A Blog for the Church

If you are a blog reader like I am, you have surely seen how various bloggers compile their Top 10 lists from the previous years.  Sometimes, it is in relation to their cause: highlighting the top movies of the year, their top posts, top news stories, etc.  Well, I wanted to jump on that bandwagon by highlighting the Top 10 comments received in 2009 and offer a few words of my own in response.  I chose these comments based on their significance, the insight which they represented, etc.  As a disclaimer, this post is organized chronologically…so number 1 doesn’t mean it is the top one, it means it was the most recent one selected.  Make sense?

Everyone whose comment was selected has been contacted and I’ve asked them to come back and share where they are at and how they are “leaving the building” today.

Hopefully they will come back and chime in!

On May 1^st, 2009 I posted my second blog post titled “On the Move” where I began a series of posts about sharing The Well’s story.  A man named Dave commented and something he said really stuck out to me:

What I realized was I didn’t even know what the burdens were of those around me until we began to make the effort to be in each other’s lives (and not just one hour a week, but continuously).

I know exactly what he means…do you?  As you read about in a recent post, leaving the building is about taking stock and getting rid of whatever is in the way.  This has to be intentional, though, otherwise we’ll be fooled into thinking that what is normal is what is best, especially when that is all you know.  As Dave indicates in his comment, getting into each other’s lives takes an effort beyond seeing each other at church or small group.

That’s a building that many of us need to leave.

At the beginning of June (the 5th to be specific) as I continued in the series of sharing The Well’s story, I wrote about how There Are Benefits to Coming in After a Beat-Down contending that change doesn’t seem so bad after you’ve been beat up with the way things are.  Garrett Stewart commented and along with some words of encouragement, said the following:

I have developed a plan to bring up to my pastor for a movement like you have done. I am a student and the assistant pastor is my mentor and he likes the idea of a street ministry, but I am not sure of what he will think about this radical idea. Over the past few weeks I have asked believers and nonbelievers about the idea of a nontraditional church/ community outreach church and it is an overwhelming majority believe that will serve God well.

What I love about what Garrett said is that his passion to see the church be what it was meant to be is evident.  So much so that he even developed a plan for bringing it up to his pastor…as if bringing it up wasn’t enough!  Additionally, he is getting out there and asking others what kind of church they would be responsive to.  Brilliant.  Why don’t other churches think of doing that?

That’s an example of leaving the building if I’ve ever seen one – ask someone who doesn’t go to your church, or who doesn’t go to church at all, and see what kind of community they would be interested in becoming part of.

House churches are not easy.  Many of you know that is an understatement.  In my post, “Wobbly Legs and Growing Pains,” posted on July 1st, I talked about some of the difficulty of starting a house church and how adjusting to the needs and communities was somewhat painful at first.  Mike commented offering his experience with going to a house church model:

This summer we hit on the idea of canning our Sunday morning service in favor of a house-based weekly fellowship. It has been spectacular. I have seen more people step up in leadership in the past two months than in the previous two years and the emphasis has shifted from “an excellent worship service” to a deepening intimacy with God and one another.

What he said echoes something I wrote a few weeks ago as part of our House Church 101 series: gifts emerge only under a structure that requires them to.  Church-as-usual doesn’t offer that, it can’t.  The structure forbids it.  Further, leaving the building causes a shift in our focus and we ask: why are we doing this?  Without his building Mike observes it is intimacy with God and each other that is the point.  I have a hard time disagreeing.

Have you seen this to be true?  Why or why not?  What gifts of yours might come out if there was a structure that allowed for it?  What is the focus of your church service (look beyond what is said about the focus and discern what is practiced)?

As I started exploring issues that many other Christians were talking about, I decided that it might be helpful to do a take on the subject from the viewpoint of the leave the building cause.  As I wrote on October 6th about the heart of social justice being in the everyday, ongoing love of personal people (rather than programs), Kathy Bradley commented and said something very important:

We too easily confuse giving to God with donating to some program or organization. Maybe we want to since that’s the easy task. I’m becoming ever more convinced that giving to God more likely involves the giving of ourselves to one another, and perhaps “stuff” if needed.

What she says here touches on something I hadn’t previously addressed.  Often times we give money to a program or organization because it is the easy way out.  Instead of willfully entangling our lives with the broken, we often keep them at arms length and throw resources at them to help them solve their problems.  But perhaps that’s a building we need to leave, too – the one of impersonal help.

What do you think?

I must have been in the same mindset as I was when writing about how social justice is not a program when I wrote about how when it comes to eradicating poverty, we don’t need a bigger giant on October 13th.  Though poverty may be a big problem, the solution is actually small.  Mark Isherwood chimed in with some words of wisdom:

When we reach out and serve others, our needs are met by the church, which is every single Christian around us.

Sometimes we forget that “the church” isn’t a building or organization, but US.

Short and sweet, Mark’s words are impacting.  If, when we see a need or have one ourselves, we look to “the church” to meet that need, we are looking in the wrong place.  Instead, it is the community, those who we rub shoulders with and talk to regularly that will meet our needs just as we help to meet theirs.  And, believe it or not, this is the church.  It just looks different than we thought.

Is this something you’ve grasped, yet?  What is stopping you?

In what was one of my most controversial posts, I talked about The Controversy of Community (ironic, isn’t it?) on October 15th.  The post was born out of interaction I had with some folks on the blog about whether it is good for the individual Christian to lean on the community…they contended that we should lean on Christ alone – something that, to me, doesn’t exclude the community.  Rick Garner was a part of that conversation and shared something that was a change in direction, but good nonetheless:

…the weekly small group is likely the closest to “community” because it’s likely the easiest time to be relaxed…to be real…to not be on a timetable and confined to a program.

It’s also likely that the best chance to show love to a neighbor and/or get to know them is via a small group at a host home.

Community is where love grows.

Interesting that the closest we get to community is in small groups – a supplemental program to “normal church.”  Actually, it’s not interesting at all, it is sad – a blight on the church that community is secondary to what we call “church.”

Here’s a question worth considering: can community-less church really be considered “church?”  What do you think?

I decided on October 27th to tackle that age-old question, the one the disciples themselves were asking, the one that Jesus had to ask…yeah, you know it, “Should Christians Celebrate Halloween?”  Okay, well, maybe Jesus and the disciples didn’t wrestle with that question, but we sure do.  I particularly liked what Nick Love had to say:

There will always be people who will turn good things away from what they should be (or what they can be). But if we hide from every situation that has been corrupted, then we will miss out on our call for life completely!

But when we participate, we can be a part of the redemptive process of the Kingdom of God.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Do you agree with Nick?  If not, what makes that difficult?  Is there a building you need to leave?

What would you do with $130,000,000?  Give it to the poor?  Take care of your family?  Start a non-profit?  Build a church building?  Well that is exactly what FBC Dallas is doing (the church building, that is) – the most expensive church building project to ever take place in the U.S.  Their justification for it is that doing so will communicate the transformation of God to the folks in Dallas and that the building will be a beacon of truth.  Of course, I had to write about why this was a problem on November 12th, but someone who goes by verticalworldsolutions commented and said something profound:

If Christians were first called Christians at Antioch, it begs the question. Why? Was it their architectural skills? Was it the wealth they had acquired? No, it was the radical difference in their lives after they accepted Jesus Christ!!

Not only is this a challenge for FBC Dallas, it is a challenge for all of us.  If it were today that Jesus came and the rest of the world looked at us, would they call us “like Christ” because of our crosses, bumper stickers, and conservative politics?

Smells like a building.

The AIDS Healthcare foundation had an interesting campaign to promote free HIV tests saying, “No Judgmental Bullsh*t” which I blogged about on December 1st.  I wish they had been talking about the church.  Everyone knows what Christians are against: abortion, homosexuality, democrats, etc., but not many what Christians are for – unfortunately, that is true both for outsiders looking in and us insiders as well.  It seems we are good at being against and bad at being for.  When I asked what Christians should be for, johnlunt said this:

One thing we must be for is Jesus. He is the focal point. It must not be obnoxious. But everything else you mentioned we should be for should always point back to Jesus. He is the life changer. Does that mean bible thumping? No. Does it mean dropping his name in every sentence? No. It means though that we have an answer for what we do when we help the hurting. When we love on people who may not be very easy to love.

Being for Jesus…what a novel concept!  I wonder what would happen if we were for Jesus with more energy than all the things we are against?

What do you think would happen?  How would the church be better?  Is “against” a building we need to consider leaving?

We just passed the Christmas season a month ago and just like every year some Christians decided to make a fuss about retailers “offending them” by saying “Happy Holidays” rather than “Merry Christmas.”  I outlined why this was not just ridiculous, but actually unbiblical on December 8th and got the following response from MDSF:

I tend to see the “War on Christmas” as generally alarmist: sure enough “Happy Holidays” is trite and bland, but the Incarnation has nothing to do with what sales people say in stores…I’m just jaded enough to suspect that the War on Christmas is less about honoring the Incarnation than about various conservative organizations reminding potential donors that they exist and need money.

Ouch!  Those are strong words for conservative organizations, but he may be right.  Regardless, he is definitely right about the Incarnation (what we celebrate at Christmas, in case you were unaware) having nothing to do with what retailers choose to say to shoppers.  I don’t know about you, but I am baffled as to why Christians would care about this at all.  If non-Christians choose to live and act like non-Christians should we really be trying to modify their behavior while leaving their hearts unredeemed?

So there you have it – our Top 10 Comments of 2009.  Is there one that you found particularly useful?