eBay It All
It’s time to clean out the old closet, get rid of stuff that is just hanging around taking up space, like that baby blue leisure suit with the dark blue stitching, and the flourescent orange floral print silk shirt with the huge collar that you wore with it. Don’t forget to throw out the white buckle shoes too!
Just like that old leisure suit, it is time to throw out the dead, lifeless, judgemental, compassionless, useless, formulaic religion that so many people are caught up in. The answer to the worlds questions and problems is not lifeless religion or formulaic church…but Jesus Christ!
What Have We Done?
I was recently speaking to a very good friend of mine, a devout follower of Christ, and he told me, ‘I love God with all my heart, but I HATE church’. His statement echoed the way I have felt for some time. I hate church…I hate what it is has become…what WE have made it.
We have made church about our building, our denominational name, our cool, hip, trendy use of technology, our life application sermons, our traditional fundamentalist services, complete with enthusiastic singing from our (insert name of denomination here) hymnals. We go to great lengths to tell everyone, I am Baptist, or I am Methodist, Lutheran, Evangelical, Episcopalian, Non-denominational, or inter-denominational, and we wear the title as a badge of honor.
Enter To Worship
Some years ago, I was invited to visit a little black baptist church near downtown Houston Texas one day, and just over the door entering into the auditorium was a sign that read, ‘Enter to worship’…I loved it. It left no doubt what you were to do upon entering the sanctuary. What was really interesting to me was that over the same doorway as you were leaving the auditorium was a sign that read, ‘Exit to serve’. What a profound statement if there ever was one.
It is time we remember that the church is not our buildings. It is not our denominational or non-denominational badges. It is not whether we sing from a hymnal or if we sing modern contemporary worship music. It is not any of the things that WE have made it.
It is living, breathing, organic. The church is not a noun…it is a verb. The church should be full of action, constantly moving, growing, nurturing.
The church is….Me and You!
“What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one says to him, ‘Go, I wish you well; keep warm and fed,’ but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. But someone will say, ‘You have faith, I have deeds.’ Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do.” (James 2:14-18)
How much would you bid on eBay for religion? Me…I wouldn’t bid on religion…not one cent…I would however give my all for a relationship with Jesus Christ.
The world doesn’t need to see our buildings, our badges, and they don’t care what songs we are singing. They want and need to know Jesus Christ. They need us…the church, the body of Christ, to get outside of the four walls, and show them Jesus Christ.
Someone once told me, ‘They don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care’.
To sum this post up, I would like to use an alternate to the phrase that was heard at the end of every Elvis concert….
The Church Has left The Building!
Relevant Christian 
So yeah, my quote should say, dropping $600 on an iphone does not fit into my values. I wonder how many “pastors” will get one because it’s the next cool thing. IMO, Buy a $50 phone and build 2 wells in Africa with the rest
Come on with that…I agree.
Whether it is foreign missions or home missions…there is work to be done and it is a much better way to spend the money.
$600.00 on a phone…that is mucho loco!
Just found your blog…I’m really glad that it made it to the “Fastest Growing WordPress.com blogs” list
So basically you want people to convert from fundamentalist churches to what, in my part of the world, are called ‘happy clappies’.
Amen to that. (: I was really impacted by that ‘enter to worship. exit to serve’ phrase. Indeed, that’s really what a church without walls is like, regardless of what denomination we are. (:
David,
No where in this post does it say that. I am talking about getting outside of your four walls and doing something.
Until just recently, I was on staff at a large church that just spent over 13 million dollars on building a 106,000 square foot building to have ‘church’ in.
It is beautiful…it is big…top of the line audio and video equipment, marble floors and granite counter tops, two stories of office space. It’s a great place and there is nothing necessarily wrong with it.
But…is that what it’s all about?
I am talking about not spending all of your “church” time building monuments that say “look how much we have grown” or “look how pretty our stained glass is”.
I am talking about not just standing on a street corner and yelling and telling people they are going to hell but actually reaching them on there level.
If they are hungry…give them something to eat, tell them about Jesus. If they need clothes, clothe them, tell them about Jesus.
I really don’t care what kind of church you belong to. i don’t care if you consider your self fundamentalist or whatever.
I’m talking about getting over your denominational self and putting legs to your faith!
THAT is what I am referring to in this post.
Jimmy,
“The Church Has left The Building”
I like that!
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Jimmy: I completely misunderstood your post, and I apologise. I completely agree with what you’re saying – too many churches (and I mean ‘church’ both in terms of an organisation, and a local building) are focused on image and tradition. To be [i]seen[/i] to believe in God is more important than the actual belief itself.
My own local church (I’m Catholic btw, not fundamentalist) is full of cliques – everyone sits in the same place every week, making sure to sit next to the same people. People worry more about what hat to wear than about what their faith means to them. Too many people fail to realise that being a good Christian is not about attending church every week – it is about [i]living[/i] as a good Christian; loving thy neighbour and all that. Faith isn’t about attendance in a building, it’s about how you put your faith into practice in your life.