Disclaimer: this blog was written when I was a bit downtrodden. It does not necessarily reflect what I believe, but more so what I felt at the time. I post it because I believe it can serve as a warning.
————————————————————————————–
What is this Christianese – “church-visiting” – I talk about?
I am not talking about your regular “church-hopping”, where one permanently moves from one church to another to another to another like a Halloween pub crawl with the frat boys. Because, as we all know, such behavior is destructive to both the church-hopper and the church herself and often, deservedly, gets looked down upon (especially in Korean circles, I am told).
I am not talking about “church-shopping” either, where one takes bits and parts of every local church and end up developing only skin-deep relationships all round. “I love the smallgroups at that Baptist church, the morning service at this Anglican church, and the evening service at that Black Pentecostal church. They just make me feel so alive!”
Not that.
I am talking about “church-visiting” – ‘I check you out, but I can’t settle and serve even if I wanted to because I am not from around here’.
I have church-visited twice this past month. And I hope to do it a few more times as it can be fun.
————————————————————————————–
But anyways, long story short, throughout all this I have come to see a disconcertingly lack of synergy. I see a massive difference in maturity level across congregations. Some churches are moving forward, yet many are falling increasingly behind. A 20 year old can be a leader of men here, but another 20 year old over there who has gone to church all his life cannot tell you the first reason why Jesus came to die.
Some churches are totally big on discipleship and authentic Christian fellowship, fitting into the “Acts 2″ mold like a glove, hence blessed with very committed men and women. Some slip under the radar as your regular Evangelicals, teaching the right doctrines and praying big prayers yet doing little in reality, creating a lukewarm atmosphere. Yet others cannot be called anything Christian, where there’s little selflessness but truckloads of legalism and politics, leading to crowds of people going to church for all the wrong reasons.
Yet, if every church appointed leaders according to Titus 1, you really wouldn’t expect to see this happen. If every leader had the heart and attitude seen in 1 Thessalonians 2, you wouldn’t expect to see this happen.
All this get my heart feeling a tad watered down and discontent. At times very disappointed.
The late Dr. Bill Bright, who founded Campus Crusade for Christ, said this: “Win the campus today, reach the world for Christ tomorrow”. Of course, much of that is based on what Jesus said in Acts 1:8 – that His followers, being filled with the Holy Spirit, shall reach the ends of the earth with the Gospel.
Yet, I have become disillusioned as to what it means when people say God is at work and that we can really join in and change the world. Can we really?
Is not every culture moving in the direction where faith in God is increasingly being ridiculed? Is not morality being thrown out the window, incoming the ‘everything is okay as long as no one is hurt’ ethics?
Genesis 1:26 says this, “Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
Yet congregations are always needing to be built up from the bottom again and again; people are walking away; so few are maturing that there is no multiplication but simply 1:1 replacements.
Is God really at work?
————————————————————————————–
Those of you guys in the C4C circle would probably have already read Samuel Chua’s blog written during his missions trip in Uganda (where he still is). If not, go look it up on his Facebook:
“Silver and gold I have none to offer, but the message of the gift of life and God’s gift to the world. Do you know where hope shines the brightest? It shines brightest in the darkest places, the eyes of the Ugandans who have found the light of life.”
Well, clearly our Lord YHWH is at work.
————————————————————————————–
I told you many times, didn’t I? I hate it when my heart hardens. I mean, what the hell.
This past Sunday I attended a service where the preacher probably came from England and had some sort of an English accent. He preached on Jonah 4. While I dozed off my mind during most of it, the passage itself was a lesson I needed. Jonah never liked people, yet he thought he loved God. But how can anyone claim to love God when he/she does not love what God loves?
On loving God and people, I quote Paulman Chan:
“In other words, you and I can talk about ending poverty, or we can talk about bringing the Gospel to people lost in spiritual darkness. But the thing that matters is living out a life that makes Jesus your treasure, first, and making it your priority to help others to know Him, followed by the inescapable desire to bring comfort and help to those who need it physically, socially, or emotionally.
Spiritual needs are the most important, even if a person is starving. But a person who says he loves Jesus but does not care about a starving person is living a lie, to a large extent. The solution then is not to force Christians to care for the poor; I believe the solution is to help Christians become great lovers of God so that we naturally want to care for the poor.
That kind of change of heart is what’s known in the biz as a “miracle”.”
Indeed, Proverbs 31 describes the model wife……I MEAN, I need a quick injection of adrenaline straight into my heart Mia Wallace style……I MEAN, I need to love people.
My heart hardens everytime because I do not love people.
————————————————————————————–
In other news, I got this from my brother, which I will take it as a grad gift:
Better than Gillette Mach 3 Turbo – the best a man can get?
Recent Comments