I’m going to switch gears for a bit and try to get over into some things I feel the Lord is teaching me about church and community. Sounds boring I know, but this has really turned my life and understanding of the Kingdom upside down. Hopefully I can make it not so boring and spark some interesting discussions. We’ll see. If anything, it will give me a chance to get some of this stuff out of my head and in tangible form.

Ok…so what’s wrong with the picture above? In terms of normal western church life…absolutely nothing. In terms of what I think the church is actually trying to accomplish…everything.

Notice in the picture, there is 1 pulpit with 1 speaker, dozens of pews with even more people.   And everybody is facing the same direction, all eyes are on one man.  1 person speaking and hundreds of mouths shut, and even more ears opened.  Ahhhhh….Church!!

Since when did this become the picture of the Church ? How in the world did we get to the point where we think that doing THIS every Sunday is the culmination of everything Jesus taught us in the gospels?

This is about to sound pretty critical, because it is, but I don’t want to make it sound like this model doesn’t produce any good fruit. It does, but only because people are there. God will use wherever people are because that’s what He loves…people, not systems and organizations.

Ok, back to the picture. I’m starting to get very frustrated with churches these days. When I go and sit and listen to one guy’s (for the most part it’s just older men) interpretation of a few scriptures, or even better, a self help psychology teaching.  I get so annoyed because I look around the room and I wonder to myself…”What’s that person’s story?” I’m to the point where I would rather talk about life with an unbeliever than sit and listen to another teaching sermon on Sunday.

Do we really think that this is it? Of course not…we say it all the time “Church is outside these 4 walls” and “You are the church”. But we always hear that from a pulpit too. You know what I would like to see. I would like to see the pulpit completely trashed, everybody take off their religious facade and face each other and just talk. Don’t talk about this scripture or that scripture…let’s just talk and get to know one another.  Our church model doesn’t actually compensate for people getting to know each other.

Every Sunday we go to church and look at the back of someone’s head. The church tries to overcome this by forcing everybody for about 3 minutes to go around the room and “shake someones hand that you don’t know, tell them you’re glad they’re here!”. This is the churches honest attempt for creating relationships. Of course they try other things like home groups and little programs, but they’ll never get rid of the Golden Cow called the Sunday Sermon…because after all, that is the focal point…it is the MOST important part of the week.

I think this is most of the problem. We think that a Sunday Sermon is discipleship…it’s essential to the growth of the body. I say we take away the Sunday Sermon along with the pulpit and see who really is interested in studying the word. If they aren’t going to do it on their own what makes us think that a 45 minute teaching on some particular social issue is going to be sufficient.  And what if I just don’t think the guy is a good speaker, or what if I don’t like sitting and listening to 1 person talk for an hour, what if I think it’s boring?  I’m judged not because I don’t love God, but because I don’t like sitting for an hour listening to someone else talk and I can’t talk back…heaven forbid there be conversation in Church!  Our model is completely designed around the pastor and Sunday morning’s sermon…instead of loving Jesus and loving one another.

Man, I’m complaining a lot. It’s been a while since I’ve been able to write so it’s just kind’ve coming out in this mess. So forgive me if I seem bitter. I probably sound that way because I probably am!  I’m bitter with the thought that my own thoughts and actions supported these things I now hate. I used to think it was all about the church and ministry. Now I think it’s simply all about God, you, and me and relationships and getting to know one another genuinely. I think it’s about taking care of one another, it’s about loving, fighting and working things out. We’ve got this nice little package called church that tries to develop all these things for us that we’ve forgotten how to do it ourselves.

My solution…don’t go to church on Sunday, instead, have a cookout, or invite people over to your house, not for a bible study…no bibles allowed…just talk. Talk like normal people and get to know each other. God is there and all He wants us to do is learn to love Him and one another, and we don’t learn that from a sermon on “5 Ways To Love One Another”. No, we learn that by getting into the thick of it and allow the relationships to create the lessons for us.

[Really, I’m not that mad…but I am serious about the whole Sunday thing…let’s stop going to church, I think it will do a lot of people good….:-) hahahaha]

Oh my gosh. It’s been entirely too long before I’ve written here! Just when you think you have a grip on things man do those things change quick!!!

I’ve been in a complete whirlwind for these past 3 months or so. Last time I wrote an update we were expecting our second child. We ended up having Luke on November 27^th. It was an amazing event because my wife actually had him at “home” (in our apartment…yes, on purpose). That was incredible and a culmination of a lot of things God was teaching us that year. However, a week prior to that event we got 2 big pieces of news that pretty much shook us up!

The first news was the Joeleen’s mother’s ovarian cancer returned (after 7 years of being clean) and this time it was accompanied with lung cancer as well. The other piece of news was the people that were renting our house (with the intent of buying it) decided they didn’t want to buy the house after all and told us they were leaving by December. So we had a newborn to deal with, moving and Joeleen’s mother’s news. December was completely crazy for us.

January wasn’t much different. Bottom line, we’re back in Bixby, in our old home, right back at square one!!! Hahaha….This has been one of the only things I’ve had to do that I REALLY didn’t want to do at all. The last thing I wanted was to end up back in Tulsa.  It feels like I’ve stepped backwards.   But, I’ve slowly given it over my pride to God since it’s quite obvious He wants us back here.

Since I’ve been back God has really been teaching me about community and what the “church”  is really supposed to be about and look like. I have so much to talk about, but I don’t know how to articulate it! It’s very confusing to me. I hope I’ll start writing again and possibly it will come out in some new articles.

I haven’t been doing much street ministry. I’ve been focusing a lot on this community thing and really let God develop that in me.

There’s a bunch more to write, but hopefully this will suffice at least for a bit. I really want to write more, so maybe this will be a nice primer for me!