I'm leaving the "church" to save my faith. What do I mean? For years I have been apprenticed in "churchianity" and I have found the whole experience to be like gorging yourself on celery - lots of activity while starving with a full stomach. I'm hungry for GOD. I want Jesus; the real Jesus. The one that loves us to death - literally; the one that opens blind eyes and deaf ears, who makes the lame leap for joy. I want the Jesus who isn't afraid of the dirt in this city or the dirt in my heart - the Jesus who sits in the smoking section, listening to the tales of the broken over a pint, picking up the tab along with the pieces of their lives. I want the Jesus that's OUT THERE somewhere, doing what he has always done. Not the professional Jesus, the incarnational Jesus. The one who didn't expect me to come to him but came to me, living life on my terms on my turf - in the flesh; Emmanuel - God WITH us; God FOR us.
Over the next several weeks I plan to write an ongoing blog that will explore the meaning of being truly "Missional." I will be including quotes and thoughts from a couple of different books as well as some of my recent experiments in being on mission with God incarnationally. A word of clarification and then a warning: I am not leaving Emmaus Road; I love this ekklesia (church). I am continuing to walk down this road of discovery toward Emmaus with my fellow travelers. WARNING: This blog will be a bit unsettling; more about generating questions than answers. Rather than assuming we know what God is doing and what he expects, maybe we should be humbling ourselves, seriously asking, "Where are you at work Lord?" "What should we be doing?"
Now that I've got your attention here are some thoughts to ponder from the book Organic Church by Neil Cole:
"A growing number of people are leaving the institutional church for a new reason. They are not leaving because they have lost faith. They are leaving the church to preserve their faith... could it be that the "churched culture" indeed is spiritually toxic!"
"Church attendance, however, is not the barometer of how Christianity is doing. Ultimately, transformation is the product of the Gospel. It’s not enough to fill our churches, we must transform our world. Society and culture should change if the church has been truly effective. Is the church reaching out and seeing lives changed by the Good News of the Kingdom of God? Surely the number of Christians will increase once this happens, but filling our seats one day a week is not what the Kingdom is all about. We do Jesus an injustice by reducing His life and ministry to such a sad story as church attendance and membership roles."
"The measure of the Church's influence is found in society - on the streets, not in the pews."
"The Great Commission says that we are to "go into all the world," but we've turned the whole thing around and made it "come to us and hear our message."
"Instead of bringing people to church so that we can bring them to Christ, let’s bring Christ to people where they live... What will happen if we plant the seed of the Kingdom of God in the places where life happens and where society is formed?"
"What would it be like if churches emerged organically, like small spiritual families born out of the soil of lostness, because the seed of God's kingdom was planted their?"
So, what do you think?