A Plea To The Church: Movement or Incubator

As I continue to flesh out my plea to the church I want you to understand my heart a little more clearly.  My plea is one of deep concern for the state of the church.  I grew up in the church as previously stated but I was never given a platform for why I believe what I believe.  I never had a landing pad for my beliefs as a Christian until I was 22.  My memory of the church growing up is not one of monumental victories.  I don’t remember people coming to Christ by the droves.  I don’t remember people surrendering their lives to the call of God with passion and exuberance.  I don’t remember our church sending out people to infuse the Gospel within our city.  I don’t remember families teaching other families about the Christian faith.  I don’t remember seeing the movement of God dispel outside the doors of our church.  I believe that where the presence of God is real and the move of God is authentic, there will be individuals and families changed, which will result in a movement that stretches outside the walls and consumes the community and the culture.  

Here’s what I do remember.  I remember thinking that the church looks like a factory that investigates little lab rats in order to watch their tendencies with the expectation of producing a formula to control the environment.  I remember feeling like as long as I was in this controlled environment that nothing on the outside really mattered.  What is the dilemma here?  The major problem with this mentality is that I was stuck in a culture that didn’t effect “the culture.”  I was in an environment that was merely holding hands and looking at each other all while keeping our back turned from the very culture God called us to reach. 

If we build up walls within the church, how can we ever be a city within a city?  If we expect those who do not know Christ to come into our buildings and look like us and dress like us and talk like us, how can we expect anything less than a production of ”lab rats,” who just run around in their controlled environment looking for a way out?  However, when the church experiences the presence of God it will create a movement that will break all barriers of race, status, personality, tradition, and heritage.  It will consume the city.  God is so much bigger than our tradition and our preference.  My plea is that we won’t shrink the Gospel down to “this is how we’ve always done it,” so we can build status while forgetting to do ministry. 

A Plea to the Church-The God Who Is

I have been around the church my whole life.  I love the church.  I’ve seen the ugly, the bad, and the good.  It’s what God has called me to be obedient to because I am his follower.  I love the church because he has called me to minister to it.  I want to take some time over the next few weeks and make some pleas with the church because quite frankly you are losing a lot of people.  My plea today is this:

Stop focusing on the God who was and relentlessly puruse the God who is.  I’ve been around the conservative movement my whole life and growing up in the late 80’s and 90’s you heard a lot about the conservative resurgence that took place in the 50’s and 60’s.  There was a big wave of mass evangelism going on during this era that flooded the church.  People were coming to Christ by the droves, the pews and altars were full, and people were faithful and passionate. 

There is nothing wrong with looking to the past as a rich source of strength and encouragement.  But if the past never compels you to do anyting in the present then you are bound for failure.  “If we are not progressivly moving in the presnt toward the future then we will be stuck in the past.”  Let me flesh this out- What I find in the church is a great priority placed on what God did rather than what he is doing and can do.  I respect the move of God that took place in the 60’s but I wasn’t there.  The people that I minister to were not there.  Thousands of people sitting in our pews were not there either.  What I’ve found is that the church is putting so much emphasis on what God did back then, that we expect everything to look like it did back then as well.  If our music isn’t the same, if our formalities and structures aren’t the same, if our dress isn’t the same, if our methodologies aren’t the same then God is just STUCK.  Let me plead with you:      

1. God cannot be put into an equation or formula-I do believe there is such a thing as irrerevent worship of God but no man can tell me that A+B=THE MOVE OF GOD.  Does God have boundaries and guidelines? Yes, read your Bible!  My plea to you is please don’t tell me that just because God did it up big way back then that it has to look that way today.  I hardly think that the worship service that took place in 1 Kings 18 at the base of Mt. Caramel remotely resemembled the resurgence of 1960. 
2. Generations are lost because you are stuck-I believe that the most evident stronghold that this mindset has tainted is our youth.  They do not understand the logic of what is promoted within the majority of our churches.  Why do you put so much emphasis on what God did, and rarely ever praise him for what he is doing?  Does that mean he can’t do that now?  Does that mean that he won’t use me?  Does that mean that God has already done his most glorious and powerful work?  Students are totally lost within the culture of this mindset because it completely ignores what God is currently doing in them.  Sure, they look different, talk different, have different interests, they may even desire to worship different, but can you prove that God is not working in the midst of their lives?  Does God’s Word limit every culture in every place in every time to a certain method of worship?  My plea to you is to move on from the past and relentlessly pursue God today.
3. He is the same yesterday, TODAY, and forever. As I study the implications of worship in the Scriptures, I find that worship is primarily individual and internal.  True worship is between the worshipper and God.  If I’m not worshipping God daily and consistently then when I engage in a corporate service, i’m really not worshipping.  If I’m solely stuck on what God did, how he did it, why he did it and expect that move to look just like it did way back then, my personal worship is dry and thirsty.  When we remove our traditional glasses and read the Scriptures with un-biased eyes, we will find a God who never changes.  The same God that brought the world into existence; the same God that walked with Enoch; the same God that brought fire down from heaven; the same God that let John lay his head on his chest; the same God that walked on water; the same God that sat in the middle of a house full of sinners; the same God that hung on the Cross and shed his blood for my sins, is the same God I have the privilege to worship and experience today.  Sure, the way I experience him and the setting in which I sense his presence will be a little different than Enoch, David, Peter, Paul, and John; yet he is still the same.  So I want to focus on the God of today, the God who is-not just who was.  My plea is that you will do the same because I may not appreciate all that God did way back then but I know without a doubt he is waiting to do big things TODAY!                   

A Celebration of Grace

This past week has probably been one of the most emotional and stressful weeks of my life.  On Saturday evening, my grandmother went home to  be with Jesus.  This is the first person close to me that has passed away so all of the emotions that come with death have been quite difficult.  I also had the privilege to be with her at the bedside as she took her last breath to wake up in the arms of Jesus.  The glory of his presence in her room was indescribable.    

The greatest honor for me was to stand up on Wednesday, November 18 and preach her funeral.  Of all the great memories that I have of my grandmother, most of them all have to do with Jesus.  She preached her funeral long before November 18, 2009.  Her life can be defined by one word, which is grace.  Her life exemplifies the unlimited, unmerited, and inexhaustible grace of God.  ”All of grace is her story, all the way from earth to glory.” 

Grace radically changed her life, it changed mine as well.  There are many Christians that do not resemble the life changing grace of Christ in their lives but my grandmother not only talked it, lived it, walked it, she fought the fight of grace as well.  You see, grace is more than a one time event in the life of a believer.  It is more than a principle.  It is more than an abstract idea.  It is more than doctrine.  It is the continual working of God in the life of his children.  It is humanity fellow-shipping with divinity.  “Grace is not merely about getting humanity to Heaven; it’s about brining heaven down to humanity.”  Grace radically changes lives!  Just the mention of his name would bring tears to her eyes.  Just the conversation of the goodness of God would make her weep and cry for joy.  She loved the way Jesus desired to be loved.  She followed the way Jesus desired to be followed.  She forgave the way Jesus desired for us to forgive.  She lived the life of grace.

It was truly my highest honor to be able to publically express the kind of life my grandmother lived.  The greatest thing about her life is the same grace that formed this world out of nothing and brought it into existence; the same grace that made man in the image of God; the same grace that God sent his son to the Cross to die and bring hope to all of humanity; the same grace that changes lives; the same grace that brought my grandmother safely home, is the same grace that sustain us until we meet again.  Today, she is face to face with grace waiting on the awesome reunion day when we will all be rejoined together and for all eternity worship the God of grace.  But until that day comes, I want to grow in the grace of Christ while standing on the shoulders of a true spiritual giant-my grandmother (Melvina Sadie Grace Barbary).

Who will take the Rose?

I was listening to Matt Chandler (you want this guy on your podcast-he is solid) yesterday and he gave an illustration that struck me so vividly and I felt compelled to share with you today.

He spoke of sitting in a worship service not too long ago and listening to a preacher who preached a message on the subject of sex and purity.  The preacher held up a rose in front of the congregation and told everyone that he wanted them to smell his rose, so he threw it out in the congregation and told everyone to pass it around and savor it.  He then began to preach a less than average, un-biblical message on sex.  He threw out statements like, “you don’t wont syphilis do you?  Everybody’s smiling and having a good time at the party until they realize you’ve got herpes.”  He then proceeds to degrade the issue and asks for his rose back, which by this time is broken into pieces and the beautiful rose petals are scattered everywhere.  He then holds up the broken rose and shouts, “who would want this?”  Matt says, that everything within him wanted to stand up and say, “JESUS WANTS THE ROSE.”  Isn’t that the beauty of the Cross?  Isn’t that the Gospel?  Isn’t that the benchmark of our faith?  Couple things are resonating within me from this illustration.

• No one leans against the Cross and says, “come get you some of this.”  I’m sure the content of what the preacher was preaching had truth within it.  But truth without love is nothing more than legalism, which is quite detrimental to the Gospel.  The Gospel shouts, “he made him who knew no sin to become sin for US, so that WE might become the righteousness of God.”  No one gets to lean on the cross.  That’s not the message of the Gospel.  The message of the Gospel is that we all need the Cross and there is room for every one of us.  If you think you’ve arrived you’ve missed the message of the Cross-you’ve misunderstood the Gospel.  Jesus wants the filthy, dirty, unsavoring, unholy, unrighteous, and less than worthy rose.  That’s the Gospel.

 

• Have we esteemed second-rate traditional issues over the heart of the Gospel?  I’m not talking about justifying a lifestyle of sin through the message of the Gospel.  The Scriptures are replete with the expectation of living a life that honors the Sacrifice of the Cross as well as rebuke for continuing to live a lifestyle that is disobedient to the Gospel.  However, the message of the Gospel is one of Grace and love, not a  checklist of self-righteous deeds.  Do we make people stumble over our preferences to get to the Cross?  If we are, then we are bringing  extra-biblical ideologies into the Gospel message and that is nothing more than heresy.  Jesus wants the rose JUST AS IT IS.  The church of Ephesus was praised for their good deeds, for their endurance and courage to faithfully preach the Gospel, and their knowledge of the Truth.  But they were rebuked for one important element: they lost their love.  God help us to live and speak the reality of the Gospel.  Jesus died for the rose just as it is.