BLOG 6/12/16. SOMETHING WEIRD: CHURCH MEMBERS IMMUNIZED TO THEIR MESSAGE?

BLOG 6/12/16. SOMETHING WEIRD: CHURCH MEMBERS IMMUNIZED TO THEIR MESSAGE?

Help me here. Is it possible that some folk become so overly familiar with the in-house life of a Christian community/church that they actually become immunized to its dynamic purpose of being God’s New Creation people? I was rocking along as a fairly well-accepted and appreciated pastor in a traditional church, trying to equip its members to be salt and light in the community, when I had an un-traditional idea for the morning’s sermon. If, I thought, God’s people are to be those well-equipped and contagious messengers of the life and teachings of Jesus, and if they have signed on to be his faithful disciples by virtue of their baptisms, … then they ought to be able to share that ultimate reality in some simple terms to their compatriots in the pew on a given Sunday morning. Right? … Wrong. At a given place in the sermon I gave them an on-the-spot assignment to find a partner near them and to share their experience of new life in Jesus with that partner. Wow! Those who were still thrilled with their new life in Christ were eager and ready, … but those who had been content to be passive partakers of the services and liturgies and church-night suppers, … but who felt no responsibility to communicate what they considered their own private spiritual experience were, to put it mildly, really irate with me and charged me never to embarrass them again like that.

It was then that I began to ponder the possibility that comfort-zone Christianity, that made no demands of discipleship, could immunize a person to the true life of discipleship, and put them in the “Many will say in that day: ‘lord, lord,’ and I will say to them: ‘I never knew you.’” It stands to reason that if Christian faith is having Christ living in us, then that passion which motivated him to give his life, to be a herald of grace to the spiritually lost of this world, would be present in us. Right? Jesus came on a search and rescue mission to real flesh and blood sinners. Why then are not all those who name his name, contagious with that love and able to lovingly and sensitively communicate it?

Or there was a time when we had a team of proponents for evangelism at a denominational conference center for a summer, and with our team of eager young adults found all kinds of creative ways to communicate our purpose. But that didn’t please some of the denominational staff, so they came unannounced to our doorstep to express (in none too polite terms) their displeasure with what we were doing. Mind you, these were ordained denominational staff, O.K.? So one of our gentle young team members asked them how they came to Christ, and to share their faith experience with us. That ignited their next explosion and their retort that their faith was a private thing, and none of our business. Wow! Church members who not only were immunized, but who had totally missed the dynamic of faith in Christ.

Or again, a wonderful team of mostly young adult, college and seminary young people we had recruited to do a fruitful Christian outreach in the midst of the annual civic orgy called Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Along with a coffee house, music, and other media, … our director gave one absolute requirement, namely that in the five days of our experiment, that they sit down on the curb with someone they didn’t know, and introduce the message of Jesus,  and write it up for us. For several of them, gifted young adults who had grown up in the Christian church, this was a life changing event, and for several it was actually a converting event. They had never had to take their faith outside the Christian community before. Over-familiarity with the in-house experience had immunized them to Christ passion to seek and to save the lost. Tragically, this is all too common. All of us inside the church need to be regularly re-infected with Christ’s passion for lost men and women, and our calling to be his missionary arm.

http://wipfandstock.com/what-on-earth-is-the-church-13883.html

About rthenderson

Sixty years a pastor-teacher within the Presbyterian Church. Author of several books, the latest of which are a trilogy on missional ecclesiology: ENCHANTED COMMUNITY: JOURNEY INTO THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH, then, REFOUNDING THE CHURCH FROM THE UNDERSIDE, then THE CHURCH AND THE RELENTLESS DARKNESS. Previous to this trilogy was A DOOR OF HOPE: SPIRITUAL CONFLICT IN PASTORAL MINISTRY, and SUBVERSIVE JESUS, RADICAL FAITH. I am a native of West Palm Beach, Florida, a graduate of Davidson College, then of Columbia and Westminster Theological Seminaries.
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