He started a movement. We have perverted that.
Power fails. Power always fails. We struggle and try for failure.
I can write this right now. I need more time to really write this.
The point is. He destroyed the temple. He did it. He tore down the curtain and asked us, all of us to join him in building something better. He has trusted us to build something better.
And for a while, we did...I say we, but I'm not really included in this.
Paul, Peter, Titus, Barnabus, Jude, Luke, Matthew, Mark, John, the early Christians did this...Jesus started a movement. He created the Church. His early followers helped him continue that work, after he was gone. They, in turn, trusted us to continue their work. And many did. St. Augustine did, and many others in the years after him have continued to.
But somewhere along the line, someone built something on their own, and called it "a church." Someone with the very best of intentions, probably without realizing, created something in their own image, and made claims that God had created it.
Jesus said that the religious institutions of his time had failed. It did not need to rework its strategy. It did not need to reform. It did not need to form focus groups and figure out how to be relevant. It had stagnated. It had become perverted, and it needed to be destroyed and rebuilt from the ground up.
So we've abandoned that model, and rebuilt something...and yet it looks remarkably similar to the very thing Jesus said needed to be destroyed.
Jesus called his followers "the Church." He called the Church his very own body. He called the church a movement.
We use his terms now to describe something that is so vastly different from what he was talking about. We call a building a church. We call Christians part of the body of Christ. We show up once a week to a place that is largely ineffective, led by people who seek power to influence us to live like they do...to join a club...and we call that a movement. Really?
My friend Phil says that it is nearly impossible to convince a person who has grown accustomed to the convenience and comfort of fast food to spend an hour or more to make a home-cooked meal. A church offers fast food, but the world needs nutrition.
I love THE Church. Or, well, I wish I loved it more...I like it. I am in full support of it.
I despise churches. Perhaps I shouldn't. But I refuse to see the skeletons of a brontosaurus, dressed up with paper and styrofoam, and call it a real, living, breathing dinosaur, walking the Earth...moving.
(and Brontosauruses, as it turns out, were never even real...just a hodge-podge of other dinosaur bones put together in a way that seemed to make sense)
Choose your words carefully. A church is NOT the same thing as THE Church. Sometimes, they may overlap...but they are not the same.
Your pastor is a sinner too, and he may pretend to be right, but ask yourself "why, if he is seeking to be like Jesus, does his ministry take place in the land of comfort and plenty?" Why does he only visit poor nations, and only long enough to come back and pat himself on the back for his valiant efforts? Jeremiah 5:30 says "the priests rule on their own authority." Is your pastor teaching you to be more like Jesus, or more like himself? Is your pastor teaching you to be more like Jesus, or more like the Jesus he has imagined?
If Jesus was alive today, would he be the pastor of a church? Would he even set foot in a church? If Jesus was born today, would he be born in America? If he were born in America...how long do you think he would stay before he became utterly disgusted and sought out the poor, the weak, the hungry, the sick and the naked?
Would Jesus be the pastor of a church? Or would that just be a waste of his time?
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