Sunday, January 27, 2013

Simple Church

I do not want to attend a church that has, and/or finds it socially acceptable to have, Beemers, Mercedes, Audis, Volvos etc. in the parking lot.  No Land Rovers, Corvettes or big fancy trucks.  How can we be sold out for Jesus and honestly own those vehicles, and then actually have the nerve to drive them to church?  How can we seemingly almost put our identity into a piece of metal that we can't take with us?  How can we be okay with $20,000 or $30,000 or even $50,000 wheels?  How can one possibly call themselves a Christian and put so much importance into luxury, comfort and keeping-up-with-the-joneses, when there are people literally starving to death, right now?  People that have never heard the message. 
I don't just have it out for cars.  They are just an illustration of a much greater problem, that are easy to pick on as they sit nice and pretty, on display to and from church.  
This is the type of church I want to raise my family in.  Simple, practical and efficient.  I do not want my kids raised in a huge church that spends crazy amounts on things I would classify as 'aesthetics.'  How can a church continue to devote any resources, let alone a large amount of resources, to making itself bigger and nicer, when Jesus calls us to feed His sheep?  Millions of people urgently need us right now.  In this short article it says, ".....where they like to say they 'do church,' rather than 'go to church,'" and, "If you look at the Bible, the church we have today is nowhere to be found......."  It's so true!!  To me there is no justification for a mega church. 
I've been reading the book Radical and the author David Platt shares many of these sentiments. To be honest though, in my opinion, you can read the gist of the book in just the first chapter.  There are thought-provoking stories and such throughout the rest of it, but he hits is pretty hard in the first 21 pages. 


David Platt was a pastor at a mega church and talks about how Jesus spent the majority of his time with only 12 men and was known for turning away crowds.   "Whenever the crowd got big, he'd say something such as, 'unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.'  Not the sharpest church-growth tactic.......Jesus apparently wasn't interested in marketing himself to the masses.  His invitations to potential followers were clearly more costly than the crowds were ready to accept, and he seemed okay with that......Soon I realized I was on a collision course with an American church culture where success is defined by bigger crowds, bigger budgets, and bigger buildings....."
"Ultimately, Jesus was calling them to abandon themselves.....(but we) twist him into a version of Jesus we are more comfortable with. A nice, middle-class, American Jesus. A Jesus who brings us comfort and prosperity as we live out our Christian spin on the American dream."
"On the left one headline read, 'First Baptist Church Celebrates new $23 Million Building'.....On the right was a much smaller article.  The headline for it read, 'Baptists have raised $5,000 to send to refugees dying of malnutrition in Sudan'.....How did we get to the place where this is actually tolerable?"

"We have replaced radical with comfortable.  But to follow Him, we need to abandon everything: needs, desires and family.  Luke 14:33 says, 'you cannot be my disciple unless you give up everything.'"
"God has created each of us to take the gospel to the ends of the earth, and I propose that anything less than radical devotion to His purpose is unbiblical Christianity."

Jesus never called us to be comfortable. We cannot settle for less than radical obedience. We must abandon ourselves.

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