Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Who are you?


Ok, let’s be honest. How many of us are the same person inside of church and out? I’m not.

How many of us feel like we can enter the sanctuary with all our agendas, scars, blemishes and selfishness? I don’t.

Ever sworn in church? I have.

Gossip? Yep, done that too.

What about idolatry and the love of money? Oh boy, it seems I have no place in God’s house. Or do I?

Thankfully, love is kind, not jealous. Love is patient, not selfish. Love keeps no record of wrong, and love never fails.

God never fails.

As we journey through lent, let me encourage you to be honest with God. Bring the “real you” you to the foot of the cross, and not the person you think is good enough for church. He is longing to meet with you, to love you and transform you. I truly believe that God is so much more impressed with honesty than a shiny, albeit shallow reputation. Besides, He knows the truth anyway. And yet He is STILL longing for your heart.

God is waiting to touch you, to love you and to renew you.

And God NEVER fails.

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Imagination

Rob Bell: "Suffering, it turns out, demands profound imagination."

Made me think, it's easy for us to imagine our lives going well, as we planned, on track. But ask the average joe on the street about what they see happening in their lives in the future and i think for the most part they find it more difficult to imagine and articulate clearly it going pear shaped.

There is an inbuilt desire in us to see things go well and so our minds actively work against the bad and focus on the good.

You never hear of high school students saying "In five years I'll be in a huge ball of shit!" it's more along the lines of a bright future - degrees, good job, family, friends, hobbies...

So here's the crunch: where does negativity creep in? And creep it does, like a ninja into a shopping mall...

Why, if it takes more imagination to see our lives end up in suffering, do we occasionally find ourselves looking that way instead of at the possible positive?

It's like putting a chocolate cake and a mud cake in front of a kid and they pick up the mud cake and eat it? what's with that?

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Unlearning

I wen to a talk / intro thing the other day by a guy names Sean Tucker, it was at 7am so my faculties may still have been at home in bed while I was out in the rain, but besides having a cool video with words popping out of his head (which made me a little jealous because the video's I'm in don't have those), he has some interesting things to say.

Like:

the church is flawed, but it's the best idea we've got. Got any thoughts on that one? I wonder if it is the best idea. Maybe the church is a terrible idea. An automatic 'you're either in or out' scenario. What if we had no formal buildings, no authoritarian leadership, no claim to have the answers on the gospel... but rather groups of people who's sole desire is to live more like Jesus every day, to meet together every so often to make sure they're on the right track and to generally have a good time together?

What if?

Then again, maybe he's right and the church is the best idea we've got, but it's just not functioning to it's full potential. But that begs the question, what is the full potential? Is there even one or is the potential limitless?

If you're like me, you see the potential good in a lot of things (and the potential pitfalls), and I see some of it in the Church, and when I say Church I mean you and me.

Not those people who meet in that building on a Sunday.

Not even 'us' who follow Jesus teachings.

But you (maybe I should say me).

The individual. The gospel of Jesus, the "Church" is a person, is this person, is me.

Maybe that's the potential, realising that I have the capacity to change my life (does that mean the world?)

Am I the Church? Really?


He also spoke at the interview of things that we can do better with our 'resources' as churches (as in the groups of people who meet as a congregation at such and such a place) - things like using our facilities for more than just directly church related stuff, even this morning I was speaking to a minister in Jozi who's church opens their doors every afternoon as a place for school kids to come and do homework etc (...there is the spin off that they then invite them to church events), but the question remains: Are we using our facilities - halls, equipment, etc. to their fullest potential, or are they standing unused for six out of seven days a week? Sean mentioned a group of people who broke away from an existing church - about 30 or so people - who met together after the breakaway and asked, "How do we follow Jesus better, and how do we make the world a better place?" and he told us some stories of putting kids through school, fixing people's cars so they could get to work and support their families, and other stories I forget... Simple stuff. Only 30 people. But can you see Jesus in it?

I can.

Contrast that with annoyed looks as people sit in church on Sunday if the wrong hymn is sung.

Or God forbid a homeless person wanders into 'our' service.

A lady was at our offices yesterday, a Zimbabwean refugee, no food, no place to stay, nothing. The only thing we could do for her is give her a pack of uncooked mielie meel and direct her to Central Methodist.

I was left asking the question: "Is that it? Seriously? Is that the best we can do?"

Sadly, that was the best we could do.

Is that our full potential?

I'm scoobied.


And I suppose I've got what some might call 'emotional fatigue' - I see so much injustice and rubbish every day that I can't even bring myself to feel bad about it anymore, let alone do something about it... maybe most of us have it.

But is that an excuse?

What about the people who the rubbish is happening to on a daily basis? Are they 'fatigued'?

So, what can we do about it?