The more that I keep hearing from those of you about some of the things that I have been expressing about the "church," the more I get this sense that I am not alone in my thoughts. What's interesting about who you are and what you say, is that all of you have at one point or another have painted this idea that you desperately want some place of worship that would be drenched in the Holy Spirit, who is inviting to you and your family, a place who is committed to living the best kind of life that Jesus invites us into, and that this church would somehow be relevant to where you are at not only generationally, but realistically. Trust me, I seek the same type of community too.

My experience has been that the church does a terrible job at speaking language that speaks to you and I. The language it speaks, is often not genuine, or real. It tries to relate to where you and I are at often compromising the real reason why it exists as a church at all. It desperately packages itself in a nice, neat, shiny package so that you and I will be attracted to it. The church, wants you and I to seek IT out, and not the other way around, which, if you think about it, goes against everything that Jesus was about. My experience has also been that the church has these huge, gaping gaps between the generations, and not enough healthy relationships to even try and bridge those gaps. One time, at an annual meeting I was at, I actually heard the comment, "Well, if these changes to the church are that important, let the younger generation pay for it." Now, changes like the roof, boiler, windows, flooring, etc., are all important, but the changes that so many older folks were pissed at, were things they felt was unnecessary or too strange or lavish like, say a projection unit with screens for the front of the church (using technology in church, how dare you?), gutting out the gym and making it usable and inviting to youth, tearing out some walls and making a more welcoming and inviting space with which to actually share some fellowship with others in. But see, when you are in a church in which the dominant god people serve is money, of course the most cost efficient and best values are going to be hammered out first...namely those that can be seen as to what the money is going to. People know that heat is important...but they do not see the importance in renovating a gym so that that snot nosed, damage making, punk of a youth can actually come and feel as if that church is his home too. What all this smells like to me is idolatry. Too many idols...too many people willing to serve those idols.

There is a wonderful story in the Old Testament about Moses and the people he leads out of slavery. Moses goes to the top of Mount Sinai, to receive the commandments God wants to give him. The problem is, that he has been there for forty days and forty nights. This whole time, God has been giving some instructions to Moses as to how he and the Israelites are to worship God...some specifics about worship. The people at the base of the mountain are getting restless, and so they get bored. They begin to wonder if Moses is ever coming back, and so they convince Aaron (Moses's brother) to build gods to go before them, to continue leading them into a new life. So, Aaron listens to them, is convinced by their asking, takes all the gold the people have, melts it down, and casts this odd looking calf. This calf is placed on a make-shift altar. Which in turn, becomes a place of worship for the Israelites. Moses sees this as he is coming down the mountain, gets cranked, and throws the stone tablets containing THE ten commandments to the ground. He goes to his brother, and in the most eloquent of Hebrew asks him, "Uh, dude, how you could be so stupid and gullible?" Moses' own brother is subject to the ease in which excuses are used to replace the living God, in which idolatry becomes a reason to celebrate and mock the care and redemption of God.

I sometimes think our churches are like the Israelites and we pastors are like Aaron. People in the church get sucked into this way of thinking about their golden cows...be it the building, the stained glass windows, the boiler, the ladies circles, the foundation/endowment, the second brick from the left on the upper northeast corner under the raingutter...people have their sacred cows to make them feel good about not doing the difficult work of actually being the kinds of people God is inviting them to be. People find the easy excuses of placing their allegiance somewhere else in the church rather than in the one who IS the church. Although, they might possibly say, "It's all a part of how we worship." Well, yeah, but even the best of intentions can be nothing but disguised cows waiting to be danced around because it allows for an easy, cheapened faith. I wonder if Dietrich Bonhoeffer had it right when he wrote about the difference between life that is costly and life that is cheap (check out The Cost Of Discipleship...definitely worth your time to read it!) I want to be the kind of person who sees the cows for what they are, and be a voice who calls churches to account for their dancing, their mocking, and their disregard for patience and faith. Because the real damage this does, is that it paints all of us with the same brush, and I am really sick of it! I don't want to be a part of some worn out and lame attempt to prove how we need to be all things to all people without doing the hard work of building a church that leaves no room for idols, but leaves space open for loving people for who they are and not for what we want them to be so that we like them. I would rather fail at being a pastor than lead a church and vision with them only to find that they mock God just so that they can be comfortable with who they are, who each other is, or worse yet who I am, or even worse, how they want this generation to fit with their agendas.

You and I have so much work to do to build up the church, but the difficult work begins with each one of us first. Take the time to work on you. Allow the restoration of God to capture your whole being, so that your life becomes the life God dreams for you...the life He made for you, the life He invites you into, and the life He loves you with. That breath you just breathed, was his life coming out of you. Take another...you feel Him? More later...