actionchurch at club19 – York, PA
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Healthy Tension:
I shared Sunday that one of the core values of actionchurch is to be a place that doesn’t “lecture you , bore you, or waste your time” I think of those three values every week as I prepare to speak.
The difficult thing is that all three values are in constant (and I think healthy) tension.
No Lectures: As a society we are over-run with information. Very few of us would willingly choose to attend a lecture on Sunday morning about the history of some long-dead “Bible charactor”. Besides, Bible information without application is just Bible Trivia. However, it’s impossible to share the life-changing principles and stories of Scripture without sharing information.
Don’t Be Boring: I’m pretty sure that making the Bible boring is a sin. It’s filled with the most amazing stories ever written. However, it’s also filled with mind-numbing lists, geneologies, and detailed policies. Because it is set in cultures from thousands of years ago it’s easy to miss it’s relevance for our lives today. On Sunday mornings we attempt every week to tie ancient scripture to things in our lives today. We use music, movies, news events, television clips, and the occasional awkward story from my life.
Don’t waste anyone’s time: No one HAS TO come to church. We don’t live in a society that enforces church attendance (either by legislation or culturally shaming non-attenders). The last thing I want to do on a Sunday morning is to waste the time of someone who has voluntarily chosen to get up and come to church. Here’s where the tension comes in: since we never want to lecture anyone, it would be tempting to not talk about the difficult areas and ideas of Scripture. Since we don’t want to bore anyone it’s tempting to just play an episode of the office and laugh together when we’re not listening to the band. That would be entertaining. However, since I never want to waste anyone’s time I know the most important thing I can do is to share the Good News that God gifts us with in scripture. The biggest “waste of time” I can think of on Sunday morning would be to simply try to entertain everyone without engaging and challenging them to consider the eternally important consequences of missing God’s plan for their life. (Besides, let’s be honest…at it’s most “entertaining”…Church is not exactly going to “compete” with the entertainment options most of us have available to us at home on Sunday morning).
“What if there was a place that would never lecture you, bore you, or waste your time? What if that place turned out to be a Church?”
Those words will always bring “tension” as we plan and prepare for Sunday morning each week…and I think that’s a very healthy thing.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Help.
For I am the LORD, your God,
who takes hold of your right hand
and says to you, Do not fear;
I will help you. Isaiah 41:13
I love the image this scripture paints. God is not a “help” button. God is not a faceless customer support worker who (in theory at least) offers us “how-to” instruction when we find ourself in a jam. God does not serve us. God loves us.
God does not promise to fix our problems. God does not promise that we will never experience “scary” situations. God says that when we call out to him he will be there…like a Father…ready to take our hand and offer his help.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
The power of a whisper
As a teenager I once had a very sincere “message from God” delivered by someone at a Church I was visiting that “God wanted to deliver me from my drug addiction”. I’m forty two now, and unless I fall into some sort of meth-amphetamine ring at the nursing home in my eighties, I don’t think drug addiction will be part of the long list of mistakes and sins in my life. (Diet Mountain Dew addiction…now that’s a completely different story.)
I’m pretty sure that “God’s message” about my drug addiction that never happened was more based on its “messengers” ideas about the way I looked and dressed than ANYTHING God ever said. (To his credit, I wish that I could blame drugs for some of the giant, Paul Stanley-esq, hair helmets I sported in the 80′s)
People say dumb things and blame them on God.
I cringe whenever someone says “God told me” anything. I am SO hesitant to say that “I heard God say” anything. The great conflict that followers of Christ face is that hearing from God has become pretty much synonymous with “I’m borderline psychotic”…but hearing from God is the most important thing that we can do in life. A life of Following Jesus without being able to hear his direction is like taking an unfamiliar road trip without a map or GPS. “Following” is impossible without direction.
I don’t often recommend a book…and I’m pretty sure Bill Hybels doesn’t need any endorsement from me. However, I finally had a chance to read his latest “The power of a Whisper” yesterday and it was the most practical and thoughtful books I’ve ever read on the subject of Hearing God. If you struggle as I do with the whole concept of “God told me” this book is worth a read.
I was hooked from the moment I read the tag-line on the cover. “Hearing God. Having the Guts to Respond”. That’s about as “actionchurch” as it gets…