Another Sunday, the Lord's Day, our Christian day of worship. I sit watching the crowded auditorim when my focus and attention really should be on God. I sense there are a lot of carbon-copy Christians entering the room. We went through the motions of another week, and now we are about to go through the motions of worship. Maybe I am projecting my own bias, but I see a lot of people who are sitting, completely disengaged from what is going on around them (myself included).
The last few years I have had a dramatic shift in my spiritual paradigms. I haven't drifted far from my core beliefs. I am not ready to run headlong towards spiritual Bablyon, but I do long for the New Jerusalem, the shining city on a hill, a place of refuge where all can come for repentance and restoration.
I remember the day over a decade ago when a man walked into our assembly intent on intimidating those present. The years of drugs and addiction made him a hard, callous man who would just as soon cut your throat as carry on a conversation. He wasn't welcomed, greeted or offered a seat of honor (or any seat at all for that matter). Most people made a conscious effort to walk the long way around the auditorium.
A few months later that man was my brother in Christ. His hair neatly cropped, his heart completely changed. He continued to struggle with the challenges of his past. Members struggled with how to help him, but he was trying, searching and longing for something better than he had known.
For years I longed for a church without problems, now I shudder to think what that mindset means to the salvation of men. The troubled, the heartsick, addicts and outcasts need a safe harbor, a place of refuge from the storms of life. If they are not welcome in our churches, ministered to by the saints, and taught by the faithful - where will they go?
So answer that question for me - WHERE WILL THEY GO?
2 comments:
Trent - great thoughts. It is so hard to cut through the distractions and focus on my relationship with my Father and my relationship with others through my Father and worship Him.
If we do not minister to the aching soul it will find its soothing somewhere else. Back to the world, the bottle, the crack pipe, porn, etc.
I believe most of us wait for a wounded soul to stagger through our church building doors instead of going out and inviting them in.
Tim
unfortunately, many who are seeking safety from sin cannot find safe harbor in the church. All they find is condemnation, misunderstanding, judgementalism, and people pretending they have no problems. The twelve step culture (beginning with Alcoholics Anonymous and now many others such as overeaters anonymous, sexaholics anonymous) were founded on the principles of the Oxford Group -- a group of Christian theologians who saw the church being inadequate to meet the needs of those in chronic sin. So they went back to the bible and "rediscovered" principles that the current church was overlooking. The principles of this group was the foundation for Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob's twelve step principles. no requirements for membership except a desire to stop drinking (sinning). A standard of perfection in an atmosphere of grace. A one day at a time approach, and attitude to "keep coming back" (ie don't forsake meeting together), letting the older teach the younger, counting each as competent to counsel, principles of rigorous honesty (not pretending or living in denial).
Until we realize that the only thing we have in common that is important is that we are all sinners who fall short and are in need of God's mercy and saving grace -- we will always be a fake, hypocritical church with pews filled with LGF's (Looking Good Families) that perpetuate the lie that to be acceptable to God, you have to have it all together.
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