What happens when you leave your journal at home? You end up journaling on your blog instead. So, this post is a bit different than the norm. Still, it’s another side of who I am.
Reading in Luke 12 this morning, following the Moravian Daily Texts (my ethnicity is traced back to the Moravians, which explains a lot about why I love house church, evangelism, and Christmas). One particular passage jumped out at me:
47“That servant who knows his master’s will and does not get ready or does not do what his master wants will be beaten with many blows. 48But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.
What intrigued me was verse 47: Those who know what Jesus demands and doesn’t do it … well, let’s just say that things aren’t going to go well for them. As I reflected on that verse my mind cast back to two things. First, all the things I know I’m called to do and don’t. I don’t pray as much as I’m called to. I don’t always respond to the Spirit’s nudgings when I feel them.
But as my mind casts around, I was struck by an image that haunts me. I work with literally dozens of Christian leaders across USAmerica who are “stuck” in churches that won’t budge an inch. Churches that have left their first love; that have turned their back on their community; and that are more focused on personal comfort and maintaining the status quo than they are about anything else. The haunting part is of the leaders of these churches … many of these, yea most of these, know exactly what needs to be done. They know what they’re called to do, whether that’s to confront the controllers or to leave the church to its own destruction and plant in better prepared soil. The thing is … they know. They know what Jesus has to say about those who won’t receive the word, and yet they don’t move for a variety of reasons, almost all of which have more to do with career than call, pensions rather than productivity, and funding instead of faithfulness.
If we’re going to transform churches, we have to spend the time doing the things we’re called to do, not the things that are convenient to do. We have to march forward with faithfulness in the face of fruitless foolishness by the bullies and the terrorists. We have to risk our pensions for the sake of being productive in the Kingdom’s work. No more babysitting, changing spiritual dirty diapers, burping badly behaved “believers,” or bottle feeding indolent adolescent “Christians.” Plant your flag. Draw your line in the sand. Take the first step. Be like one born of the Spirit … blowing wherever Jesus beckons … and he never beckons us to stay. We’re always on the go. If no one follows, then move on.
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