Giving thanks for Christian Community
It has been a little over six years now that I have been a part of the Christian community that I am in. It hasn’t always been easy, and it is often messy but God has used them in amazing ways to shape me. So I want to say thanks for the church.
This may not sound like a big thing to say but many people that would have know me ten years ago would be shocked to hear me say that. I really struggled with disillusionment which drove me out into the wilderness of the de-churched. I had spent may years wrestling with how church and faith were meaningless for the vast majority of people. What happened on Sunday morning made no real difference to their lives on Monday. People lived just like their neighbors who are not Christians. Add to that the shenanigans and bad theology that was tolerated so easily in many evangelical churches I felt that there was something really wrong.
Having come from a background which originally was connected with house churches and home fellowships I made the leap that the problem was how we gathered. I even wrote my senior thesis for my undergraduate degree on why the house church or cell church was a more Biblical model of how we are to meet. The problem was, after a year or so, house churches become as ingrown and stagnate as the rest. So I ended up going back to the more traditional setting wondering what was the better way.
The church I ended up in was trying to be different, but in the end became worse than all the others. My wife and I were a part of that church for almost six years, and when we left we were battered and beat-up. Two months after we left that church the news that the pastor had been having an affair with a woman in the church for over two years came out. At this point I was completely disillusioned with the idea of church and community.
At the time I could not see myself ever being a part of a church again. I read and talked a lot with people who were fed up with church as well during this time. Anger ran high, and deconstruction was the word of the day. We spoke often of finding true community, but it was always on our own terms. Yet, God in his wonderful grace didn’t leave me there. Slowly he started to show me through the scriptures that God created communities, that he was building his church. The problem wasn’t just them, it was me as well. They may have had wrong ideas of community and been wrong in may areas, but I had been wrong as well. I had my idea of the perfect community and was trying to force people into it.
I still saw that there are a lot of problems in evangelicalism (and still often cringe when I hear the term), yet I also saw that the solution wasn’t to find some new way of doing things. Nor was it to disconnect with the historic church. Instead, these things needed to be wrestled with in a community which is focused on Christ and informed by history. He also opened my eyes to see that my trust of Christ was proven in community. I couldn’t be healthy until I could love my brother’s and sister’s and be willing to give of myself for them.
So he lead me to my current community. The people there are like people all over. They are not perfect, and neither am I. We hurt each other, forgive each other, care for each other and it is generally messy. Yet God is in it which makes it all to his glory. I still see all the imperfections, and continually desire growth but I also see love, grace, and the hand of the father at work.
So I thank God for the grace he has shown me and the community he has placed me in. May they continue to form me and rub off my rough edges as they are directed by His hand.
The Death of Compassion
Today I read an article by Clint Rainey over at culture11.com entitled The Decline and Fall of Charity. It is really said to think about some of the things in this article. As Americans our care for the poor as demonstrated by our giving to charities is dismal. When we look at this the only thing that we can say is that as Americans we are lacking in compassion. As the economy becomes more unstable projections are that it will get worse. When our generation is judged by how we cared for our poor we will come up lacking. For it appears that compassion may be dying.
In every election we hear politicians preaching the need to care for the poor, yet the actual care falls far short. One side says that the government should be in charge of looking after the poor, the other says that it is the role of the private sector. Yet, looking at the recent financial scandals it appears that we should not trust the politicians and business community to be any more caring then the private sector. We seem to be lacking the virtue of compassion on all levels.
The one bright spot in the article is that the group that gives the most is Christians. Which, considering compassion is a Christian virtue, is really good. Yet, before we start patting ourselves on the back, we need to realize that we were only marginally ahead of the culture at large. According to Empty Tomb, a Christian research group, put the average giving among church goers at 3.4% which is 21% less than what people gave during the worst of the great depression. According to this article contributions from churchgoers has been cascading downward since the 1960′s. This is simply dealing with giving to churches, and doesn’t even reflect giving to the poor. Often mercy ministries are lacking in church ministry, and giving to mercy ministries out side of the church is declining.
Have you ever thought why there is such a decline when personal wealth has been on the increase? The only conclusion I can come to is that we have our eyes on our wealth and not on the person of Jesus. For as Jesus said,
“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money” (Matthew 6:24, ESV).
I wonder if God is asking us who we have been serving? Read the article and see if God is speaking to you.
Isn’t Broke So Fix It: EFCA In The News
There really hasn’t been to much press given to the process that the EFCA has been going through for the last few years. Yet in a new article in Christianity Today actually gives a good discussion of the situation. It is intresting to see the view of someone that is outside the demonination. Check it out!