As I read Jeremiah 14:1-6 (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=jeremiah%2014:1-6&version=NIV) this morning I couldn't help but think of those poor people in Somalia and Northeastern Kenya. There are so many people in desperate need.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/10/somalia-drought-worst-humanitarian-crisis-_n_894072.html
A pastor friend said to me: "Why is this happening? Why are we allowing people to starve to death? Why is the world not listening?" The sad reality of her questions is that for the most part the world is preoccupied with other matters. There has been no media coverage to speak of. It seems that only drastic measures will get the media to sit up and take notice.
The worst part of it though is that the global community of the church really hasn't taken notice. The magnitude of this disaster deserves the full attention of the entire global church community. I heard the other day that the annual income of the North American church community is in the billions of dollars. I suspect that many of those dollars are spent on self-improvement programs for the average Christian and on church building maintenance and improvements. The average new church facility with all of its bells and whistles costs in the vicinity of a million plus dollars and many of them go up every year.
It seems that ministry for many North American churches has become more about empire building than about helping others around the world. How many times has the comment been made in our churches, "Well, we have to take care of ourselves before we can take care of others." Where on earth is the sacrifice in that!!??
What is the purpose of the building anyway? Probably many would say that it's about quality in order to appeal to our affluent society of people. People won't come to a facility that is run down and decrepit. Maybe we are mixed up on our appeal. We are appealing to their affluent lifestyles instead of appealing to a servant's heart.
If I understand scripture correctly, Jesus never said "Go, build a great facility for worship for people to come to have all of the comforts of home. Build it and they will come." Unfortunately that appeal works, but maybe for the wrong reasons. So many people are looking for a place to go and simply "chill out" from ministry altogether. A friend of mine once told me that he could go to his church and sit in the front row and "pick his nose" and no one would even notice that he was there. Not a good comment, but you get the picture of what he meant.
Don't get me wrong, I think buildings are important. But they are only important to the real cause of Christ and the real cause is not about the building, but a calling to ministry from God.
Therefore, a building should be nothing more than a point of mission to serve a two fold purpose. 1. To come and be discipled. 2. To be deployed for mission into ministry. When it becomes nothing more than a gathering place for the saints, and our main focus is to gather as many in as possible, then we have missed the true mark of our calling from God - deployment. God's not finished with the world yet, why should we be?
Pray for the people of Somalia and other parts of Africa who are affected by the terrible drought. Amen.
Blessings,
-Leo
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
A Time to Work and a Time to Rest
When I was younger I worked in a factory. It was monotonous work to say the least. Day after day I stood in the same place doing the same thing over and over again. It became brainless work for me. I no longer had to think about what I was doing. My body became a robot, and I became quite dull. I spent most of each day daydreaming about anything and everything. I wanted to be any place but there.
One day I was leaning over the machine I was operating and began to drift off to sleep. When I did my hand slipped and fell against a fly-wheel and got caught on a screw, I summer-salted through the air and landed on the floor. The side of my right hand was gashed to the bone. I was rushed to the hospital for immediate attention.
Life can become very monotonous in the church as well. Traditions are great things to adhere to but when they lose their purpose they can soon lull us to sleep. We begin to feel like robots with no sense of satisfaction, spiritual or otherwise, when doing the things we do.
I once asked a man at a church meeting why we should do something the way he demanded it to be done. He said, "Well, that's the way we have always done it." I said to him, "But why do we do it this way? There must be a reason." He turned to the person standing behind him and asked, "Can you remember why we've always done it this way?" The person behind him couldn't remember either.
There is a time to work and a time to rest, and the resting is for a purpose. It is to take a breather so that our faith does not wax cold. It is also to take stock of why we are doing the things that we do. When the purpose is long since dead and forgotten then it may be time to pray for something new - a new way to accomplish the same purpose.
A part of the maturing process of any church is in its ability to easily change with the flow. We should not be afraid of this process because it is God-given. Once the church adopts a tradition for doing something and can't remember why, then it might be time to change before it's too late and that particular church dies.
I think this became the case for the religious leaders of Jesus' day. They had done things the same way for so long that doing them became more about themselves then it did about God; and when traditions become more about us than God, they become nothing more than man-made traditions.
Hopefully we will never go as far in our traditions as the religious leader of Matthew 23 in the "Seven Woes" passage of scripture. In verse 27 Jesus said, "Woe to you teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside."
Who wants to feel like a whitewashed tomb? I certainly don't! Therefore, let us be diligent to know when to give it a rest!
Blessings,
-Leo
One day I was leaning over the machine I was operating and began to drift off to sleep. When I did my hand slipped and fell against a fly-wheel and got caught on a screw, I summer-salted through the air and landed on the floor. The side of my right hand was gashed to the bone. I was rushed to the hospital for immediate attention.
Life can become very monotonous in the church as well. Traditions are great things to adhere to but when they lose their purpose they can soon lull us to sleep. We begin to feel like robots with no sense of satisfaction, spiritual or otherwise, when doing the things we do.
I once asked a man at a church meeting why we should do something the way he demanded it to be done. He said, "Well, that's the way we have always done it." I said to him, "But why do we do it this way? There must be a reason." He turned to the person standing behind him and asked, "Can you remember why we've always done it this way?" The person behind him couldn't remember either.
There is a time to work and a time to rest, and the resting is for a purpose. It is to take a breather so that our faith does not wax cold. It is also to take stock of why we are doing the things that we do. When the purpose is long since dead and forgotten then it may be time to pray for something new - a new way to accomplish the same purpose.
A part of the maturing process of any church is in its ability to easily change with the flow. We should not be afraid of this process because it is God-given. Once the church adopts a tradition for doing something and can't remember why, then it might be time to change before it's too late and that particular church dies.
I think this became the case for the religious leaders of Jesus' day. They had done things the same way for so long that doing them became more about themselves then it did about God; and when traditions become more about us than God, they become nothing more than man-made traditions.
Hopefully we will never go as far in our traditions as the religious leader of Matthew 23 in the "Seven Woes" passage of scripture. In verse 27 Jesus said, "Woe to you teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside."
Who wants to feel like a whitewashed tomb? I certainly don't! Therefore, let us be diligent to know when to give it a rest!
Blessings,
-Leo
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