BLOG 7/18/13. CONSUMER CULTURE GOES TO CHURCH

BLOG 7/18/13: CONSUMER CULTURE GOES TO CHURCH

I believe it was missiologist Robert Coleman who made the point that: “If you can’t relate your life to the Great Commission, then your life is irrelevant to history.” I frequently reflect on that as I observe the fairly common phenomenon of that large segment of church-goers, who are marvelous members, have wholesome and orthodox Christian beliefs, discern good sermons, participate in worship services and the Eucharist, love Bible studies, etc. … yet, outside the ‘in house’ church culture seem to go mute, or incognito until the next church meeting. Their lives seem to have no dynamic, or thrilled, connection with the mission of God in Christ, or with all of those sojourners out there with whom they rub shoulders every week.

That puzzles me—that disconnect between beliefs and praxis. Such, while in so many ways commendable inside the church culture, are hardly contagious sons and daughters of the Light, hardly the living demonstrations of the One who came to seek and to save the lost.

And I’m not quite certain how to engage this widespread phenomenon, or where this somewhat subverted concept of discipleship derives. I do know that unless those ‘in house’ church activities and gatherings and worship of the church community equip and motivate us for that Christ-like mission to those ‘spiritually confused god-seekers’ with whom we associate everyday in our normal course of events … then something is amiss in both the church’s leaders and its participating members.

One of our old gospel songs goes: “Come, ye sinners, poor and wretched, Weak and wounded, sick and sore; Jesus ready stands to save you, Full of pity, joined with power …Come to Jesus, seek and find.”

Question: Where would such an encounter take place today? Where would our daily acquaintances, who are still in the darkness, encounter the Light, so that it sparks their curiosity, and so begin to ask question, to “seek and find?”

Somehow we need to remember that Jesus hung-out with publicans and sinners, that he told the despised and compromised Zacchaeus that: “I must stay at your house today,” that he had no problem violating all the codes of propriety and chatted with the woman at the well, and sparked her curiosity. It was Jesus who was derided for consorting with winebibbers and gluttons (at the neighborhood pub?). Or, in the contested text, that Jesus was the one who sided with the woman caught in the very act of adultery, and offered grace. Even his own twelve disciples were a motley crew, off the streets, composed of profane fishermen, a self-aggrandizing tax collector, and assorted others of ordinary circumstance—but included no ‘religious’ (scribes, priests, etc.).

But with all of these, they saw something in Jesus that made them willing to pull up roots and to be with him. Who serves that role here and now?

Try: “As the Father has sent me, even so am I sending you” … or, are you and I satisfied to be consumer Christians while escaping the requirements of true discipleship? That’s worth pondering. (Like, maybe, skipping church on Sunday and inviting your neighbors over for coffee or brunch and getting to know them and seeing what the conversation produces… or something like that?).

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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