Christian! Stop going to church!

"Which church do you go to?" or "Did you go to church this morning?" are common questions you hear all the time in our Christian relationships.  I confess, I've asked them many times, but I've come to a place where I'm trying not to.  I've come to realize such questions only reinforce a misconception, and this misunderstanding is that "church" is a place we go to or something we attend.

Let me give you a little background on the word church.  Our English word church translates a Greek work, ekklesia, which simply means, called out.  The church is a group of people who have been called out of something.  The Bible often speaks of us as being called out of darkness and into God's marvelous light, but what that simply means is that the church is the group of people, from all over the world, from all races and ethnic groups, from both genders and from all ages, who trust in and follow Jesus.  So church isn't anything we go to or anything we attend-- church is who we are.  We are the church, the called-out ones, the ones who follow Jesus.  Peter calls us a holy nation, a chosen race, even a people for God's own possession (1 Peter 2:9).  We trust His words, we believe in His work, and we give our lives to live for and to follow Him.  We follow His character, His heart and His teachings.  Our goal in life is to be like Him, to be transformed into His image so that we think like Him, act like Him and love like Him.  C.S. Lewis used to say that if your conversion to Christ didn't change you outwardly, your conversion was probably just imaginary.

So how did church become a place we go to or something we attend?  It's actually quite easy--as we the church would meet together we acquired buildings in which to meet, and over time we began to refer to them as churches.  As we the church met together weekly for worship, that gathering became central and we also began to refer to it as church.  It was an easy step to begin to refer to church as a place we go and a meeting we attend, rather than to us as a people who are the church.

I know that words morph and change over time.  Not too many years ago, a "gay event" would have referred to a "happy occasion", but not anymore.  So calling the buildings we meet in churches is here to stay.  Referring to our weekly worship gathering as church, probably isn't going to disappear either, so why would I even write about this in a post?

Well, even though I know we can't change the church at large, I do think we can speak to encourage our own thinking.  The Bible says, "as a man thinks in himself, so is he."  How I think affects me, so if I can consciously think correctly about the church, I can influence my own life.  Again, church isn't something we go to.  It's who we are, so when we come together on Sundays, it's not to spectate--it's to participate.

So here's my challenge.  Remind yourself often that the buildings where you meet are not the church.  I've been trying to refer to the buildings as our "facilities" or the "buildings where we meet."  I confess, it's hard.  I know you might be saying, "Why bother when no one else will follow suit?"  Bother because it will remind you that we are the called out ones--not our building.  In the Old Testament, the temple was built and God's presence dwelt there.  It was a magnificent edifice that pointed people to the greatness of God.  But with the new covenant in Jesus, God destroyed the temple and built a new one, not with stone and mortar, but rather with living stones--us!  We, His people, are the temple of God.  His presence dwells with us and we live to show off the magnificence of His grace (1 Peter 2).  So do your best to stop calling bricks and lumber the church of God.

But maybe even more importantly, it will help us to stop referring to our Sunday morning gathering as church.  "Did you attend church today?"  We don't attend church.  Attending gives the idea that we are spectating at whatever is happening.  When we speak of attending a sporting event, we never mean that we are the players on the court or field--we're just watching others perform.  When we come together as God's church (God's called-out ones) we are never supposed to be just watching others perform, but I sense that's too often just what we do.  When we gather to worship as the church, we are not the people in the stands; we're supposed to be the people on the field.   Now you may be thinking, "How do I do that?  I'm not up front.  I'm not a praise leader or a pastor."  You do that by giving yourself, your mind, your heart to that worship expression time.  You sing.   You engage in prayer.  You listen attentively with a heart to obey what you hear.  You heed the Holy Spirit as He prompts you to encourage others.  You take the initiative to greet others and meet them if you don't know them.   You gather early and stay a bit afterward, for the purpose of engaging with others, and you use your words and body language to affirm them, build them up and help them where you can.  You see yourself as one of the players in this gathering of worship rather than just someone in the gallery of observers.   I know it's just semantics, but words matter.  So we should say things like, "Did you gather as the church to worship yesterday?" instead of, "Did you attend church yesterday?"

As I read back over this post, I'm sure some of you will think it's silly, but I stand by my assertion that we should stop going to church and just start being the church.  Join me and others as the church this coming weekend.

Celebrate Christmas Well!

As one who follows Jesus, do you ever struggle with celebrating Christmas?  I know I did.  I always asked myself, how can so many people who don’t hardly know anything about Jesus, much less follow Him, celebrate Christmas?  Obviously, they are not celebrating what I’m celebrating.   But then, what am I celebrating?  Certainly, as a Christian I am celebrating the fact that God chose to enter the world He created as one of us, and He chose not to do so with fanfare and accolades, but incognito and among the poorest of the poor.  But what do Christmas trees and colorful lights have to do with that?  How does exchanging gifts with those I love and sharing meals with people I treasure have anything to with God becoming a person?

Maybe this confusion has bothered you too.  A number of years ago I accepted a couple of realities and made a couple of decisions that have helped me—maybe they will help you too.

First, I accepted the truth that for most people in America Christmas as we know it isn’t about Jesus, God or even anything spiritual.  In fact, I’ve come to the conclusion that this has probably been the case for generations, maybe from the very rise of Christmas as we know it.  Don’t get me wrong, I accept the reality that in days gone by more Americans tipped their hat to Jesus at this season, but I doubt the coming of Jesus has ever been what most people celebrated at this time.  People, by their very nature, love to celebrate family, friends, joy and happiness; and however it happened, those things came to be associated with Christmas.  Parents love to see the joy on their kids’ faces as they open gifts.  Most everyone loves the joyful music, the festive lights and the obvious good will that seems to permeate this time of year.  However it came to be, this is what most people are celebrating.

Now here’s the second truth I accepted—it's ok for me as one who follows Jesus to celebrate all these things too.  It’s ok to love the lights and the songs and the joy of watching my kids exchange gifts of love with each other.  It’s ok to decorate my house and cook great Christmas cookies just for the fun of it—just for the joy!  Actually, God made us to enjoy festivities.  He himself gave the Israelites so many joyful festivals for their pleasure and happiness.  I’m not a Jew, at least not a natural born Jew; I’m an American.  Christmas is a time my culture celebrates family and friends with feast and fun and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Accepting those two realities helped me immensely sort out my confusion about the season, but I also made two coinciding decisions.  

The first was that in the midst of celebrating with my culture, I was going to not forget, but purposefully celebrate, what the Bible calls the incarnation of God.  Jesus is often called “Emmanuel,” which means “God with us.”  As a Christian, I wanted the truth that God came to earth as a man to be something I prioritized in my celebration.  Over the years Anne and I have done some things at this season to help us remember this great event.  You might think they are simple, even crass, but we put red and white lights on our tree to remind us of Jesus' holiness and his death on the cross.  We set up a manger scene in our living room to help us commemorate.  In our family it is tradition to worship together with other believers on Christmas Eve.

The second decision was that in my heart I’d not separate the celebration of Jesus’ birth from the remembrance of His death.  When Jesus was born the angels said, “I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all the people; for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”  The birth of Jesus was joyful news because God had Himself come as our Savior, but Jesus’ saving work wasn’t complete until His death on the cross some thirty-three years later.  His birth and His death are inextricably tied together and I promised myself not to celebrate the cradle without remembering His cross.

So if you are a follower of Jesus too, let me urge you celebrate Christmas well!   Celebrate this festive time with our culture.   Enjoy the lights and the chestnuts roasting on an open fire.  Take advantage of that mistletoe!  But don’t forget the greater joy that Christmas brings to your heart.  Remember Christ our Savior was born on Christmas day and later died on Calvary that you and I might know God and have a personal relationship with Him.  Take special care to worship Him joyfully and purposefully at this special season of the year.

"Christians are such hypocrites!"

"Christians are such hypocrites!"  "The church is full of hypocrites!"  As a pastor I've heard those two statements quite a bit over the years.  Maybe you've said them or at least thought them.  I confess I've always wondered why people have said that when Christians have never claimed to be anything but flawed, failed and fallen people.  Our platform of belief begins with a foundational stone of our own sinfulness and wickedness.  However, the other day I had an 'a-ha' moment and I now think I understand why so many think of us as hypocrites.

As followers of Jesus we teach that we should submit to God's will.  We believe that God reveals His nature, character and will in the Bible so we seek to surrender ourselves to what God desires of us.  In other words, when Jesus called us to follow Him we believe He meant for us to live like Him, and more specifically, we believe it meant for us to follow the morality that God has delineated in the Scriptures.  We truly want to live the morality the Bible lays out for us.

But what I just said is really the second half of our message-- the outflow of the first and primary piece.  The central message of a Christian's faith is that he or she is selfish and thus a sinful person.   We are all morally flawed and thus rightly and consequently under the judgment of a righteous God.  You may manage to be more moral than me, but you still fall short of moral perfection-- especially morality as God delineates in His Bible.  Moral failure includes selfishness as lived out in lying, stealing, bitterness, lust and murder.  We tend to compare ourselves and say, "As long as I'm better than most, God will accept me, forgive me, because he obviously grades on a curve."  Unfortunately He doesn't grade on a curve; just one sin is enough to condemn us before this perfect, righteous, loving God.

So the Christian good news begins by understanding the bad-- I need help.  I can't earn God's forgiveness by being better than others.  You may have heard the old joke of the two friends who come upon a grizzly bear and one starts to put on his tennis shoes.  "You can't outrun that bear!" says one friend.  "I don't have to", replies the other.  "All I have to do is outrun you!"  That's not how God's justice works.  The 'grizzly bear' of God's justice will run us all down-- we need a Savior.

The good news the Christian puts his hope in is that God so loved him (and all of us) that He sent a Savior-- Himself.  Jesus as God came and lived a morally perfect life and then gave up that morally perfect life in exchange for my morally sinful and flawed life.  In dying for me, both physically and spiritually, Jesus became my Savior!  Because of Jesus all my sin is forgiven.  Not by my merit.  Not because now I'm perfect but because I trust in Him to be my substitute.  By faith I rely upon His love and His work for me.

Why would anyone believe that?  Really for one reason only.  Because the testimony of many a man and woman is that Jesus proved it by rising from the dead.  They killed him by hanging him on a cross and they buried Him and thought that was that, but history says it wasn't.  On Friday afternoon He dies and on Sunday morning He walks out of the grave.  The resurrection of Jesus, that truth and that reality, changed history without coercion and force.  That truth is still changing men and women's lives today.

We're back full circle to where I started from.  Because Jesus is now my Savior, I want to follow Him.  I want to live as God desires me to live.  I still fall woefully short.  I'm still capable, and even struggle with, wanting to be just as selfish as I ever was.  But nonetheless, God has given me a new heart and His Spirit to help me-- there will be a change.  Not a perfect change, but a change.  I will be more like Jesus.


But here's where I had the 'a-ha' moment-- people outside the church hear us talking about this change and our desire to follow Jesus and be Biblically moral men and women, and without understanding the primary piece, they think that being a Christian simply means seeking to live as moral people.  That conception is reinforced in their minds as they see Christians fight vociferously and politically for Biblical morality.  And then-- then they see us fail.  They watch us fail morally in about every way a person can fail.  They even see those Christians who have been most vocal about God's declared morality fail, or maybe I should say they especially see those who are most vocal fail.  And because they believe the Christian life is merely about living morally-- they see us as hypocrites.  Think about it for a minute; if you thought Christianity was simply about following a moral code, and you saw people who preach and promote that code fail often and openly, wouldn't you think we are all hypocrites too?

So I conclude this note with two challenges.  To the Christ follower I want to urge you to do your best to help people understand the heart of our Christian faith.  It's not about being moral.  We can't be moral so as to earn God's forgiveness or eternal life.  Jesus died to give us what we need-- He rose from the dead to prove He had succeeded.  Be careful not to confuse the message.

Finally, to the one who might be reading this and thinks all Christians are hypocrites, I want you to know that we all agree with you.  We live hypocritically of the morality that we believe God desires of us.  Even now as we follow Jesus we still fail.  We all too often lie, cheat, steal, lust and live selfishly even as we know that is not what God desires of us.  But please understand that is not our central message.  The primal truth we cling to is that in our moral sinfulness, Jesus died for our sins that He might give us freely, by grace through faith, the forgiveness we need.  It's not earned by living to some degree of moral perfection-- its simply received with a grateful heart.  If you've not understood the bedrock truth of the Christian faith, dig in until you do.  You may still reject it, but don't confuse it with mere moralism.