Irrelevant Church

I have been feeling convicted lately. I have read a few books in the past months that have all seemed to have some common themes. The last of which was Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. In it, Miller traces his coming of age in his spirituality.

In it, he discusses many of the ways that "Christianity" gets in the way of spirituality. May of his ideas, I was ready to disregard because he often threatened to throw the baby out with the bath water. But, then I went to church.

Something very frightening occurred to me as I looked around at the faces in the crown and sung along by memory to the songs.

The church is completely irrelevant to modern society. Before you move to dis-fellowship me, look around at your own congregations and tell me if you don't see it too.

Even in very good, open, loving congregations, you'll notice that the service is for and by comfortable Christians. We preach about issues that no one is talking about to people who we know will agree with us. We have completely lost touch with the world that we have been sent to preserve.

I think that the biggest problem, is that we have no focus. It's okay that the worship service is set up to edify the Christian. I'm not suggesting that we start gearing our services with the sole purpose of seeking the lost (though that should be a concern). The problem is, that we've made the worship service the focus of the church.

Christianity is something that we do once to three times a week at a building somewhere in the suburbs. It was never supposed to be that way. The church service is supposed to be the smallest part of what we do as a church. The church exists to serve the people that are around us. The worship service is meant to be a time to edify, learn and thank God in between the stuff that we've been sent here to do. Yet, very few of us have given up our possessions, or actually gone out and fed the hungry. Instead, we think it's enough to give a little money on Sunday and pay someone else to do our work for us, then we complain when the people that we are giving the money to don't repay us by filling our pews.

That's not what we've been called to do. We are here to do actual work. We are here to save the world. Unfortunately, we haven't even tried.

So, what will I do about it? I don't know, these are un-thought out ramblings at this point. Will I plant a church? Will I begin to sell my possessions and give to the poor? Will I write a book (of which I already have a couple in the works)? Don't know. I will start and have started by praying on the issue and evaluating my own role in the church and the Kingdom of God.

That's all for now. More later.