Posted on 09/04/2008 3:56:05 PM PDT by guitarplayer1953
In every town of America there is at least one church with a building worth hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars. This church meets every Sunday morning with only eight to ten silver and blue haired women and one or two balding gentlemen for a “service”. Empty parking spaces, silent pulpits and dusty pews cry out for days of glory gone by. The church has been dead for years, perhaps decades, but has been kept alive unnaturally by an artificial life support system. The soul is gone, brain waves have ceased, but mechanization keeps the lungs breathing, the heart beating, and the door opening every Sunday morning at precisely 10 AM. Why? We are so desperately afraid to admit failure that we will keep the church alive as long as we can. It is as if the continuity of Christianity depends upon this one church staying alive. If the church dies God has failed, and we cannot allow that.
Why are we so desperate to keep churches alive? While I know that the church is special to Jesus (His bride!) I think we have lost touch with something very spiritual…death. Can it be that death is as spiritually right as life? Well consider this, without death you cannot have a resurrection, the Gospel, salvation…life. Perhaps it is time that we embrace a theology of death.
The thinking behind this has caused us to commit the worst treason possible against heaven—self-preservation. Why is self-preservation so bad, aren’t there worse things a church can do? Self-preservation is nothing short of blasphemy, it is taking into our own hands the function of Deity. It is playing God, plain and simple. That is the problem. As a consequence, literally tens of thousands of Christians and churches are deceived into a “churchianity” that is carried out by men, for men, under the name of God. I wonder if God likes getting the credit for all of the crap we do.
While we clearly avoid a theology of death, the opposite is not a theology of life, for life is not what you will find in churches that strive to avoid death at all costs. I don’t know how it happened, but sometime in history we bought into a theology of safe. We think that we should do what is safe, for ourselves, for our families and for our churches. In fact, we are convinced that anything that is unsafe must be outside of God’s will and is thoroughly un-American. A theology of safe is put in place as a defensive measure to avoid death. This leads us right down the path of self-preservation.
Jesus is not about safe. He is the one who said things like… “I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves.” “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” “He who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” “Let the dead bury the dead—you follow me.” These are not safe and wholesome words, they are words that shake us up and toss us out way past what is safe.
I have come up with two acronyms to expose some of our delusion regarding these things. The first reveals our inadequate theology of SAFE. The other is how Jesus wants us to embrace a theology of DEATH.
Safe is…
Self-preservation = our mission
Avoidance of the world and risk = wisdom
Financial security = responsible faith
Education = maturity
This is what a theology of death looks like…
Die daily to who we are
Empowerment of others (not self) is our life
Acceptance of risk is normative
Theology is not just knowledge, but practice
Hold tight to Christ with an open hand for everything else.
Jesus said, “He who clings to his life shall lose it, but he who loses his life for my sake will find it.” We need to embrace a theology of death, our lives depend upon it!
I was really blessed by Neil Cole's Organic Church.
Can you describe Organic church Movement?
A body that is alive where all participate not a spectator environment. These are a few adjectives to describe the movement. Here is a link to some resources on the movement.
http://cmaresources.org/features_articles/articles
This is the story for about every fifth Roman Catholic Church in New England and likely a much higher number of UCC, UU, UMC and other old line denominations. Many of the ones that survive are Sunday Morning are more along the lines of social and glee clubs than houses of worship.
I am a member of the Roman Catholic Church. I am not here for a flame war, though one will ensue; I am only here to say this: Jesus’promises did not come cheaply. This is the promise: the darkness will not overcome the light. Have faith; continue to work hard for what you believe in. God bless. V’s wife.
I signed up at the Organic Church website recently. There are no house churches in our area. No one really wants to drive 40 or 50 miles on a Sunday for church, so house church meetings held at homes in a five-mile radius in small family groups that get close to each other with no need for paid pastors who sometimes claim two-thirds of the total church income, at the expense of poor people who have to rake and scrape to shore up his (and sometimes his wife’s) salaries, are worth giving a try. Some people are getting tired of sitting and staring at the backs of the real church’s heads while listening to funny stories (in many instances) with little scripture delivered by the same Big Man in the pulpit (in many instances) week after week, month after month, and year after year. I know there are those who defend their pastors profusely, and that is all well and good and I am sure there ARE a lot of good preachers and pastors. There are, too, just as many megalomaniacal control freaks who have latched onto iron-fisted control over small groups of people and will NEVER relinquish “their” pulpit until either they, or their entire congregation, either die or are driven away by the preacher’s ego trips.
It is that simple and that profound. Daily prayer time should be common in the church. Before service open the prayer rooms. Have prayer meetings. Have prayer chains. And you pastor and church leaders, never stop praying.
Without prayer there is no vision. Without a vision the people perish.
God has made humans so that we are able to create and appreciate art.
Having a worship service in a beautifully crafted church always enhances the experience. It is why even organic churches include beautiful music in their services.
Having a church service in an otherwise cluttered and cramped suburban cookie-cutter home or some vacated shop in a mini-mall is OK, but it is even better to have such services in great works of architecture that were crafted by people who loved God and created a fitting place for His worship.
If there are churches with too few members then the answer is evangelism, not defeatist nomad/gypsy behavior.
That is called creating a strawman.
Hold tight to Christ with an open hand for everything else.
Hold tight with an open hand? This one needs an explanation.
Churches abrogated their duties when they began sending parishioners with spiritual problems and moral issues to secular practitioners (psychologists, etc.) who, after all, teach that the soul is a myth and that all mental states are a result of random chemical actions. Why would anyone contribute to such clergy who have abandoned and betrayed their flocks? The psychologists teach that homosexuality is fine, that child abuse isn’t harmful and that no one is responsbile for their acts; their brain chemicals made them do it. Why would minsters send their people to the enemy?
After firing a salvo like that, I question you comment about it's not a flame war.
First paragraph is a perfect description of the average “church” of The Episcopal Cult.
My former parish I grew up in has had to lay off the associate rector and all the staff. The have resorted to booking the church for concerts to keep the doors open. The sooner it is gone, the better is my response. The church totally failed in its mission to convert and grow Christians (I think of how screwed up the majority of kids I went to Sunday school with 40 years ago are today). God’s judgment is heavy on such false churches.
When the wolves come the hireling flees but the Shepherd will lay down his life for the sheep.
If all the church has is hirelings then it is already dead.
But even a dead church can be raised by prayer.
I have seem it happen. A little abused church with only a handful of the elders left. Because they did not have a pastor they began to meet and pray. For two hours on Sunday they would pray. They would meet four or five times a week and pray as a group. Daily someone was in the church praying.
And something happened. A pastor four states away heard God tell him that he needed to pack up and move to a tiny town tucked away in the hills.
A young college student was driving past when on impulse she turned into the parking lot of the church and went in. No one was there but one 86 year old sister praying. The young woman stayed and soon she was praying as well. She came back again and again. And she brought some of her friends. And some of them stayed.
People who had attended the church as children also felt the call and slowly began to come back and they brought their kids.
In under three years the church went from less then a dozen to over a hundred.
Prayer works.
I never mentioned the RCC or any other Church you are the one who brought it up.
When man began to separate the sheep from God by limiting access to Him that is when it began to wither on the vine and die.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.