friend or foe?!

Since I last wrote I spent a week in Honolulu for a leadership practicum with Wayne Cordiero of New Hope Church-Oahu. (The picture at the top of their web site is a baptism for 155 people with Diamondhead in the background. I'm in that picture somewhere. See if you can find me? LOL) Great insights. My notes are available. Also, the movie "The Passion" has been released. It feels like a different world from a month ago!

I have been preaching on Paul's letters and have used 1 Corinthians for the past few months. There is a tension that becomes clear from this book. We see Christ as all loving and that to be a Christian means to love. But Paul becomes very angry with the whole Corinthian church at times and with portions of it at some other times. In chapter 14 today he said to ignore those folks within the church who won't acknowledge the truth he writing to them about how God is speaking to them to function as a church. We have the tension of loving and ignoring/excluding. We have the tension of humility and presumption. We face the tension of how to get the church focused on its mission when for so many decades it has focused on numbers for membership and budget. Now that the world around us is ignoring us and we realize we need to get our true mission clarified. Not everybody wants to do that because they are use to the membership organization which has focused on their entitlements and priveleges as members with some small portion left over for charity and "mission" as we use to define "to help other people."

Paul says often to the church that it needs to be clear about its boundaries so that it can go out into the world. The church has been very loosey-goosey about its boundaries and identity, trying to be all things to all people so "they will come." How do we re-clarify the mission of the church when some of the "members" object? When they feel like we are unfriendly, uncaring, unloving, and unChristian because we are not paying sufficient attention to them as they believe they are entitled to by length of time in the church and/or offerings given for years or simply because they expect the church to be there for them? It is the same question as "when you are up to your rear in alligators, who is going to drain the swamp?" In an "entitled church" who will serve? Who will be the missionaries to the wider world?

We have reached that time in the history of the US church where the numbers have dwindled so much that we are now struggling to figure this one out. But it is easier to complain than to ask God if he will be with us into the future, no matter what happens along the road. Thus, we expend great effort to keep things as they were, and spread blame around to those who we believe "no longer pay attention to me and don't care about me any more." Paul confronts this straight on. But we have avoided his letters for this very reason. We were afraid what they might say to us and about us. We love to be a voyeur into the Corinthian church to see how bad they were, but it becomes a spectator sport for us because in no way do we believe what he is writing might be about us! This is the bottomless pit of the modern-day church in a new emerging culture!

I continue to see people changing, though! I see people who were "entitled members" becoming mature disciples spending time daily in growth and nurture. Moving beyond themselves to allow God to use them to speak to such a diverse world not just "over there", but now very close by in our own neighborhood. We have a lot to learn, but we are willing to learn! The tension between mission as "pastoral care" and mission as "being the evangel of God" is difficult. Especially when "resources" are low. But God continues to find ways to help us find resources we never knew we had! There is sufficient gifts among us for the mission of this day!!

Grace and peace,
David