Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Shallow & Depth...

Tonight we had our weekly high school small group study. We are using the book Posers, Fakers, & Wannabes by Brennan Manning. It is an awesome study, but one of the hard things I have discovered with trying to bring depth is that you never know when it is going to come. The study is going great and then things go off a cliff. Why is it so hard for us to reach a moment of openness? Manning compares the church community to that of AA. He talks about how AA is an open community because it is made that way. The church can be so closed to people unless they are perfect, without defect, and ultimately willing to fit the mold we have created. Obviously God didn't create this mold. I mean there is the lame question of What church would Jesus attend? However I think the question holds more to it then we allow it to have. Truthfully though, where would he go? Just today someone walked into the church and talked to me about the less conservative church next door and how they felt unwelcomed and uncomfortable there, asking me about our church and what we are like. We are like Jesus of course. Come on though...are we? Really? Deep down? Just by me saying we are conservative opens your mind up to disapproval or approval, but who are you to approve and by what grounds? Not anything of your wants of course. Of course not. Also what makes us think that church should be comfortable. Sin is comfortable. Now I know that comfortable is not sin...but go with me here...when we are comfortable we hide, we slide through. We need to get away from that. There are no "denominations" of AA. Either you want to open up and work to fix the problem or you don't. It is that simple. It is so hard to be real because we want so hard to be accepted and who we are would never make the requirements. Denominations within one movement of truth. It is an interesting oxymoron when you really think of it. I would hope Jesus would pick my church (the fact that I call it mine may be a reason he wouldn't), but I think we would be surprised of the church he would pick.

1 Comments:

At 7:33 PM, Blogger Texas Locations: said...

what church would Jesus go to? Or would He come in and overturn some tables. Would the real Christians please stand up? Hang in there and keep posting. I will be checking back to see how things are going. I'm an older YM and this time around have been at our Church for 3 years. This is not my full time job,(HA!) and it's tough to be patient. Even though things are not happening as fast as I would like them, I know Christ is at work in our youth.

 

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