That's not how we do it!

Been awhile. . .

I've been involved in some discussions on other blogs and emails about this thing we call the church. Everything from the right and left and inbetween. My dissatisfaction with the church at large, as we now see it, continues to grow. Not as a vile thing that needs to be spit out, but as a loving thing that needs to be nursed back to health.

Overall, I wonder if our histories and traditions have taken precendence to our reason for existing. How many people leave this place called church agreeing with Marx that religion is simply an 'opiet for the masses"? I do my church dance on Sunday morning, go home with a good feeling, and that's that. I start to imagine God smiling on me because I sit in a pew, listening to some feel-good music while I stare at the pretty artwork. What the hell has happened to God's people? Are we so numb to the existence of our loving God that we reduce his actions in this world to a pretty building? "Welcome to God's house!" the visitor sign reads. "Wow, I guess this is where god lives. . .we should come visit more often. . . like, maybe every sunday morning! Yeah, that'd be a good idea!"

Do you remember the time before Constantine? I don't, but this is what I know. In 313 the Emperor of Rome, Constantine, made Christianity legal. Before that time christians huddled in homes to praise God for loving them. They read their bibles in secret. They shared the good news, the truth about a saving God, to their family and friends with the threat of death always at their door. When Constantine made Christianity legal, it was a huge turning point. Churches went up and people no longer had to worship silently in their homes.
Sounds great. Sounds wonderful. But fast forward about 1700 years and what do you have? You have people who leave all this god-stuff at god's house and go home and get on with their lives. Church became a building, instead of a life. And the message of truth begins to mean so much less. I begin to do the church dance.



I thought I'd share a few quotes that have been sticking with me the past week or so.


"Emerging leaders sense not only change coming to our churches, but the critical need for change. In many churches it has already arrived. The emerging leaders of those churches are beginning to reshape and rethink church and the Spirit of God is doing wonderful things. But there is still a growing restlessness in many hearts and minds. People are emotionally pacing back and forth waiting and longing for change in the church to finally arrive."
Dan Kimball - Emerging Worship


"We don't display our respect for and loyalty to our fathers and mothers in the faith simply by repeating their words (although their words bear repeating). Instead, we go farther by imitating their example, by doing as they did: bringing (under the guidance of the Holy Spirit) resources from the gospel story to bear on the new situations that face us today, situations that have come to fruition in part because of the success of the gospel in undermining the status quo of the past again and again."
Brian D. McLaren - The Church in Emerging Culture