to do.
God, please give me the strength to do it.
I have a serious question. How many books about religion need to be written or read this year? How many music videos have to be made by Christian artists? How many Christian magazines have to get recycled every month and how many t-shirts really need to be stamped with crosses and cute word plays? Seriously, at what point do we stop consuming Jesus and start being consumed by Jesus?
“Oh, but I am consumed by Jesus”, I tell myself. “I read the latest Brian McLaren and Erwin Raphael McManus books. I watch Christian TV for the news and only let my children watch Sky Angel. The only presets on my radio station are either Contemporary Christian music or Christian talk radio. I even went to Starbucks to try and get a coffee with a Rick Warren quote on the cup. And what’s more I go to church an average of seven Sundays out of every eight. So don’t tell me I am not sold out for Jesus.”
I recently saw a study by George Barna which revealed that 5 out of 6 people don’t think that the church is a place to deepen their spirituality. I am thinking that maybe their churches need a book store and a coffee shop. Actually, I am not thinking at all. My head is just sort of spinning. You see I love the Church and I wish mine had a coffee shop and a book store. I wish there was a place in my church where I could invite people that don’t know Jesus to talk and share a coffee in an environment that didn’t feel like the same irrelevant system they left years ago. I wish my church had a place where we could sit and discuss spirituality while listening to music that at least hints of Jesus with the sounds of a Hammond B3 rather than a pipe organ.
Yet even more, I wish there was something that I could invite someone to join me in doing that would instantly make them feel that their life was worth more than the any of the things they can buy. Something where their hands could be used for more than holding five dollar cups of coffee while discussing what is relevant in a post modern culture. I wish there was something I could invite them into doing that by the very nature of the activity drew out of their hearts the compassion that God put there before they were born. I wish there was an activity that I could invite them into that led to a discussion about the Kingdom of God as a life changing, nonviolent, social revolution where the revolutionaries daily had their lives changed even more significantly than those that they were reaching out to help.
But unless you find painting an old building so that it looks nice for middle to upper class Americans a life changing adventure, unless you find it fulfilling to go to a house with a bunch of people that look and act just like you and where you carefully guard your real self without quite looking like that is what you are doing while talking about Jesus, unless you feel that learning to play a bunch of rock songs about religious topics more significant that playing a bunch of rock songs about boy-girl relationships, then I don’t have much to offer you.
And my head is still spinning. My head is spinning because between now and the time I turn on the Christian satellite television tonight, 1800 children are going to die because they didn’t have access to clean water. My head is spinning because there are approximately 4000 families living on the street in the major city closest to where my home is located. My head is spinning because nothing on that Christian satellite television is going to even mention the genocide currently underway in Darfur or the fact that over 15 million of children in Africa have been orphaned due to AIDS. My head is spinning because the American church refuses to talk about let alone commit any real effort to address these massive problems that are tearing at the heart of God.
My head is spinning because there is a delicate balance. There is both the Great Commandment and the Great Commission. By the Great Commission, we mean “Go and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19-20) and by the Great Commandment, we mean "love the Lord your God with all you heart and love your neighbor as yourself", especially in the context of “Whatever you have done for the least of these.” (Matthew 25:31-46). Sadly too many churches have abandoned both the Great Commission and the Great Commandment to become the "Grand Country Club", but even discounting that majority those of us left are so focused on working out the Great Commission with people that we might want to sit next to in church that we don’t have any time or energy left for the least of these. And even were we to have any energy left, our churches are doing so little to provide a means to become the hands and feet of Jesus that, as an individual in the church, I would have to use what little energy I have left just to figure out where to start to help.
Don’t get me wrong, the gospel of salvation is crucial and the Church truly is the hope of the world. I find both of those statements both factual and compelling. Yet somewhere along the line, salvation became the end of the line, being the Church became going to church and discipleship became expanding your knowledge of words in the Bible. But in reality, salvation as critical as it is, is only the recruiting process. Jesus wants you. He wants you for eternity but He wants you to start working for Him now. Having a place to celebrate as a group and build each other up is significant, but being church is less about going to a building than going out of your comfort zone to help those who can’t help themselves. And discipleship isn’t studying a book, albeit a Holy Book, but rather allowing God to use a Holy Book as one of the tools in His arsenal to daily change your life to be more like His. And becoming more like Him has to become much more like giving your life away to heal and change a hurting world, than setting a preset on a car radio or subscribing to a podcast on iTunes. But wait, that Audio Adrenaline song is on now, so I have to go.
“I wanna be Your hands. I wanna be Your feet. I’ll go where You send me. Go where You send me.”
It’s so much easier to sing than to do.
God, please give me the strength to do it.
posted by MickyMcB | 9:38 AM
1 Comments:
This is great. Thank you for your clarity, your insight and your balls.
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