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…that you should definitely read.
(I’ll give you a hint. Click the word “read.”)
Now that I have seen, I am responsible. Faith without deeds is dead.
I can’t listen to that song without getting chills. Yesterday morning I went to the church I attended from 7th through 11th grades, a church whose service I haven’t gone to since the summer of 2007. When the message began, I suddenly was struck with a quick stream of thoughts on church and the Christian life that I was sure were God speaking to me. I immediately seized pen and paper and wrote the following. My audience is specifically the Seven24 community, but I believe this applies to anyone who calls him or herself a Christian and is not a pastor.
~*~
What if a lack of ‘fabulous teaching’ is actually a good thing? What if we should only be fed like that every so often instead of every week? What if that means that we need to read our Bibles ourselves and ask God to speak to us straight from His word? Maybe Brian Kiley leaving us and taking his awesome messages with him is a good thing. Maybe God wants to stretch & mature us. Maybe He’s calling us to search the Scrpitures together and challenge each other instead of waiting for a pastor to do it all for us. Maybe He’s calling us to stop relying on everyone else to feed us, to step up and take responsibility for our growth. That’s what we’re trying to get our high schoolers to do, but are our college students doing it?
Also, are we getting spiritually fat? Are we putting feet to our faith? Faith without deeds is dead, the Bible says (James 2:14-26). Maybe as BK is leaving, it is time for us to do something different.
Here’s my proposition. Let’s stop placing all the importance on what the speaker says on Sunday nights. Church is what happens Monday through Saturday, outside the four walls of the Venue room. Let’s commit to small groups for real, and let’s actually study the Bible as if we had no Sunday night message. If we seek God, we will find Him, so let’s seek Him ourselves. And let’s not stop there. Let’s commit to loving people, not just in words or with warm & fuzzy feelings, but with actions. Let’s not just do it a few times a week when we volunteer, but let’s figure out what love looks like as a lifestyle.
God is poking at my heart, telling me there’s something missing, something more He has for us if only we’ll reach for it. We’re not totally getting it. If we commit to changing things, I guarantee you not everyone will follow. Some will disagree. Some will be “too busy” to commit. Some will not “feel called.” Some will say we’re being too harsh. But how can we call ourselves Christians, aka “little Christs” if our lives look nothing like His? No, I’m not saying we need to sell everything and wander the streets preaching. I’m saying our lives should look radically different from those of the world. Our lives should look like adequate responses to the incredible cross, and I think that looks pretty different from the way we live now.
I think it’s time to stop waiting for some sort of revival and looking forward to the next butt-kicking message. It’s time to get off our butts and become the revival.
What Seven24 needs, I think, is not another great speaker. What we need is a leader who believes in changing things, in taking us back to the way Jesus showed us how to live. We need to band together and commit to becoming ordinary radicals, responding in the only logical way to God’s crazy love.
I am so incredibly discontent with the Church in America.
This is not right. We are so selfish and complacent. We get together and we sing and we sit and we listen, and then we go on and live our lives looking almost the same as everyone else in the world. There is nothing radically loving about the way we are living. There is not a stark and astonishing difference between us and our unbelieving neighbors; there is a church-on-Sunday-and-a-little-more-charity difference. Is that how Jesus lived? Is that how the early church lived? The answer is a big, fat, resounding
NO.
I put myself in this same category when I say that the majority of us are not actually following Jesus at all. We believe, sure, but even the demons believe and tremble. Are we actually living His example of hanging out with prostitutes and tax collectors, of healing the sick, loving the poor, and touching the untouchables?
Matthew 25:34-40 says, “Then the King [Jesus] will say to those on His right hand, ‘Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.’ Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You a drink? When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or naked and clothe You? Or when did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You? And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.”
Reading that is not supposed to make us say, ‘Oh, how nice; let’s volunteer more often.’ Occassional volunteering and detached charity that does not put you face-to-face with the poor is not what Jesus is talking about. He is talking about a whole different kind of living. He is talking about bringing the kingdom of God to earth, now.
We are not living this radical Jesus-led life. We are feeding ourselves every Sunday in church, during the week in small groups, and throughout the year with special events and celebrations. We are spiritually obese, while the poor and homeless go on literally starving.
We are not doing this Christian thing right. I understand, of course, that we will never do it perfectly, but can’t we at least try to stop just filling seats and instead start mobilizing Jesus’ hands and feet? We don’t need to feel personally called to minister to the poor and reach out to the destitute; that is quite simply what following Jesus looks like. If we claim to be Christians, then this is what we are called to do.
How can Jesus reach hearts if His Church, His Body, is not turning from a life of normalcy and diving into a life of community, sacrifice, compassion, and radical love? We are His hands and feet; He moves in the world today through us since He is no longer present physically Himself.
We, the Chuch, have been focused so intently on our role as Bride that we have missed our role as Body. As Jesus’ Bride we are in love with Him, yearning to know Him more and excitedly anticipating the day we see Him face-to-face; but out of that love and adoration should spring our role as the Body. We should then be ignited with passion to go out into the world and pour the Love He has given us onto those who need love so desperately. We should then be filled with compassion and driven to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, and when they ask why, to simply reply that it’s because we love Jesus and we love them.
When we are in love with Jesus, sacrifice should become exciting. Our lives are no longer ours, so when we use them to do exactly what Jesus would do if He were here right now, then we are truly living in and through Him. At first, maybe, the idea of hanging out with homeless people or having less stuff so that we can give more stuff will scare us or make us uncomfortable, but as we begin to willingly conform our lives to His, then His passion and love will fill us and it will become natural.
Here is what I propose (and no offence to my church- I love you dearly and place myself within that very same category with you in which I am so dissatisfied). Let’s stop thinking of the Church as an assembly that meets on Sundays. Let’s start thinking of the Church as the people who comprise it. Let’s start thinking of those people as Jesus’ actual physical way of touching the untouchables. Let’s take action and make our entire lives look shockingly and beautifully different than the lives of those who don’t know Him, rather than just our Sunday mornings.
Here’s a quote from Shane Claiborne’s Irresistible Revolution that I absolutely love: “What would a twenty-year-old Jesus have said if they asked Him, ‘ What are You going to do when You grow up?’ I don’t know, maybe something like, ‘I’m going to turn the world upside-down. I’m going to hang out with prostitutes and tax collectors until people kill Me.’ Or what would Peter have said? ‘Well, I was going to be a fisherman, but then I met this dude, and He messed all that up.’”
Practically and specifically for us New Songers, I strongly believe this means diving into Frontline. If you have scheduling conflicts, this does not mean that you can’t be involved! All it takes is asking Edwin, or Melody, or even me, and we can all meet and figure out more opportunities to serve.
We’ve been giving up too easily. We’ve been copping out and making excuses. Let’s cut it out, guys. Let’s actually start following this crazy awesome Jesus.
[For more on this topic, and to read what started me on this track, check out the aforementioned Irresistible Revolution. Every Christian should read this book.]
