Kingdom Come!

I can only think of friends who are investing their lives in developing what is described as “Big Box Churches” that are geared toward performance (the pastor up-front doing his thing), command-and-control (vision handed down form the elite to the followere) and comsumption (“I come to consume… feed me, love me, help me, encourage me, entertain me, make me grow”).

And as I’m reading The New Conspirators, I’m sent to an article in Christianity Today by John Stackhouse where he calls us to live “lives of difficult paradox, of painful negotiation between conflicting and competitive values…”

We live in a time where every ounce of energy can be utilized just to exist.  Just to think through the paradoxes.  The rapid change of our world makes me dizzy.  The demands of ministry make me weary!  Such is our world today.  What will it be in another decade?

And yet, the Church - as I’ve told people all over the world! - is the hope of the world.  The church is the only thing Jesus died for and promised to return and collect!

So I am hopeful for the church, but concerned…  Can you tell?

Also my other friend Bill Kinnon has a lot to say about this… and does some linking to David Fitch’s blog… and beyond.

Being a very lazy, overweight poster-boy for consumption myself, I appreciate these smart cerebral guys doing the hard lifting and giving us links.  It makes life easier and gives me more time to get my Christmas shopping done.

But seriously… For those of us who hunger for “incarnational” to become the norm and for us who attempt to live out those things Jesus taught and embodied, the reductionism rips at my very soul.  And my task is to keep my heart soft and my spirit sensitive so that I can hear God speak among the noise and static of our world and consuming church.

Bravo Mark, Bill and David! Pray for me!