Hard choices …
Make strong disciples.
Category: Simple Discipleship
I’d rather gather together with a few in my living room and be the church, one with another …
Then sit in rowed seats with a thousand in some building called the “church” to watch a staged event.
Christians who think proper church methodologies and structures will solve all their problems …
Are just as naïve as Christians who think that wrong church methodologies and structures don’t contribute to their problems.
The biggest idol these days is a “Jesus” created in their own image …
By “Christians” who dismiss His plenary authority of Scripture.
Over the years, I have found that without the humility of repentance, there is no freedom …
And without the transparency of confession and forgiveness, there is no wholeness.
Unfortunately, many ignore these essential elements of discipleship …
And wonder why their simple participatory churches never advance beyond everyone’s accumulated quirks, hurts and insecurities.
In traditional spectator church, such unresolved issues are easy to ignore.
But with real church as commanded in the New Testament, we have no such luxury.
Ignore them and your attempts to be the church one with another will stay stuck in a rut …
No matter how well you started.
Media preachers and big stage pulpit showmen are like crack.
They offer a feel-good escape from reality to those who feel otherwise detached …
Often causing a downward spiral of more isolation with ever more dependence on their feel-good “fix.”
It rarely ends well, except for the “spiritual” huckster.
In contrast, real life, real faith and real church are played out between real people in real community – where we have real opportunity to work through real issues and find real spiritual health and maturity …
Together, one with another.
It’s not always easy …
But it’s always our choice.
Don’t settle for counterfeits.
Unless you are part of a functional local assembly of believers, I’m really not interested in your books and blogs telling everyone how to be or not be the church …
Unless you are out there doing actual evangelism and seeing people surrender their lives to Jesus and His Kingdom, I’m really not interested in hearing you tell everyone how they must or must not do evangelism …
Unless you are ministering redemption to actual people trapped in sin, I’m really not interested in your views on how Christians should or shouldn’t speak up about homosexuality or any other lifestyle of bondage …
Unless you are secure enough in your own gifts and motivations to honor God’s different callings in others, I’m really not interested in why you think He can’t send some to serve His Kingdom in academia, politics, the armed forces, government or the like …
Unless you are submitted to God’s plenary authority and truth of Scripture as His written Word, I’m really not interested in your “deeper life” revelations …
Unless you are an authentic disciple who has the integrity to sacrificially walk the walk and move beyond merely talking the talk, I’m really not interested in your attempts to distort Christ to reflect your own existential angst and narcissistic sensibilities.
Sorry if that offends …
But then again, maybe it’s time someone cared enough to offend and call you to repentance.
If it’s cool, hip or seeker friendly …
It ain’t worship.
Because true worship …
Is not about us.
Sacred cows make the best hamburgers.
You can’t change what you won’t confront:
Courage and sacrifice are the price we pay for freedom …
While evil thrives on lethargy and fear.
Biblical Christians who submit their sensibilities to Scripture …
End up trusting God and doubting doubt.
Existential “Christians” who submit Scripture to their sensibilities …
End up doubting God and trusting doubt.
Why are those who dismiss the need for sound doctrine …
So doctrinaire about it?
In the New Testament, “worship” occurs when we respond to God’s ongoing sovereign presence by living ongoing lives of reverence and obedience …
Which might, at times, properly invoke emotions.
Pagan worship, however, starts by manipulating emotions to “usher in” a false sense of God’s presence through special effects and special “leaders” at special gatherings.
It is a concept foreign to how the New Testament says God’s people are to function together as His church.
Unfortunately, there’s way too much pagan worship, and too little New Testament worship, in our “churches” these days.
Saying Jesus is all about relationship and not religion …
Is narcissistic.
It’s an attempt to have Jesus on our own terms, without His Scriptural authority and the propositional truths, commands, precepts and moral imperatives He reveals there.
Yes, Jesus wants a relationship with us …
But on HIS terms, not ours.
It is narcissistic foolishness to twist the truth that all Scripture points to Jesus …
Into the lie that our own perceptions of Jesus therefore supersede Scripture.
Such non-sequiturs, and those who promote them, inevitably destroy all they touch …
Including authentic faith, discipleship and churches.
False “deeper life” spiritually has become a substitute these days for “real life” …
Among insular Christians too wrapped up in themselves to engage a messy, waiting world with authentic faith in action.
The viability of a church today typically depends on “the Pastor”.
How is that even Biblical?
You can’t find that anywhere in the New Testament.
Instead, the New Testament says we are to be the church – the multi-part Body of Christ – as each of us uses our diverse functions and gifts to minister to one another, encourage one another, and strengthen one another …
Including local elders who emerge among us to serve beside us by pastoring, teaching and watching over the flock.
The simple fact of the matter is that there are no favorable examples in the New Testament, as is common today, of one person primarily leading a church …
Unless you read your own post-New Testament presumptions, meanings, and traditions back into Scripture.
Nope, not, nadda …
Just ain’t there.
Which raises the question:
What else about “church” as we’ve come to know it …
Has nothing to do with church as the Bible actually shows it?
The Gospel works for none of us …
Unless it works for the worst of us.
But it’s only through Godly repentance …
That it works for any of us.
When people are used to build up a ministry, rather than the ministry being used to build up people …
It’s no longer ministry.
People with true gravitas make hard things seem easy because they’ve spent years quietly learning how …
By actually doing them.
Trendy “influencers” with media platforms …
Not so much so.
How can some say they believe in the authority of Scripture …
When they keep reading post-Biblical meanings, presumptions and traditions back into its original words and contexts?
I’m more interested in going and sharing Christ as He uniquely brings life and builds “His church” among you and your friends …
Than always expecting you to come and find Him in “my church” among me and my friends.
Such is the heart of the Great Commission.
Wolves twist the saying “all Scripture points to Christ” …
To subjugate all Scripture to their concept of Christ,
Rather than subjugating their concept of Christ to all Scripture.
I have yet to see Christ entrust authentic spiritual power …
To those who dismiss His plenary authority of Scripture.
You can’t know the power of His Name …
If you reject the power of His Word.
Tolerance without discernment …
Is like the blind leading the lost.
Plumbline Faith 