Christian entertainment is
a cottage industry that is a veritable billion dollar enterprise. The
Christian entertainment realm includes gospel music cd’s, inspirational
books, concerts, church conferences (mega or otherwise) and gospel
getaways/cruises. These Para church gatherings are not a bad thing in and of themselves;
I know many people who come to know God in a deeper way because of these events
and ministry tools. I think that these are important supplements to our
spiritual regime. But just as you would never attempt to live off of vitamins
it is problematic to attempt to live off you’re the aforementioned spiritual
supplements. You need a diet first then you can supplement the diet in order
to strengthen the body. We have usurped the diet and began to
draw directly from the spiritual supplements that were never intended to be
source but rather resource. God bless Oprah’s choux pastry heart but all
the super soul Sunday in the world aint gonna help you if you first don’t get
the soul right first.
The institution is partly to blame; the church became disconnected
and disenchanted with itself and its mission to the world. The
church institution has fallen out of love with the world that it was
designed to save. The check on the church has been one of failing
to corporately acknowledge its failings and revise its methods to interact
with the world at large. The message is complete, God is love and be
transformed by that love, but the messengers are distracted.
How have the messengers become distracted? We turned an open invitation to change into a
show to be entertained. It's what I like to call the message of being a church
dude. The message of being a church dude is simple “you came here to see me and
here I am ". It’s not just men it’s the prevailing church culture; who has
the most stylish preacher, best choir, best hair and nails, biggest hat, best musicians,
who can give you the best bump (dance), and who looks the best. Frankly, I’m
exhausted, church dudes kill me. It’s a whole lot of pomp and circumstance with
NO substance. I have not seen so many horn rimmed glasses in church since
the late sixties (only through pictures cause I’m an eighties baby). The appeal
for church dudes to even come to church is not development, improvement or
transformation but rather it’s almost a sick fraternal order where an
ultra-emotional existential experience may be sought that tickles the
fancy but drops the believer back to a faithless existence.
This fraternal group of believers is
hyper flamboyant without the penchant of dignity or humility.
Church dudes are a danger because they tout this message that sounds just
enough like the gospel to pass but ultimately devoid of any subsequent action
that is literally the fruit of that gospel. Where is the fruit of service
that comes with the gospel? There is a strange spirit around choirs, praise
teams, soloist, musicians and the like that suggest that ministry is all
exhibition. The litmus test of church dudes is they show up for the performance
but can’t make it to bible study. Church dudes can make it to the conferences but
can’t seem to make prayer. Church dudes can make worship but can’t seem to make
much else.
The service element of
church has been totally divorced from their experience. Church dudes would not
have fared well being disciples of Jesus, he would have sent them back home
because they love the show more than the substance of Christ. Christ would have a difficult time making them
disciples because they don’t show up unless they are on program to be
seen. Again this is not a designation
for just men this is a specification for a sect of church attendees who have
little to no desire to take part in the mission of Christ. The members of this sect are addicted to the
uplifted hand (seeking to receive) rather than the outstretched hand seeking to
give. Church in the minds of Church
dudes should; GIVE me a feeling, I should RECEIVE a word, and I should leave
AFFIRMED. This mutant form of Christianity ties whatever giving that might
occur to a trigger mechanism that comes after the giving that would cause the
giver to get. There is NO cross at the heart of their faith system. The faith system, as a matter of fact, goes
out of its way to never talk about the sacrifice of crucifixion at all. The faith system then goes on to postulate
that the ultimate enemy of the believer is not sin(cause who needs sin hanging
over their heads) , but the enemy of the believer is the mythological hater who
floats around like a wraith seeking to hijack our terrestrial experience by sabotaging
what we were divinely designed to do. When we move our battle from the confines
of the pneumatological to the anthropological, our worldview
become myopic and we become the center. Who is really hating on us? Have we become so narcissistic
to believe that people are actually going home and thinking about us after we
leave their presence ? Scarier still is
that fact that you believe that you have done something revolutionary enough to
merit such concern. Maybe just maybe all
that shade that you seem to be receiving is just a culmination of all the shade
that you have been giving others.
Which
leads me to another caveat of church dudes attitude. There is nothing like a Christian
with attitude. A Christian with attitude is like going to the fridge and
picking up a carton of milk taking a healthy pull, only to discover that the
milk has spoiled. Your expectation has been
crushed and you can’t remove the taste from your mouth. The world needs
Christians who are over themselves. Christians who don’t need titles to do
ministry and who don’t think ministry involves a mic. The world is looking for Christians
who have clean hearts and dirty hands.
The heart is ready to love and the hands have been sullied with the work
of their Christ. The world needs Christians who are not Christ LITE, but rather
Christ LIKE. I cannot stress enough how
awful Christians with bad attitudes are its false advertising. Now this is not
a solicitation for the bright and shiny Joel Olsten’s of the world to rise up
and make us all into Stepford wives. But nasty, immature, little Christians can
be taken to the space ship and dropped off into the black hole; your disservice
is no longer needed. I would rather a
person be straight up with their issues and say “listen I’m working on my mouth, or my heart isn’t
all together right” than give me that fake half love of Christ stuff. Y'all know about that stuff the placating rub
on the back with the Christian concern face. (I by the way have got a mean back
rub granny taught me)
Church dudes are killing the church because
the gospel of Jesus is not alive in their lives. But a mutant form of spiritualism
is pervasive. This is the mutated form
of Christianity that is “spiritual” but not religious. The mutant courses
through their veins and the bad news is the mutant is airborne and it is catching.
The mutant loves to go to para church events but is highly allergic to the
service of the church. The mutant loves the mic but breaks out in hives with
authentic ministry moments. The mutant is allergic to service because service
would expose the weakness of its witness. The mutant does not reveal identity but
replicates fragility. The mutant does
not want Christianity because that would require obedience to Christ. The
mutant wants the shakes and shivers without the service and sacrifice. Yes dear
hearts the word is still true “to live is Christ and to die is gain” the
commitment still requires sacrifice. However the gospel of mutant Christians would
suggest that we need to “go back to Eden and live on top of the world”
ironically Christ ministered to the disenfranchised first and chose to live on
the bottom rather than the top. Spectacularly enough Christ changes the world
from the bottom up. This debunks the myth of the mutant that “I can’t help
nobody if I can’t help myself” the
mutant acquires more only to keep more, Christ Borrowed two fish and five loafs
and broke what he had and found the power of multiplication not in hoarding but
in helping. The mutant wants to be seen, Jesus has to ask “who do men say I am?”
he will be recognized by what he does not what he wears. The mutant is constantly in a search for identity,
the master says “I am that I am”, his identity comes not from what church he
has joined this year but the God he has joined in this life. The mutant is lost
in self-aggrandizement; the master was never lost to begin with. The mutant wants duplicates, the master wants disciples.
For
those of us who believe that we have overcome the mutant allow me to further
extent this metaphor. The Mutant speaks the language of legalism rather than
the language of relationship. The mutant loves judgment and scandal because it further
perpetuates the uniqueness of its own abnormality. The mutant loves topics like
abortion because it’s a place of high contention where it can spread its virus.
It loves the divisiveness of sexuality and sensuality because that’s where the
scandal lives. It loves racism and sexism because quite as kept the mutant
loves oppression. The mutant loves these
areas because the mutant knows that Christians who have been changed will not
let any point of disagreement separate them in love. The mutant exacerbates the speck in our neighbor’s
eye blocking our view of the plank in our own eye. How do will kill the mutant? My suggestions
·
Hard dose of anti me medication make
community more important than yourself
·
Get out of survival mode, scared to risk,
scared to attempt, and scared to try different things.
·
Every vision for the church should not
include a new building without envisioning a new way for community to take
root. Especially when you are under-utilizing current facilities
·
Service requirements you love to sing/preach
great….now I want to know can you serve?
·
Professional Counseling … I cannot tell you
how many of us are suffering from severe narcissistic disorder, I am Not
laughing.
Maybe if we stopped getting high off of
our own supply we could get back to changing the world. But that might hurt a
little…
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