For the last several years I’ve had a hobby of sorts. My hobby is pretty unique – some might even say a little nerdy. The hobby has taken a LOT of my time, but it’s always been okay because my hobby and my vocation are connected. My hobby has been to explore and try to understand the cultural shift that is occurring between the Church and the society we live in. I know, sounds really fascinating right?
Well, to be fair, this hobby is really more of a life long obsession. I’ve been very up front about my love and appreciation for the bride of Christ. I remember the day I decided to follow Jesus – it’s easy to pinpoint. But my love affair with the church is a little harder to nail down. It seems that every time I saw the Church reflect the radiant glory of Christ, I felt my heart strings tugged a little more. I was raised in the church, so I probably had these moments even before I realized the Jesus connection. The church can be absolutely stunning – a community or congregation of individuals who work as a unit to advance the mission of God on the earth – wow!
This idea and these glimpses of the Church shining have captivated me since I was wee tiny. The possibility of the Church being this way is, often, what keeps me going. I say the possibility because all to often it’s been the not-so radiant community that has shown through. Sure, I’ve seen the Church do some amazing things, but I’ve also seen her do some absolutely horrendous things – things that are an embarrassment – things that make my whole being cringe.
When you add to the church’s “Jekyll-Hyde personality disorder” a culture that is no longer giving the church the benefit of the doubt we have a recipe for a faith crisis. My hobby has invited me to continue to see the beauty of the Church, but also to explore just what is going on that is making us so ineffective to the world around us. Everybody has a different opinion – many of them make tremendous sense, and the amount of material and literature that tries to recover or return the church to a sense of balance just keeps piling up.
I think part of the problem is that many in the Church know that there is a problem and they also know what the solution is, we just are terrified to step out and do it. We have trainings and webinars and podcasts that continually equip us to enter into this rapidly changing post-christian world. I think we’re just afraid to risk losing even more.
A recent look into the parables of the pearl of great price and the treasure in a field has shown me that disciples who know what the treasure is are willing to risk everything in order to possess it. That risk even includes losing the very treasure we’re trying to achieve. Can we even imagine what it would look like for a community to be captivated just at the sheer “possibility” of seeing the Kingdom of Heaven crash into our midst? I mean to have heaven and earth crash into each other is one thing but just the yearning for it could alter everything, couldn’t it?
I think this is the newest evolution of my hobby – inviting others to yearn for kingdom crashing with me. To be honest, it’s not a new idea. The church has yearned for this before – we may have called it other names, but the point is the same. So, instead of just wishing for revival or renewal or whatever other term we want to use, I’m going to invite others to not just yearn, but risk a little too. We yearn a lot, but when was the last time we risked to actually achieve the treasure?
I pray that as the weekend approaches, we would begin to find new ways to risk and that in our risking, the yearning for the Kingdom might just seep into our dreams. I pray that in our yearning, we would find ourselves risking even more and that as we worship this week, we might taste just a bit of what the world is begging the church to be.
Grace and Peace…
No comments
Thank you for sharing your hobby with me (us)!
God of Love, we don’t even know how high and wide and deep Your love is. You are above all things.
Crash into us; break into our world. Let Your Church be agents of Your love.
You meet our needs every day.
Forgive us for being so timid. We have been fed and equipped, so what are we waiting for?
Inspire us to take risks so the Church can be what the world needs.
Your Kingdom has come. You give us power. We will glorify You.
And they will know we are Christians by our love.
To tell you the truth, Jim, I believe I’ve had the same hobby, and not for just a short time, but virtually my entire life. Indeed, seeing the inconsistencies in the church (and therefore people) is what really kept me apart from the church most of my life. Once I realized that the church, like people, wasn’t going to be “perfect” and that grace is what saves people to begin with, then I didn’t really need the church to save me– I needed Jesus. And by extension, what the church needed, therefore, since I was one saved by grace, was ME! The irony is that people tend to judge, especially non-believers, and when non-believers see the church filled with ordinary sinners like themselves, they are quick to judge the church by its membership of less than perfect people, much like the Pharisees judged Jesus by the company he often kept. The bottom line is that the church can never be perfect because we, people, constitute the church, but by understanding that we are only saved by the grace of God, we can congregate with others of a “like mind” and, if we understand what Jesus wants us to do, we can spread the word as effective agents of Christ. And then… (see last line of Matthew Orr’s fine prayer above). And THAT, my friends, is what our real hobby should be.