Thursday, October 20, 2005

I opened my big fat mouth last night in my online discussion and, in response to my reading and various posts of others, wrote that while the writer of Hebrews does encourage/command us to continue meeting in Christian community, "I don't think Christ or any of the apostles would be happy with our form of living out this command today." Of course I was called to the carpet, asked what aspects of Church Jesus would be least excited about today. Here is my response:

Not that I'm innocent of any of these, but...

How similar we are to the Pharisees;
How we exclude those who Jesus ministered to;
The amount of money we spend on buildings while "not having enough money in the general fund to meet a physical need";
Our lack of discipleship, preferring to go through the motions rather than truly follow Christ;
Our dualistic worldview;
Expecing people to come in rather than going out to get them;
Our focus on the Great Commission to the detriment of the Great Commandment;
How we bend Scipture to fit our needs;
How we have gone to bed with political parties (on both sides of the spectrum);

Those are just a few. Of course I do believe some of these are just a part of human nature, but many of these could be fixed if we would take a deep look inward and worry more about expanding the Kingdom than growing our churches.

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