I made it to the final round of the blogging tournament over at PlantingSpace.com. Thank you voting for me in the previous rounds. I also want to thank Mark Doebler who has also made it to the final round. His posts have been excellent. He pastors The Grove in Peoria, IL, so if you are near his church, go check him out.
In this final round, we were supposed to encourage church planters to keep planting churches. Just like last week, I came up with two possible submissions, and then submitted the one that I thought was best. I will give you the other one tomorrow. I chose this one for a very special reason, which I will also share with you tomorrow. (I hope it doesn’t disqualify me!) If you want to vote for Mark or me, you can do so here.
Faces. We see them everywhere and every day. Some faces are recognizable and incite feelings of love, passion, tenderness, and happiness. Other faces give rise to feelings of anger, wrath, jealousy, or fear. It’s these faces that must push us forward, these faces that must motivate us to reach out with the love of Jesus.
You know the faces you need to reach. We all have them in our lives. They are the faces of God’s children, many of whom are far away from Him. Others don’t even know His name except in a curse. A handful of these faces knew God once, but no longer believe He cares about them any more. Still others feel that God couldn’t possibly love them after what they’ve done.
They are the faces of divorce, lust, abortion, drugs, abuse, violence, death, heartache, heartbreak, loneliness, fatigue, rejection, and pride.
They are the faces of your grocery clerk, your mailman, your boss, your neighbor, the homeless person you’ve walked by for years on your way to work, the pregnant teen whom you believe is just reaping what she’s sown, the bitter widow, the ex-con.
The list goes on and on, and it includes you and me.
Yet somehow, we think we don’t belong on this list. We know the truth. We are different.
But if that is so, it’s only because someone in your life answered God’s call to reach out to you, and help you out of the muck you were dwelling in.
God is calling again for people to go out and be His hands in the world; hands of love, grace, kindness, friendship, and truth.
Are you going to see the faces in your life for what they are, or for who they can be? It’s your move.
you’re not going to like this.
here it is anyway — please, please don’t reach me.
see i’ve been in church. i’ve served. i’ve done missions and i don’t want to be there again.
“being the hands of god” do you realize how arrogant that is? how people use it to say you should serve on a committee about potlucks?
“answered God’s call to reach out to you” it seems the actual call is to get enough tithers together to support a bureaucracy.
“who they can be” we don’t all want to be pious christians. we don’t need someone to make us into them.
some of us who love God, who believe in him, think the great commission is a tool of colonization, of imperialism, of war.
you have so much to learn.
Jeremy, we are all at a different place. There may well be a great many people who have grown above the need for Christian fellowship – and if you’ve ever been a part of that fellowship, you know how juvenile it can be. 🙂
But there are a great many, as well, that have not been reached by a single person with a motivation of love behind it. Juvenile or not, that fellowship is needed by those of us who have only known brokenness and fear. I think what you’ve written makes it very clear that you do not think you are one of those that believes you do not “belong on that list.” In fact, I would venture to guess you believe you can easily be on that list and still love others as “the hands of God.”
I, too, can see some idealism in your writing that the skeptic in me shirks – but mostly I am very happy to read that your motivation is outwardly focused and not about the thrill of the ride. Good job.
Great post my friend. Keep up the great work. Your heart is the kind of heart that keeps me from going crazy. God is working thru you my friend.
postchristian,
Thank you for being honest. I am not offended at all. More of us Christians can learn from such honesty, and loving authenticity.
Everything you are saying is exactly what we are against too. We are right there with you in everything you said.
What if the “church” we wanted to be part of did not want or desire people to be part of church committees? What if there were no committees? What if “the hands of God” meant going out and serving the sick, feeding the hungry, buidling homes, giving water to those in Africa, helping AIDS victims.
What if the church we were part of did not want tithes, ask for tithes, or expect tithes? What if there was no bureaucracy to support? No pastors to pay? No buildings to fund?
I think us Christians need to be less pious, and more open, honest, authentic, and real…we are so “pious” is makes me sick.
What if we were just as much against colonization, imperialism, and war, as you are, and that when we told people about Jesus and His love for them, we let them maintain their culture, their identity, and who they were as people?
I definitely have lots to learn, but the brief description here is some of what I imagine as the “church” I want to be a part of. And to do that, we would need people like you to call us back from arrogance, tell us when we’re being idiots, show us where we are wasting money and time.
I hope you stick around and can continue to help me in these ways!
Missy,
You hit the nail on the head when you said you see some idealism in my writing. If I am anything, it’s an idealist. I always have been! I like to think of it as optimism, but maybe I’m also a bit naive.
I do know that I am learning a lot from you. I can’t believe how far I’ve come away from “church” as it is often thought of, and I wonder how much further God will take me.
Anyway, thanks for the comment!
Mike,
Thanks for the comment and for the encouragement from your own blog. I read every post! I am graduating in two weeks and hope to be planting a church very similar to what you are doing there in Florida. We’ll be in touch!