The Church Is the Enemy When...

John Eldridge did it to me again with his book Beautiful Outlaw.

I've spent the last several weeks brewing, festering, boiling over this. Do we really need "the church." I'm not talking about the the body of Christ--of course we need each other. I'm talking about the man-made institution and all of its traditions.

The buildings. The programs. The organization. The structure.

Do we really need it?

Like so many other things, it's not the vehicle that is evil. "Church" is not evil. God has worked through "church" to accomplish His work, but it becomes the enemy when godless, spiritless men and women grab hold of it and leverage it for their own purposes.

The church is the enemy when...

• Developing programs becomes more important than teaching, challenging, and inspiring people to follow Jesus
• Building a tight-knit, comfortable, happy group becomes more important than leading people to follow Christ
• Appeasing pharisees or seekers becomes more important than loving and following Jesus
• Achieving excellence becomes more important than making disciples of Jesus
• Maintaining the image of an active, loving church becomes more important than walking in the footsteps of Jesus
• Performing tasks efficiently becomes more important than showing people what it means to be Christ-followers
• Establishing and upholding man-made rules, standards, and expectations becomes more important than being in love with Jesus

The church exists for the purpose of facilitating the process of making disciples of Jesus. If it is not leveraging its resources to this end, it has become the enemy of Christ's mission.

Let's not sugar-coat it. Many churches have become the enemy of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Pray that these godforsaken, human-operated establishments are shattered by the love of Christ. Pray that we have the strength, courage, and stamina it takes to be friends of Jesus and facilitators of his mission.

How to Love

For the last few weeks, I've been thinking about what it means to truly love. In Luke's Gospel, Jesus is confronted by a scholar with the question, "What do I have to do to have eternal life?" After Jesus turns the question back on him, the scholar references the Great Commandment: love God, love others. Then he follows with the question, "But who do I have to love?" In the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus essentially says, "You're asking the wrong question. I'll answer the right one. Love others by observing and meeting needs."

For the last couple years, my wife and I have been trying to teach Kaden how to love. We often show an example, then say, "Now that's a good way to show love." Any time we catch him doing something that fits the bill, we remind him, "That's a great way to show love, Kaden!"

Last night Kaden found me lying in bed way before bed time. When he found out that I was sick, he sat there thinking for a minute, then he said, "Daddy, what is your favorite animal?" I told him, "Probably dogs." He said, "No! I'm talking about MY animals. Real animals." The giraffe. And the zebra. And the lizard. He walked out of the room and returned a minute later with the stuffed animals of my choice for me to snuggle with while I rested. After taking care to place them all around me, he began heading back out of the room, but then he stopped. "Daddy, remember not to cough on them so when I take them back tonight I won't get sick, okay?"

Last night Kaden showed me how to love. Daddy is proud! I have the best 3-year-old in the world!

Hunger Games Thoughts

As I watched the movie, I was most disturbed not by the violence, but by the grotesques who lived in the Capitol. To them, the events taking place were nothing more than a game, mere amusement, entertainment. They were so concerned with putting on a good show, so as to create the best possible story line, that they were completely unaware of what was really happening. Children were dying. Loved ones mourning. Their lack of compassion and awareness was disgusting. It's like they were numb to reality.

Then I began thinking....

How often do we as Christians concern ourselves more with saying "the right thing" or putting on a good Christian show, all the while going along completely unaware of the reality and the depth of the pain of those hurting around us? How often do we settle for throwing out a cliche Bible verse instead of truly entering into a sufferer's pain? "You know, all things work together for good. God has a plan for your life." I'm not questioning the truth and the power of the Scripture referenced. I'm questioning my heart and your heart as we treat others' sufferings as if it weren't real. As if it were a game. Maybe it's time to look in the mirror and recognize the grotesque looking back, hiding behind the make-up.

Refinished

I spent the last few days refinishing a couple pieces of furniture. Thankfully, I had a friend around who had some experience; he taught me a lot through the process. First, we stripped and re-stained a cedar trunk. My idea was to paint it, but my friend agreed with my wife: you don’t paint cedar. The wood is too nice to cover up! And whaddya know they were right. It’s beautiful!

Now I’m painting a pine bookshelf. Pine is one of those woods that often looks better when it’s covered up. So now it’s white.

This afternoon I started thinking about a parallel. Jesus talks about white-washed tombs…

Matthew 23:27-28

New International Version (NIV)

   ²⁷ “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. ²⁸ In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.

A white-washed tomb is a lot like my pine bookshelf. You can put a little paint on the surface, and you don’t notice the blemishes. In fact, a painted pine bookshelf wouldn’t look any different than a painted cedar trunk. But when you strip away the paint, what’s underneath the two provides a sharp contrast. The cedar is so beautiful on the “inside” that you put stain on it, which soaks deep into the wood, and rather than hiding what’s under the surface, it draws it out. And the finished product boasts about its grain.

We all know how to put on a nice finish coat of white paint. We know how to make it look like we have it all together. But what would happen if you stripped away the cover-up? What would be revealed? Are you just a white-washed tomb, or are the grains of your character worth exposing… even highlighting?

Are We Getting It Wrong?

Last fall I watched a documentary on youth ministry called "Divided." It rocked me... made me ask some tough questions. Questions whose answers could potentially shake my future dramatically.



If filmmaker Philip Leclerc is right, I've spent the last 10 years working with students with unbiblical methods, and the last 2 years of studying youth ministry have been wasted. So I went back to Deuteronomy 6 to take a closer look and to see what I had missed.

The premise is that in Deut. 6:4-9 Moses is teaching that it is the parents responsibility to disciple their children,  not an age-segregated youth ministry! Back in October of last year, Greg Stier posted his response to the movie, and a lot of youth ministry advocates loved watching him stand up for his "little brother." The article is worth the read because Stier makes a great case against the movie. But he misses on one point. Stier writes, "Deuteronomy 6:4-9 was written to dads and moms, not youth leaders and sponsors. The gravity of God’s command through Moses to the people of Israel still reverberates for parents today."


Read the passage yourself.

 ⁴ Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. ⁵Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. ⁶ These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. ⁷ Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. ⁸ Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. ⁹Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

Who exactly is Moses addressing here? Is he instructing the parents of individual family units on how to disciple their children?  "Hear, O [individual families of] Israel..." The Israelites were about to enter the promised land, so maybe Moses assumed that each individual family would be abundantly blessed with multiple houses and gates. I seriously doubt it. I hear Moses challenging a nation, an entire community of believers, to raise up a new generation that would love God. Israel was a community, and they raised their young as a community. Youth ministries are a part of that community as are institutions such as families and schools. Whether or not you agree with her politics, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton got this one right: it takes a village to raise our youth.

Glad to know I'm not working against God as I seek to love students and their families.

"I'll Have a Number One with a Side of Pain Please"

Not many of us are looking for a side order of pain in our lives. I'll have all the good things this life has to offer, but none of that other stuff please. Wouldn't it be great if life was just kisses and hugs, smiles and laughter, thrills and highs. Wouldn't it be awesome if life always worked out the way you wanted it to: if you always succeeded at work, your doctor called back with good news, you got the grade/car/house/boyfriend/girlfriend you wanted? What's up with all this guilt, and failure, and disappointment, and pain?

This is the point when most marketers will jump in and tell you how to avoid all that. "You know there's a pill/thrill/vacation/upgrade/hobby/book/technique that will fix that for you... a little money can buy you anything, my friend."

Most of us think of life this way:

There you are standing on the peak. You're goal is to make sure you're always moving toward the right and away from the left. You fix your gaze on pleasure and curse pain as you look back in your rear view mirror.

In his research in leprosy, the late Dr. Paul Brand saw what life was without pain. Don't get too excited, unless you're up for a side order of leprosy. After watching thousands of lepers  become completely debilitated, Brand discovered that these men and women were losing hands, feet, eyes, and more not because of a disease, but because they didn't sense pain; their warning system wasn't functioning. These lepers, and Dr. Brand, see the value of pain. They've learned that pain and pleasure are necessary and beneficial parts of life. Like love and marriage, you can't have one without the other. To cut either out would mean sleep, apathy, or death.

As long as we're on this plateau called life, we may as well embrace both. As strange as it sounds, let's thank God for both the pain and pleasure He allows in our lives.

"Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it." - Matthew 10:39