a Waypointe...

The more things change, the more they stay the same.  

"The eastern world it is explodin' violence flarin' bullets loadin' you're old enough to kill but not for votin' you don't believe in war but what's that gun your toatin' and even the Jordon river has bodies floatin', but you tell me over and over and over again my friend, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction..."

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

2 Timothy 3.1-4 ..."But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. 2  For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3  unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, 4  treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God..."

Does this sound familiar?  Is Paul describing the corporate culture around us, the environment we labor in on a daily basis?  Our neighborhoods?  The places we shop?  The schools our kids and grandkids attend?  Yes.

But Paul doesn't stop at verse 4.  In the next verse he says...

 "...having a form of godliness, but denying its power."

Does that sound like the church where you (we) worship?  Paul is telling Timothy what the last days, the Eve of destruction, will be like; he says they will be marked by three observable facts:  a Godless world, a powerless religion and a corrupt ministry (detailed in vv.6-9); we are there.

My focus in blogging today is on the second fact, the Church in America is unplugged, powerless.  By power I mean spiritual gravitas--authority which is the result of a clear anointing from God.  Most of the country perceives the confessing church to be the most conservative wing of the Republican Party.  I grew up hearing my mom say, "if the shoe fits wear it!"  Unfortunately, we've been tagged with this perception the old fashioned way, we've earned it.  We've chosen to contend for the soul of America using the political process--a grave error.  The shoe fits. 

Last December we came to a "waypointe" called Sandy Hook; a "waypointe--a place on a journey where the traveler can stop and change course."  It's time for the confessing church change our trajectory to become THE church. The fact is we've settled for sloppy seconds.  Too many of us worship in places that are driven by forms rather than power.  We've allowed popular culture to shape our vision of what Christ's church should be, what it should look like; we have embraced the wrong set of outcomes.

Today we measure the quality and effectiveness of our ministries based on the Big 3: People, Buildings and Revenue.  In fact, it's not difficult to erect buildings and fill them with people that generate million-dollar budgets.  False religions, cults and sects do it all around the world.  Jim Jones did in San Francisco and finally in Guyana.  Jimmy Swaggart did it, then did it AGAIN in Louisiana.  

People, buildings and money won't produce transformational-redemptive power, nor are they the indicators of the anointing of God.  Powerless religion, form-driven religion has a micro focus: it sees "the church" as the end.  Forms--the way we "do church," the things we do or don't do that identify us as "christians," are paramount.  This is the kind of context Jesus came into in Judea; the context the Religious power brokers endorsed and protected.

Form-driven religion becomes a template that blinds us to the brokenness which surrounds us.  Form-driven religion makes us think in "wrong headed ways" about what the world deserves v. what God desires--us v. them.  Form-driven religion becomes a tyranny which chokes our vibrancy and shrivels our generosity.  

Outcomes are what's at stake here.  Matthew 9..."35  Jesus was going through all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness.  36  Seeing the people, He felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd.  37  Then He said to His disciples, 'the harvest in plentiful, but workers are few.'" 

We've come to a waypointe.