What I’m about to express may rock your world.
Or not.
Churches of Christ (as a group) have lived with the status quo too long. You may be thinking, “Yeah! You’re absolutely right!”, if so – I’m not talking to you, you already know what I’m about to say. Or you may be thinking “What are you? Some kind of progressive troublemaker?”, if that’s the case – please, for all of our sakes, read on.
Allow me to explain myself – the status quo I’m referring to is the seeming inability to entertain new ideas or concepts. I’m talking about the absence of evolution of ideology. According to most Churches of Christ, understanding and explication of the Holy Word of God reached its epitome in the person of Alexander Campbell. He got it completely right, job is done, let’s get this show over with and get to Heaven! … hmm … If you detect a little sarcasm, it’s because it’s there. Alexander Campbell was a great man, an incredible man of God. And we want to give him the status of Prophet! At least in our minds, anyway.
Times change, people change, perceptions change – Truth is absolute, understanding of Truth … is not. Largely as a movement, the Churches of Christ have been unwilling or unable to entertain the notion that the “way we do things” is because that’s the way we’ve always done it! We have the same discussions over and over, and we use the same circular logic to come to the same unfounded notions about things that have nothing to do with the Gospel!! You all know what I’m talking about – clapping in worship, musical instruments, women’s roles, widows and orphans … the list could go on and on.
When will we wake up and realize that people are leaving the church more often than not for what we don’t do. We don’t preach the Gospel like we should, we don’t focus on getting each other to Heaven, we don’t build up our families, we don’t love people the way Christ did. Love is kind, love is patient, love is forgiving. Brotherhood gossip columns, rampant disfellowshipping – these are not loving actions.
We have slogans like “Meeting you where you are” , “Come and join our family” , “The door is always open” … do we actually live those words that adorn our bulletins and letterheads? Do we meet a man who is homeless and living on the streets, where he is? Do we even look out the door to see who is there? I firmly believe that if the kind of people that Christ accepted were to walk into a Church of Christ worship service today, 9 out of 10 congregations would either ignore them or ask them to leave. I hope to God that I’m wrong!
Do we accept the adulteresses? The drunks? The thieves? The prostitutes? The mentally ill?
Or do we sit quietly while Satan claims another for his keeping?
The enemy is close on our heels. Going into the all the world shouldn’t just be a nice thought.
Peace.
Hey Daniel,
Great post Sir. I understand your concerns. I agree with much of what you said, and I would like to take this opportunity to offer some of my own thoughts on the subject.
I feel like there is a large segment of our generation (myself included) who have their eyes opened to the legalism that sometimes exists within the COC; and who as a result of this realization are working hard to counter legalism. Below are some basic words of caution.
1. Legalism is not just a COC problem. Every religious group (denominational and non-denominational) falls pray to legalism.
2. It exists today, it existed when Jesus physically walked on the earth, and it will exist in the future. We could learn a lot to study how Jesus handled it.
3. We need to be careful not to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Meaning, I believe it is important to hold on to traditional aspects of our worship and our religion because it helps us a.) form an identity, b.) come together as a body, and c.) our traditions are designed to draw us closer to God.
4. We need to be willing to say that much of what we do is a result of our own inferences based on implications made in scripture (mouth full). Based on this, we should be willing to say that implications are highly subjective and different people may infer different things from the same implications. Meaning, Christians around the globe don’t have to all do the same thing. If one congregation decides to not allow clapping, and another wants to allow for it, they are both in the right as long as neither of them are binding that behavior on each other, and they are not binding it on folks as a requirement for salvation.
I would also like to say that we need to be careful when dealing with this issue because many folks don’t realize how legalistic they really are (again, myself included). We need to deal with brothers and sisters who are struggling with this in love and sympathy. The Lord will change their hearts over time and the more we throw it up in front of folks, the more everyone will draw up sides in this battle. The more we battle each other, the less focus we have on the real battle. The battle for lost souls.
God bless you in your work Daniel! I look up to you and respect you brother. You are tackling some major issues at a young age and I can see how the Lord working in your life. Thanks for being so candid in your blog postings. Keep’em comin!
BigGameKen
Comment by Ken Finzer — July 18, 2008 @ 10:43 pm
Thanks !
Comment by Busaguinia — August 3, 2008 @ 12:25 pm
Of course we welcome adulterers, drunks, murderers, gossipers, cheaters and the like into our congregations. They are us! We just are very good at covering over our sins, so that they don’t look as ugly as those who are coming to have something done about their sins. It’s all in appearances. Of course, not a ll churches are like that. And especially not all christians. It’s just that the few that are like that, give us a bad name.
As for your comments about Campbell and the others, I respect what they did for the church, it’s what others have attached to them (prophet status) that gets to me. When will we stop referring to the ‘founding fathers’ and start listening to “The Founding Father”.
Comment by Keith Honeycutt — September 5, 2008 @ 1:39 pm