A church for those who've wasted life - their own and maybe yours too

The Return of the Prodigal Son by Rembrandt

Jesus tells a story in Luke 15 about a father and two sons. It's a story I had the pleasure of getting to recount and explain this past Sunday. The youngest son is often described as prodigal, which means recklessly wasteful. This young man tells his father to his face he wishes he (the father) could die so he (the son) could finally live. The son then promptly wastes what the father gives him in the name of freedom and self-indulgence. In the most happy and surprising turn in the story, this recklessly wasteful son is welcomed home and even celebrated by his father (whom the son earlier wished dead!). The older son, who stuck around serving the father, is furious at the celebration...

As are many of us toward people in churches just like yours and mine. Some of those who sit and stand next to you on a Sunday morning cut corners (even commit fraud!) in their workplaces, have slept the night prior with someone who is not their spouse, and have even hurt you or someone you know. Yet sometimes we think in protest, "Others must know who they are and what they are doing and yet they still welcome such as these, they are still greeted, they are made to feel included." Indeed, we expect the welcome, forgiveness, and call of Jesus to be what transforms a person's life (Titus 2:11-15), not a starting line of moral conformity followed by Jesus' stamp of approval. Otherwise, Jesus would be called the "Affirmer" not the "Savior." For some, truly grasping this grace ("activated love") of the Lord Jesus takes a while and in the meantime such people may even call themselves a "Christian." In fact, I may even be describing you. But if I'm not - I want to appeal to the patience shown to you through Jesus Christ and also to consider the alternative - a church full of older brothers. 

In a small section of his book, The Prodigal God, Tim Keller talks about how during the early years being a Christian was considered abnormal and then helps us consider why we should desire for prodigals to be attending (and sometimes "messing up"!) our churches. I'll quote him at length because what he says is so good for us long-time church goers to hear:

It's hard for us to realize this today, but when Christianity first arose in the world it was not called a religion. It was the non-religion. Imagine the neighbors of the early Christians asking them about their faith. "Where's your temple?" they'd asked. The Christians would reply that they didn't have a temple. "But how can that be? Where do your priests labor?" The Christians would have replied that they do not have priests. "But...but," the neighbors would have sputtered, "where are the sacrifices made to please your gods?" The Christians would have responded that they did not make sacrifices anymore Jesus himself was the temple to end all temples, the priest to end all priests, any sacrifice to end all sacrifices.

No one had ever heard anything like this. So the Romans call them "atheists," because with the Christians were saying about spiritual reality was unique and could not be classified with the other religions of the world. This parable explains why they were absolutely right to call them atheists. 

The irony of this should not be lost on us, standing as we do in the midst of the modern culture wars. To most people in our society, Christianity is religion and moralism. The only alternative to it (besides some other world religion) is pluralistic secularism. But from the beginning it was not so. Christianity was recognized as a tertium quid, something else entirely.

The crucial point here is that, in general, religiously observant people were offended by Jesus, while those estranged from religious moral observance were intrigued and attracted to him. We see this throughout the New Testament accounts of Jesus' life. In every case where Jesus meets a religious person and a sexual outcast (as in Luke 7) or a religious person an a racial outcast (as in John 3-4) or a religious person and a political outcast (as in Luke 19), the outcast is the one who connects with Jesus and the older-brother type does not. Jesus says to the respectable religious leaders "the tax collectors and prostitutes enter the kingdom before you" (Matthew 21:31).

Jesus' teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, in the main, our churches do not have this effect. The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative, button-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did. If our churches aren't appealing to younger brothers, it must be more full of older brothers that would like to think.

Pray for our Mission Team in Honduras (July 3-10)

Pray also for me, that words may be given me to fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly, as I should (Ephesians 6:19-20).

Twelve "sent ones" are heading out this Friday to serve our missionary friends of Tree of Life ministries as well as the people of Tegucilgapa, Honduras. Let's send them with more than well-wishes but, rather, partner with them in prayer. 

Below is their itinerary so you can best know how to pray for them:

Friday, July 3:     Travel days, orientation, prayer and sharing time. 
Saturday, July 4: Ministry to children a the Tree of Life site.
Sunday, July 5:   Church service, tour of the new ministry site, prayer for the ministry. 
Monday, July 6:  Tour of Valle de Angeles and La Tigra, visit to new site for orphanage.
Tuesday, July 7:  Ministry to children and door-to-door evangelism in Monte Leon
Wed, July 8:       Construction at the Tree of Life site.
Thurs, July 9:     Door-to-door evangelism and distribution of anti-parasite medication.
Friday, July 10:  Travel Day.

Those sent:

• Andrew Cummer
• Alex Cummer
• Jesse Chong
• Grace Chong
• Stacey Mathis
• Sean Olson
• Thaddeus Daniel
• Brett Wendle
• Jeff Cummer
• Susan Cummer
• Francois Bezuidenhout
• Dan Bryer

Church-Branding Overwhelms the Cross

Jesus' object lesson in Mark 11:15-19 about the ineffectiveness of religious ritual continues to stir in me because I recognize that church attendance, just like temple worship in Jesus' day, can provide "a den" (a refuge, a hideout) for people to take cover under the banner of: "Me & God are good...because I'm a pretty good person who goes to church." Worse yet, those of us who are pastors, elders, or lay leaders are prone to propagate this twisted idea - even if unconsciously. Thus, the irony: We hurt the church we love by spending ourselves to promote the church we love. We ought not be about "our church" preservation and "our church" promotion - but Jesus-preservation (preserving his teaching) and Jesus-promotion (promoting His name).

JR Kerr provides a "gut-check" to every church, including ours, in this little article: "Church-Branding Overwhelms the Cross." (A side note: I met JR Kerr at a Chicago Cubs baseball game - in the bleachers of Wrigley field. I kept in touch with him for a while and he helped me during a pivotal time in my ministry. A gracious and godly dude). His question toward the end is particularly challenging: "When people think of your church, what do you think they more readily think of, the cross or your brand?" Recently, a new Christian who attends our church turned to me and a friend and asked: "After all these years walking with God, how do you guys keep the fire going?" Let's just say neither of us respond firstly with: "A firm Commitment to our local church." Rather we replied similarly with: "A daily, return trip to the cross of Jesus Christ" (see Luke 7:47; II Corinthians 4:11; Galatians 2:20). Let's point people toward the fuel that will sustain the fire!

Why do people get so "my-church-promoty"? Various reasons I'm sure but one comes readily to mind: The Fear of getting left behind. Here are some fears that go to work on us who rightly love (but perhaps over-love) our church: "Is God moving in our church? If not, will others leave us for a newer and more exciting work? If He is working, I'm pretty weak and inadequate: Won't He choose to use others and leave me and my puppet ministry in the dust?" However, God promises a couple things concerning the local expression of His universal church - (1) He has every desire and motivation to advance and build His church (Matthew 16:18; Ephesians 2:22; 1 Peter 2:5) (2) He wants to use your God-given gifts to do so (Ephesians 4:7, 4:12-14). 

I pray God uses your holding on with confidence to these two promises to free you and your church to be all about speaking and living the message of "Jesus Christ and Him crucified" (1 Corinthians 2:2) while letting Him take care of the advancing and the using. He says He will. He can be trusted to do so.

8 reasons why enjoying God with others is better than you and Yahweh "doing your own thing"

This past Sunday I had opportunity to teach from Psalm 40 and try to explain why this prayer-song was a kind of pattern for David's spiritual life - and ebb and flow from worship in private prayer closet (in his case - fields and caves) and public worship with God's people (whether it be dancing before an Ark in his underoos or in the sanctuary). My emphasis for Sunday was upon how running back each day to the private prayer closet - alone with God - serves to re-fuel and sustain every effort of corporate worship.

However, I did make a brief comment: Public, corporate worship - hearing from God's Word together and singing it to one another and to God - protects and enlargens the prayer closet. This is the other side of the coin in developing intimacy with God. The impetus behind that brief comment largely stemmed from a sermon I read last week by David Clarkson.

David Clarkson (1622-1686) was a colleague and successor in the pulpit to the famous Puritan John Owen. His sermon is entitled: Public worship to be preferred before private from Psalm 87:2 and it contains an absurd number of Roman numerals that will cause you to either grow dizzy or begin to form a shape (various Star Wars or Lord of the Rings characters are common) if you look at them (or through them) for too long. 

Ultimately I disagree David's his overall assessment in part because of the inherent dangers of vanity that accompany overindulgence in worshipping God in the midst of others, which Jesus warned us about (Matthew 6:5-6), but mostly because it begs the question: Why would you try to pit two friends against each other?!. The private re-fuels and sustains genuine, lasting public worship while the public worship protects private worship from becoming introspective, selfish, heretical while spurring on insights in to God, the Bible, life that you wouldn't have noticed yourself. Each serves the other as a good friend would. But many of his points are insightful, well-girded by Scripture and so worth taking a gander.

Without further ado, here are 8 reasons (Clarkson gives 12 but 4 of them are, in my estimate, not well-supported) to stop telling yourself: "Oh, I'll just stay out later and spend time with God by myself on the beach when I wake up" or "Must...hit...snooze...button.  Sleep...better...than...preacher" or "God understands that I have ____ going on or ____kids or need to put in ____ extra hours at work" and instead enjoy the benefits promised in God's Word of gathering together to grow from and gladly respond to God's Word.

1. The Lord is more glorified by public worship than private. This first point by Clarkson should makes sense. More people means more voices singing, more gifts at the table, more testimonies of thanksgiving - but also more opportunity for the Holy Spirit, through the bond of peace (Eph. 4:1-3), to make unlikely unity out of such diversity of backgrounds, ethnicities, interests and seasons of life. For brining unity where there would otherwise be relational chaos, God receives maximum glory.

2. There is manifest more of the Lord's presence in public worship than in private. Clarkson argues for this beautifully: "The Lord has a dish for every particular soul that truly serve him; but when many particulars meet together, there is a variety, a confluence, a multitude of dishes. The presence of the Lord in public worship makes it a spiritual feast, and so it is expressed in Isaiah 25:6."

4. There is more spiritual advantage in the use of public worship. For instance, certain deeper spiritual truths which one tries to suss out on his/her own, can be apprehended more readily and precisely when he/she listens to good preaching and worships together with others. Clarkson rightly quotes Psalm 73:16-17 here. Asaph has just been querying GOd as to why the wicked and proud prosper - it all starts to make sense once he arrives to the sanctuary to worship God together with others. For one thing, you realize the true prosperity you possess in community and being a part of the church of the living God most acutely when you get there.

5. Public worship is more edifying than private. In private, you seek God merely for your own good, but in public you seek the good of both yourselves and others. Every person who trusts Jesus brings with them a gift "to serve one another" (1 Peter 4:10), "for building up the body of Christ" (Eph. 4:12), and "for the common good" (1 Cor. 12:7).

6. Public worship is a better security against apostasy than private. Heresy is a fun word, but apostasy - yikes. The former has to do with believing and espousing a false teaching or truth but often without contrarian motives. Apostasy, however, is the espousing of false teaching as an act of willful rebellion. Either way, when one locks himself or herself in the private closet without bouncing ideas about the Bible, truth, Jesus off someone else, it's easy to stray the course - often without contrarian or malicious intent. I remember years ago doing this once for the first sermon I ever preached during our preaching lab in seminary. The combination of wanting to preach something more 'original' and not really running my notes by anyone else made for an interesting teaching from II Corinthians re: how people should plant churches. There was some errant content in there. Lesson learned. "Where there is no guidance, a people fails / but in an abundance of counselors there is safety" (Proverbs 11:14).

8. Public worship is the nearest resemblance of heaven. A wedding feast, a banqueting table, a heavenly city are all descriptions that entail more than just you and J.C. over a candlelight dinner. 

10. Public worship is the best means for procuring the greatest mercies, and preventing and removing the greatest judgments. So next time you hear about your church conducting a prayer meeting, a prayer vigil, etc, I would caution against the "I'll just join in from home" approach. The number of verses to support the above statement are astounding. Joel 2:15-16: "Blow the trumpet in Zion, consecrate a fast; call a solemn assembly, gather the people. Consecrate the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children, even the nursing infants. Let the bridegroom leave his room and bride her chamber" (you can read Joel 2:17-18 for God's response). II Chronicles 20:3-4 & Acts 4:31 are other poignant examples of God calling His people to come together or using His people as they come together to seek Him.

12. The promises of God are given more to public worship than to private. There are more promises to public, and even the promises that seem to be made to private worship are applicable and even more powerful in the context of public worship. A great example is Revelation 3:20 - often quoted as a most encouraging verse (ie. God is knocking at the door of your heart). But really this invitation is extended not to an individual but to a church. Jesus will come in and fellowship with the church body that hears His voice and invites Him through the door.

We need Sunday because all is not yet Sunday

I've been thinking and reading a lot this week about worship as I prepare to preach on this final avenue of how our church's leadership envisions carrying out our God-assigned mission to introduce people to Jesus and help them grow by his grace.

I am looking forward Zac Hicks leading us in praise and worship when myself and one of our elders attend the Liberate Conference in Ft Lauderdale, FL next month. He wrote a very thoughtful blog post entitled "Why the Tension between Public and Private Worship?" as to why we need to diligently drive ourselves to corporate worship every Sunday. His conclusion stems from the following quote from a book written in the 1960s (by a non-hippie named Jacques Von Allmen) called Worship: Its Theology and Practice. Von Allmen writes:

[Corporate Worship] is necessary because the Kingdom of God is not yet established in power. [Corporate worship] as such is necessary because the whole of life has not yet been transformed into worship. Thus it suggests that the Kingdom exists already, like the leaven in dough, but is not yet established. It shows that Sunday is other than weekday, that all is not yet Sunday. 

Hicks rightly relates Von Allmen's brilliant observation to the already/not yet tension of God's Kingdom that exists through Jesus Christ. One day everything will be perfect - including a perfected and constant community wearing white robes and worshipping the Lamb with no more hunger nor thirst to beset us (Revelation 7:13-17) - but until then we lean into little tastes of divine perfection to keep us going in advancing His Kingdom. God has called us to display saltiness to the world. What does this mean but a kind of set-apartness or difference that makes our lives attractive or 'taste good'.

"You are the salt of the earth" (Matthew 5:13)  

"Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its saltiness, how will you make it salty again?" (Mark 9:50)

"Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person" (Colossians 4:5-6). 

Blanding through Blending. However, Satan, through the wicked tripartite combo of sin/demonic/world, seeks to blend us in and remove our flavoring (consider, for instance, Paul's description in Ephesians 2:1-3 of lemmings following what most think is just the way of the world, but is really Satan's way and increasingly adopted as our own stubborn way). So when we chicken out of sharing a little bit of good news about Jesus with a co-worker, tell & then convince ourselves: "Hey, I have rights too!" (self-serving act to follow), throw in your coarse joke you would never say around church peeps, thoughtlessly use the person working on the project with you for your own gain (or use your child or spouse for that matter) - these are ways we lose flavoring as we begin to blend in with everyone else and, suddenly, voila! : "See! Christians aren't any different." Yet, it's always a struggle to prevent blanding through blending. In fact, it's probably why you are reading this blog entry now: You're feeling tired/blah at work or beaten down by the same ole circumstances at home and could use a pick me up. So you read this in your inbox or clicked on a link that brought you here.

Sustaining your Flava. Sunday corporate worship then becomes essential as the start-to-the-week push you need - a reminder that there are others like you on the same mission, at the same well in need of the same grace, and opportunity to remind each other of God's goodness through hearing and singing the Word of God. Likewise, M-F, private prayer closet worship re-fuels us for the day ahead. God uses time in His Word both corporately and privately to remind us of promises that HE is better, to re-focus us on His mission, and to drink in the amazing reality of grace and forgiveness through a return trip to the cross. He brings you to focused time of worship with the entire church on Sundays or with HIm alone to pray against (and in some cases for - see: people) and re-arm yourself against forces that seek to make your life blander through blending. 

The Forever Sunday. Psalm 34:8 is one of Katie's favorite verses (it hangs above our kitchen sink): "Oh,taste and see that the LORD is good! / Blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him!"
The provocative language in this verse is the "Taste and See" as it hints that the God of

the Universe can be experienced as sweetly and readily as a good steak is tasted or a Cayman beach is beheld. But I've often failed to meditate on the means of such blessed and experienced goodness - namely, "taking refuge in Him." A refuge is not a place a person remains or lives out his/her life (notice the Psalmist doesn't say: "residence" or "place of business"), but a place to which a person returns or even runs - recognizing their need for help, safety, and re-fueling. We are promised that one day we will have no need of certain now-essential-items like four walls and a roof because God will be our home (Rev. 21:3), no need for tissues or therapists or pastors for that matter for their will be no more crying or pain (Rev. 21:4), no more places of worship because God the Father and God the Son will be ever available to satisfy our praises (Rev. 21:22), no more Sun because God will bring light through the Lamb our lamp (Rev. 21:23, 22:5), no fear because there is no one bad (Rev. 21:27). 

So until our worship looks like that, we must (and we get!) to gather on Sundays, each of us bringing along a gift to serve and encourage the other, building one another up for the week ahead so that those we encounter M-F might so taste and see God's flavor in us - the difference in us - that they'd join us first for the following Sunday and then the forever Sunday. 

What makes a church unique? (part 2: the glory of uniqueness)

In my last post, I tried to establish that, given the consumer culture in which all churches find themselves and the accompanying temptation to 'play that game,' many if not most churches promote not simply Jesus making them unique, but Jesus + something else -- after all, every church gets to claim Jesus (so he doesn't 'set them apart'). I even took time to throw under the bus myself and my favorite church in the world - Sunrise Community Church of Grand Cayman. I want to exhort us to be insistent to trust our God enough to "billboard" to others what He says is unique about the gathering of His people (yes, ladies and gentlemen, you just witnessed grammar history as 'billboard' was used as a verb). 

What does God's Word say ought to make a church unique? I've often communicated to others that God's grace makes our church unique. But even God's grace, which is often expressed through a church's ethos in a welcoming, come-as-you-are atmosphere, is a means to God himself. Grace is the gift that allows us to know God, to be reconciled to God when we sin, and is described as the strength to serve God. The pattern being that the beginning and end of grace, the beginning and end of the gospel is God Himself. So also it is with the church - the people part is great. But the people part is especially great because it is in the entire people we more clearly see God - each person made in God's image with various gifts that reflect the entire Person of our Heavenly Father.  Thus, what makes a church unique is God's Himself, God's presence, which is ultimately expressed through Jesus Christ.

5 images that appear across the storyline of the Bible that reflect God's purpose to give His presence to a people He has set apart as His own 

(1) A Garden (Genesis 2: 4-17). The Hebrew word for "Garden" infers "to protect, to enclose." Eden means "delight" or "pleasure." It was a place of relational harmony - various, plants, animals, and, of course, a couple of humans co-existed without strife. The protection existed for relationship with God and the pleasure existed to reflect the gracious character of God. In other words, God designed this to be a place where man & woman might freely enjoy fellowship with God. Genesis 3:8 infers this was a place of direct fellowship with God: "And [Adam & Eve] heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day." God is pictured here with the familiarity of a neighbor, going on His daily walk. Leviticus 26:12 pictures fellowship with God as a walk: "And I will walk among you and will be your God, and you shall be my people." Not coincidentally the Book of Ephesians uses the Greek word for walk (peripateo) on six different occasions to describe times one's relationship with God.
(2) A dwelling (Exodus 25:1-8). In addition to being rescued from slavery (first half of Exodus) and being issued God's law (second half of Exodus), Israel is promised God's presence. "And let them make me a sanctuary, that I might dwell in their midst" (Exodus 25:8). From now on it won't be their athletes, a national anthem, their natural resources, the pride & toughness of their nomadic peoples, but God's presence that sets them apart. This makes a profound impression upon Moses. Upon being promised a great land, listen to the interaction Moses then has with God: "Moses said the YHWH, 'See, you say to me, Bring up this people [into the land I am giving you],' but you have not let me know whom you will send with me...' And YHWH said, 'My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.' And Moses said to him, 'If you presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?' " (Exodus 33:12, 14-16). Consider how bold this statement truly was in Moses' life and relationships. He's leading a people who have been enslaved and then nomadic for generations . They just want to have land and have peace like all these other nations they've heard of and grow up around. And yet, Moses is bold enough to request: Don't give us any of those things if you don't give us Yourself. I'd rather stay poor, destitute, wandering and enslaved but have You with me. 
(3) A person (John 1:14). "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth" (John 1:14). Literally, Jesus "tabernacled" or "sanctuaried" among us (see direct connection with Exodus 25:8 above). Jesus is Emmanuel, "God with us."
(4) A people (II Corinthians 6:16-17). "What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, 'I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore, go out from their midst and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you'" (II Corinthians 6:16-17). Here we find that, through trust in Christ, we (the church) become the temple in which God dwells. We also see the near direct quotation of Exodus 25:8 and that God's presence provides us the motive to be different, to be separate, to be other than the world around us.
(5) A city (Revelation 21:1-4, 9-22). At the end of the Bible, we find a surprise. There is no more temple. Because, as in Genesis 2, God's presence is once again immediate, direct, unhindered and unclouded by sin, pain, & decay. "And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb" (Revelation 21:22).  


That's pretty much the whole Bible there. So while we might be tempted to display something else more novel, more edgy, we must insist that it is the presence of God Himself through Jesus Christ that makes we His people unique.


So What? Two Pictures. Let me give you a couple pictures of how God's presence practically sets us apart. The first picture is an evening I spent with one of our church's Community Groups a few weeks ago. This particular group had asked me to come in and help conduct a Spiritual Gifts Discovery Seminar, which is something I've enjoyed immensely in the past and knew I would again. The third of four parts is probably my favorite part of the seminar. Recognizing that, because of sin, we all have blind spots, members of the group endeavor to go around and affirm certain gifts that each individual thinks he/she has and suggest certain gifts that perhaps he/she had never before considered having. The Lord used this as an exhilarating time of encouragement. I walked out that night with my friends Rob and Bianca - we started to talk and we all agreed: "Where else would people go out of their way to make such sincere and personal encouragements than as part of a church - where we all have Jesus in common?" (In fact, you could add: "Where else other than church would people even make this kind of statement or observation?").The presence of God had practically set us apart from others gathering that same night to watch a movie, play a game of cards, to participate in a Rotary Club, or even to do a charitable work. 


The second picture is my attendance yesterday at Georgetown Primary School's Outreach Program for at-risk youth. Last September our church Adopted a local Primary/Elementary School at which to volunteer and invest time, talents, and resources. Many in our church find a time slot to go each week and spend time mentoring at-risk youth. I happen to go for an hour on Wednesdays, during which time we have a wonderful Aerobics/Athletics instructor lead. At the end of the hour, the instructor was searching for something impactful to communicate to the twenty at-risk children. Getting to know her a bit, I could tell she was searching. So she decided to incorporate as part of her stretches us hugging ourselves and saying, "I love myself" and then "I will be a good student and not talk back to my teacher the rest of the year." In other words, messages these students had heard before from speakers, children's books, positive videos that a teacher popped in the player during a slow day. Just after this, we did another stretch or two. At my age, I was clearly lacking in flexibility so a couple of the kids inquired: "Mr. Ryan, here's how you do it. Like this." I explained: "My body is no longer able to do that. But because I've trusted my life to Jesus, one day I will get a new body. In fact, because I trust Jesus, I know that no matter how bad or good my life is going, it will always get better than it is now." That is real, genuine hope. And I could tell as the kids all stared at me that it was a message that set was unique, set apart. That's what happens when we bring ourselves, when we bring the church to an onlooking world that is desperate to hear and experience something unique - the possibility of God with them. 

What makes a church unique? (part I: the problem of uniqueness)

A friend of mine here in Cayman recently received an email from a co-worker entitled: "Only the King James Version is the real Bible." The introduction to the email claimed that any person or church using a translation other than the NIV was denigrating the deity of Christ and the existence of His Kingdom. That's meshugenah!. Beyond the facts that there are good reasons to be both thankful for the KJV translation (see 17th-19th centuries + only English translation) yet also move on to other more reliable translations (see here for more), the larger question this email brought to our minds as my friend and I discussed it was:

Why are many churches so aggressive about making a little thing into their ultimate thing? 

Our conclusion was ultimately that churches often feel the need to set themselves apart. In a consumer market in which all churches find themselves and each must decide to what extent they are going to play that game, many churches feel like they need to not just make Jesus their thing (every church gets to claim Jesus) but Jesus + something else.  This something else makes us unique.


Enter the church of which I'm blessed to be a part - Sunrise Community Church. Since we are non-denominational, pretty new to the scene (ie. new to being a church), non-sectarian in our doctrine/beliefs, thankfully our people are pretty much immune to the pressure of distinguishing our church according to "+ something else." Right? Mmmm...not so much. 


This became clear to me during our search for an associate pastor. Not only did the other elders and myself find ourselves describing & distinguishing our church in ways that weren't just about Jesus, a truly cautionary tale made it clear to me that even churches trying to keep the Big things Big and the small things small can get caught up in this. One of our pastoral candidates mentioned, off-hand, that should he come to visit & preach, he would wear a tie. I cautioned against this primarily because I've never seen anyone in our church wear a tie and people feel weird when I wear dress shoes twice a year (cuff links three times - but that's only because a dress shirt I got from a TJ Maxx Clearance Bin that lacked sleeve buttons...Get it together Van Heusen!!). This caution crystallized how many of us promote our church according to the following terms - we are casual, welcoming, wear whatever you want, & 'not legalistic.' And in promoting it we might become just as rigid as KJV-mania in keeping to it -  how accepting would we really be toward someone who regularly donned a formal, full-length dress or a coat and tie (especially if he was one of the pastors!!)?? At the very least, there would be looks and whispers.


What about your church? How do you describe/promote it to others so as to make it sound unique, different, distinguished? 


So what does God's Word say should make unique the gathering of God's people? That's the subject of my next post: What makes a church unique? The glory of uniqueness. 


As I discovered this week, the whole Bible (yes, including the Old Testament) echoes a consistent theme.