Convenient Amnesia: Has The Church Lost Her Way?

Guest post submitted by George

You slowly make your way through the former warehouse to find a place in the theater-style seating. The band is playing the number one praise song of the week. Just last week, you handed over a couple of tickets at the concert hall as you casually stroll through the masses into the standing room only gig. The band hit the stage and everybody screamed! One is a church, the other is rock show, is there a difference? Should there be?

Churches today look more like a fortune 500 company and less like communities who look outward. One Sunday we might highlight the newest book by the biggest flavor of the week while the next we’ll talk about how tithing is more important than forgiveness. Maybe we’ll throw in a few verses for posterity’s sake. Just a side note, there are no verses in New Testament that talk about a compulsory tithing. Interestingly enough, Jesus challenged everyone to look outward with what they had.

The Church today is more like the rich man in the story of the rich man and Lazarus. You see, the rich man didn’t just have money; his wealth brought him influence and power. His prosperity got him whatever he needed when he needed it. With wealth comes reputation, with reputation comes preservation and with preservation comes oppression at any cost to protect the wealth and influence! You see Jesus was using the rich man as analogy of the religious system of his day. It would be like Him saying to us now, “You have lost the plot. You now use all your resources to make yourself look good. You are more worried about yourself and not the person in need outside your door”. What’s even more tragic is that the rich guy (remember, he represents us) ends up in ‘Hell’, he is licking his wounds all the while being separated from God. Lazarus ends up being the nearest he could be to His Creator. You see Jesus is doing a reversal here, he is saying all this religious mumbo-jumbo will get you nowhere fast. Ah, but he is also saying that it is the outsider who gets the cake and eats it too. The Church should look less like the world and more like a community that lives out heaven on earth.

The Church should divorce itself from embracing old pagan models of doing church and embrace the original organic movement of counter-cultural prophets who lived by the rule of love and grace. I believe Jesus would have been labeled a hippy if He was around in the 60′s, I believe He would have been hanging out with Ghandi in the desert and sipping a coke with Billy Graham. But, I also believe He would have held hands with AIDS victims, hung out in the “not-so-safe” parts of town, he might have even spent time with drug-dealers. It seems the Church is more concerned about making a name for itself rather than embracing the outsider, I believe that if we do, we might have to come to the realization that we were once not that far from where they are [1 Corinthians 6:9-11].

Maybe for some, it is too uncomfortable to accept grace and so the easier thing to do is point the finger and look on those who are easy to judge. One of the biggest phrases that shows up throughout the ancient scriptures is “Remember when…” Why? Because, we forget. When we forget, others tend to pay for our convenient amnesia. It is remembering that God is the one who got us out of our mess and that His rescuing doesn’t stop with our conversion, that he empowers us to keep moving. We must be a community of people who embrace forward spiritual motion. The question is, well, do you?

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BIO: George loves the outdoors. Likes to sing in the shower and do underwater synchronized pilates. He is currently working on a book entitled “Jesus Bootlegged: Recapturing the Stolen Message of Jesus for The World”. You can read more about him: travelersnote.wordpress.com