Bored

People told me that it was all about the lost. We’ve got to change things because those lost souls, those unchurched, they are dieing every day without Jesus. The way we are doing things just isn’t going to reach them. I listened and I agreed. I had spent many years living in the lost world, I still have the memories, the scars, so I needed very little goading to want to get involved.

We need to change things. We need to make adjustments because it is all about the lost. So we add this and that and the other. We seek to be relevant, cutting edge, vibrant. Those lost souls they want this. If we just had new technology and new ways of doing things then those lost souls will just pour in our front door. That is what is keeping them from Jesus, a wide screen projector with words to the songs.

To write it is embarrassing. To think that this ever sounded logical to my ears. What have I discovered? If you ever want to get something changed to more closely align with your personal preferences, the best way to do it is to claim it is for the lost, those people who are dieing without Jesus.

If you are tired of the same old song for the hundredth time it sounds selfish to say I’m tired of that old song but actually sounds holy when you say a lost world of sinners will not understand that song and can’t relate to a song book.

How much change in church done in the name of the lost is just because the current crowed is bored with the same old same old? We stick our Bible verses up on the big screen so that people don’t have to bring their Bibles. We are told that is because the lost don’t know the Bible and would be intimidated but is it really because the current crop is tired of carrying a Bible they never read to the building? Is it the fact that they don’t want to open the Bible so show it to me? I’m not sure it has anything to do with the lost.

In the past several years what I have discovered blew me away. The lost, people not raised in a church their entire life, were actually very zealous to open their Bible. Tell them how to get there for sure, but please let them get there. The stories of the Bible that I was told would intimidate them instead excited them. They want to know about the book.

They want someone to read and explain the story. They didn’t want less they wanted more. So who was it who got upset when I would read a lot of scripture in my message? Not the new Christians. No it was the ones who have been in their entire life. Bored? When do we get to the end so I can get to Applebee’s.

It is no different with hymn books and old songs. The lost who may have spent a few Sundays at a relative’s church or a VBS instantly connect with the old hymns. I actually had a woman who hadn’t been to church since childhood tell me our church had way to much going on. She longed for a place where they sang from a hymn book.Doesn’t she know she is the lost we did all of this for?

Do we realize that in keeping our current members from boredom we may be missing the very people we say we did it all for?

Is religion the opiate of the masses?

This is a thought that keeps swirling around my head these days. I can’t get away from it. The longer I live the more I wonder if Marx wasn’t right. Now this quote is often used by atheists to make fun of Christians but it seems Marx intended it as a challenge to people who numbed the pain of life with religion instead of dealing with the issues that came their way. For Marx the issue he saw was an economic one. Today I wonder if people don’t use religion to numb any number of pains caused in our world.

I keep wondering if he wasn’t right. When people look for a church, what do they look for? A place that will help them grow? A place to challenge their faith as it pushes them in new directions?

Maybe I am becoming a cynic because of what I see. I hear people tell me they want these things and yet when they don’t find the exact blend of songs old and new or the exact right quota of kids they move on. I hear people tell me they want to make a difference in the world. I hear people tell me that they want to grow and yet what I see people doing is tenaciously holding to their old way of doing everything in their lives.

It seems that people go to worship to use it as a drug. To feel better about themselves. What’s ironic is the churches that frown and look down at others who emphasize experience are just as guilty but in a different way. Their drug is the lack of feeling they get in a worship setting. The more brainy the better.

What they don’t realize is they are seeking the same numbing opiate. Instead of soothing themselves with emotions they soothe themselves with the same sermon on the same topic with the same scripture for the two hundredth time. They feel better but do they live better? Am I being to harsh? I can’t help but feel like something is off. It seems that church has become one big search for a numbing drug and each style is just another brand name elixir.

I don’t know. I just wonder. Maybe I thought being a Christ follower would be so much more. A new movement promised a better experience but all I have found is the same drug with new packaging. Very graphic and experiential but just the same. Now the opiate comes in the form Charlie Hall or Tomlinson. Numb me so ignore the fact that I look just like everyone else, believer or not.

I don’t think religion is supposed to be a drug that numbs our pain but the longer I live the more I wonder if, I’m just wrong. Is there hope for anything different or have I missed something and that really is what God intended?

I just don’t see Matthew leaving his business to numb the pain. I don’t hear in Zacchaeus a man who was looking to escape his everyday existence. I don’t think Paul abandoned all and started building tents as a common man so he could show up each weekend for an I’m OK your OK moment.

A couple of years ago I preached a sermon with a basic point that being a Christian meant you felt more not less. Two years later I wonder if it is true, and if it is, what could be done about it. What do you think? Help me along in this journey.

Which way next? 

My Growing Frustration

I’ve had enough. I’ve come full circle. I’m not impressed. I’m sorry, for all the good intentions, and even needed truth, I have had enough of those who have come to save the church from itself.

I can see it no other way. I wonder why it took me so long and I am embarrassed with the way I treated others. In an effort to get others to get it I totally didn’t get it.

I have spent the past few days reading, reading a lot of different writers. They make some very interesting points, and yet why is it that I feel so looked down upon after the exercise? Have I really learned so little? I grew up in a tradition that spoke for Jesus, really that is what they did. They told Jesus that he was most concerned with whether or not a group used instruments in worship. They told Jesus that what consumed him most was the frequency of the Lord’s Supper.

I understood all of that and rejected it. The problem is it just seems like a new group is telling me what Jesus would and wouldn’t do and say. So now Jesus is fully consumed with AIDS in Africa and he doesn’t care what words one uses to express it. If you don’t understand that then you must just be a “church” person locked into old ways of thinking that are spiritless. So now someone knows Jesus wouldn’t mind the F word. Same attitude, same way of speaking for Jesus, telling us what he really thinks.

Just as I didn’t know where people got the information that Jesus was consumed with instruments I find myself asking the same question with this new wave of teachers. This new group that wants to save me from the tyranny of mindless church rote. I am reminded of the book Animal Farm by George Orwell, and I can’t help but get this sneaky suspicion that this is exactly what is taking place. Someone is making claims and they sound so good and yet in looking down the road I’m not sure I’m not just trading masters. It is easy to tell someone what will fix everything but another to make that reality come true.

I was reading a blog by a guy I really respect and he was telling of a funeral that he recently did. She was 87, and as I read the wonderful story of her life, the hardships and struggles, the joy, I couldn’t help but wonder if she new she wasn’t emergent. I wondered if it bothered her that she was modern to the core. I wondered if it ever impacted her life that she felt obligated to go every time the church doors were open. I thought about her life and its beauty and said that after a lifetime of majoring in minors nothing had changed. I had just replaced one set of minors with a new one.

If only we did it this way or that. If only people got this or that, it would all be better. I’m not buying that one anymore. Never believe it when it sounds too good to be true. Never take the easy answer. A person wants to replace one shortcut with another. Everyone’s journey is different, just because they do not experience it as I do doesn’t make mine better or more right, it just makes it mine. How sad to fall into the same trap one is leaving, but that is the story of Animal Farm isn’t it?

I have officially stopped dreaming of the day the church will get it. I have jumped off the bandwagon. I am leaving the search for greener grass to fully embrace my wonderful lawn, weeds and all. I begin my backtrack journey.