Smashing Success
// July 7th, 2009 // 2 Comments » // OUT LOUD THOUGHTS
I’m becoming more and more convinced that the modern expression of the church has effectively ripped the arms and legs from the average Christian.
I was talking to a new friend of mine who told me how there are a lot of people in her church who are ready and willing to reach out to the
community, but they are “looking for a place to do it.”
And that’s the tragic thing that we have modeled (taught).
Because of egos and because of our insecurity as to need proof of God’s blessing by the number of people showing up on a Sunday, we’ve convinced them that the only thing that counts is our weekly gathering.
We don’t validate the spaces where stories collide in the everyday.
We’ve left them unprepared for a life that’s mostly lived outside the church.
And, in so doing these things, we’ve claimed the exclusive right to the presence of God to only been in our midst.
We’ve mistakenly not emphasized that the life Jesus lived was on dusty roads in the commonest of places – that God’s Kingdom comes not in the large, gaudy, and audacious things, but in the foolish, simple, weak, and underwhelming ones.
I indict myself in this matter because while, for many years, I talked about the Kingdom being in us and God showing up anywhere and at anytime, I overemphasized the need for people to connect their friends with “what God was doing here.”
