Church Talk

Have we lost, completely lost what it means to be a man in our church culture? I'm going to be real honest...I am a church planter, and the next church planter I meet with ripped jeans (jeans he paid a hearty price for...not ripped because he actually put in a day's worth of hard labor) and spiked, fluffed, colored, and streaked hair...silver bracelets (what the hell?), a fairly flabby chin, a whiney voice, and birth control glasses...I think I am going to puke.

It’s a sign of the time when it's in vogue to talk bad about your country too (Shawn Claiborne, this bud’s for you). And frankly, I'm sick of it and I think it’s a sin. I've tried to see it their way and I think its wrong. Shut up! It should be a law that unless you have time in a uniform...you keep your trap shut as far as our war fighters go and stick to hair coloring or leave the USA and join the French in their desire to turn men into women. You'll fit right it.

In churches and in ministry, we seem driven to spend everything in every resource category to offer a ministry form that is properly dressed up (after carefully "exegeting" our culture) and we are pathetically malnourished in the Word of God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. After the very profitable show "Extreme Home Makeover", many churches are forming ministries to save the whales...and in the meantime receive/give a salary for 70,000 plus for putting on a light show complete with puppets, sand artists (whatever that is), smoke machines (by the way if you are reading this blog and you have a smoke machine in your church.... leave your church...), creative dance, animal tricks, basket weaving, and a really cool interactive platform set design...(you know what I am talking about...a freaking set where you hire and spend money on set designers...or have Christ followers build the set and pass it off as gospel ministry).

I’m all for helping the poor…and being Jesus in the culture but the way I read it, it should cost the leaders something. Maybe Jesus is looking for the kind of justice that takes it where it hurts. Turn down your salary (or at least take a pay cut), go to work, and use it to feed the homeless. Buy one less overhead or digital camera, one less projector, one less sand show, one less guitarist and use your sacrifice as an offering to those who need it. Downsize your building by “sending out” a large chunk of your congregation to plant new missionally robust churches. Maybe we should lead by example and stop bilking the congregation for the dog and pony and put their financial sacrifice to good, gospel centered purposes.

In the meantime, we are gabbing about a lot of “cultural exegesis” stuff without doing what Jesus called us to do: Preach the gospel and live it out. Typically, the conversations center around…"What's better, church on wheels or the nomadic church? Simple organic church or organic seeker friendly? Institutional church or house church?" I feel like the Saturday night skit... Clothes or naked church? I think we've stretched and pulled Acts 17 (Paul’s talk on reaching his culture) beyond recognition with an over the top, church led cultural policy that is centered on accommodation. The emperor has no clothes....period. Jesus and the gospel are relevant because they are true. People are not lured into faith in the gospel or even on giving it a hearing. They are called by God (John 6:44).

I can’t imagine Jesus getting together with his planters and talking about organic vs. institutional or a long term capital campaign for hiring a production specialist and pastor of the dog and pony show. Paul’s pretty clear on who gets paid: Preachers who preach the gospel well!
Lets focus on this…

1. Walk with Jesus and love Him more than these! Our role from the garden to this very day is to walk in His new creation blessing by the power of the Holy Spirit, worshiping and loving Him with every breath, thought, action, motive, or deed.

2. Learn about the one you love. The word of God is the gospel from Gen 3 forward. Own your dependency on Christ and the redemptive power of a relationship with the King of Kings. You’re going to have to renew your thinking every day. So read, study, think, meditate, and grow rich in God’s Word.

3. Focus your life and all the things God has given you for His glory (time, resources, money, family, house, hearth, job) on honoring and worshiping Him!

4. Pray without ceasing…beginning with praise, thanksgiving.

5. Keep your affections where they need to be (Ps. 73).

6. Live sent: own the fact that you have been sent to your culture (work, home, neighborhood, city, town) and you are to present Jesus to them, every day and in every way!

7. Live incarnationally! Sacrifice for others both inside the church and outside.

8. Teach the Word, disciple and mentor others in the faith…both as the church gathers and is scattered.

If we could get this right, it seems the steady decline of the church in America might just turn around!

Stay tuned…for Biblical Theology for the common man.