Church Recap 2

Well, it is not the Monday after church and I'm 5 days overdue with this post, but I had a moment and thought I'd talk.

Men's Breakfast
The breakfast last Saturday, July 20th went great. There were about 25 men present. It was a good group that had a mix of ages, not just older, so it was different than the last time I spoke to this group about men's group. I started my talk affirming their community, stressing the importance of meeting together, but also piggy backed off of something one of the men had said regarding his recognition that he couldn't do ministry alone. I had a lot to share, but his words really were the catalyst for my conversation. Evangelism is important, no doubt about it, but as men, we need to be meeting together in close fellowship, keeping one another accountable. I continued to speak on this and gave some of the danger signs for why men aren't accountable, mostly stressing that we don't like to be transparent and we like to hide and not confront our sin. Then, prompted by the leader, went further into my discussion about sharing my faith at the mall and focusing on the question, "What will happen to you when you die?" I really enjoyed speaking and the time flew by. I had a lot to say. I stayed vocal as there wasn't a mic. In the end, many men came up to speak to me and really appreciated my words. It was a great time. I was glad Tyson was there, to eat, but also to hear me.

E-class
I sent an email to our pastor earlier in the week about the class. I kind of had a revelation. God really spoke to me earlier in the week through an email I found from our pastor from a question I asked him 3 years ago. It was back when he wasn't pastor yet, but he was responding to a question I had asked about discipleship and the emphasis that you don't do discipleship like it was a check list system that once you complete you are a disciple. He mentioned that the pastor at the time often stated, out of the being comes the doing and it really is the idea that when we surrender and submit to the Father, acknowledging Him as our Savior and Lord, seeing our sin, then God changes us. It will happen. We don't have to manufacture it. So, I thought that instead of having a class that showed a step by step method of evangelism, we could have a class of encouragement, a class of evangelism discussion. The class would be called E-class to hopefully force people to take the time to read the class description since the class name won't explain to them the class or cause them to guess what the class is all about. The pastor loved my idea.

Church
My wife and I went to church. We got into the auditorium towards the end, but did hear a song. It was good. I went into the service expecting to hear from God. I didn't want to go in with a poor attitude, expecting not to hear something, but wanted to accept what God would have to share with me. The message was a good one, focused on husbands and there primary role to love their wives. 4 points stood out (this wasn't the pastor's outline):

1.  Should - (Eph 5:28 ) "husbands should love their wives" - should is a word that means ought to or bound to it. So, our love is not part-time, but it is always. 
2. As their own bodies - (Eph 5:28) "husbands should love their wives as their own bodies." This is a great picture Paul uses because it begs the question, "how do we love care for our bodies?" As I thought about it, we protect it, we are careful with it, we don't take chances with it, we shower, we exercise, we take care of our appearance. We go to great effort and time to look after our own bodies. We sacrifice a lot for ourselves.
3. Nourish and Cherish - (Eph 5:29) "For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it." - I am to nourish my wife by providing for her. I am to cherish my wife by protecting her. Marriage is a covenant relationship.
4. Hold fast to your wife - (Eph 5:31) "a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife." - Hold fast means we are joined; we are viewed as one; can't separate something that is joined together; divorce shouldn't happen. 

I really enjoyed reading this and seeing all the pictures that are used: (1) Jesus' love for the church, (2) How man love's his body, (3) Nourishing (food) and cherish (Physical), (4) 2 pieces joined as one.

We don't talk about ***** anymore

I’m not sure there has ever been a subject in the church or among Christians that is just not talked about or mentioned as much as ******. I mean, guess there could be and I just did not know about it. But, I just don’t hear anyone mentioning it on Sunday morning. Are we just scared? I mean, we know it’s wrong or we should know it’s wrong. Scripture clearly speaks against it. And yet we are nt talking about it. For that matter, we really are not addressing any of the other stuff either. I don’t hear any talk about ***** or ****** or **** or ***** or *****. I mean, nothing. It’s like we have just changed our landscape. And yet I thought that was the crux of the gospel. It’s funny because I’m always telling my pastor he does not preach the gospel but every week he says he does all the time. I just realized that he asks people if they have said THE prayer and now I realized, that’s the redefined gospel, so he thinks he is giving people everything they need. He just talks about the final piece now and avoids all the other talk of why the gospel is even necessary because in order to talk about why it is necessary somebody is going to have to use a word like ***** and we have already realized we just don’t talk about **** anymore.

I think it’s over all this tolerance. I mean tolerance is not really tolerance because we are not supposed to tolerate people’s intolerance, right? See, that just does not make sense. So, to be tolerant then ***** has to be okay. Well, actually, I may not like it, but I just need to keep that to myself and if I see anyone engaging in *****, just smile and keep walking.

But, then there is the problem that just smiling and walking past is not good enough. I mean I feel like I’m expected to now to now cheer for anytime I see *****.

I’m kind of nervous about what is next. I mean I think most everyone agrees that ***** is not right, but that may change, too.  

Church Recap

Here is a new weekly post that I'm doing. Every Monday I will give a little observation about church life. I'm beginning today and will never repeat this again. Ha. Get it? That gives me permission to not follow through.

Men's Breakfast Prep

Anyway, this week I'm prepping for a talk I'm giving this weekend at church. Men’s group that meets this Saturday. Fellowship group of 15-20 men that meets monthly at the church. Has breakfast. $5. They asked me to give them a witnessing update at their 7:30 time. Uggh. That’s early for Saturday. They had me talk a couple of years ago on men’s group and the importance of men getting together and meeting. At that meeting, I shared my passion and then tried to coordinate guys start meeting. A daunting task for 1 guy and as usually, I failed and didn't follow through. My problem was I approached it like an opportunity to get men’s groups going in the church. I have learned now. This is a meeting of guys like you might go to in the business world for any various type of organization you belong to and that organization is looking for speakers for their monthly gatherings. Just men getting together in fellowship (which is great), but just encourage them.

E-class in fall

My pastor sent me a note as well saying he wanted to talk to me about the evangelism class for the Fall I taught last Spring in which I ended up with one participant, though it was great. He agreed with my initial assessment to change the class to a hybrid of teaching and field work. I sent a little note to the coordinator for the fall asking for clarification on the class name, how it will promoted and such. She didn't respond. I later apologized. Again, no response. Get tired of how inept people are when it comes to email and common response courtesy. O well. It’s not intentional. Just trying to take stuff in stride. 

Church model

I think I have expected too much out of my church leadership and their backing of my ministry ideas. You know, the landscape of church now is that church leadership really just hones in on the basics and spends their time on those things. North Point and Sagebrush, now, have got it right. Set up the small home group and let life (and application) evolve from that group. It’s basically the church hybrid of large corporate worship and house church (i.e. cell group).

My problem is I’m still caught up in the old church model (since that's where God seems to have called my wife and I) where you hope the church starts a ministry, get 400 people engaged, active and everyone involved. But, there are just so many aspects of ministry. So, a church has a hard time going off in so many directions. 40 years ago, it was missions, evangelism, discipleship, but now we've veered off into so many different areas while the involvement at times is less than stellar. I’m waiting for this magic moment for things to change, but it’s not happening.

The problem is blooming where we are planted. It can be frustrating partly because I think my church leadership, unintentionally, frustrates people. The demographics of the church are primarily made up of people over 60, the wealthy class of the church as well, who have extra giving often for the church and so the funding for the church often comes from these folks. And the leadership seems really apprehensive about changing much in the church because it doesn't seem to want to upset these individuals. So, I've had talks with the senior pastor in the past about men's ministry, discipleship, outreach, greeting visitors, follow-up---all good things and basic things in most churches, but all things that would require change and it is clear the 60+ generation doesn't like change. So, he usually loves the conversation, but when I start talking application, he states, "not now." I could be way off, but that's the way I see it. Baby steps.  

Progress is happening

And yet maybe the church is developing, but just not in the way I see it. Take greeting visitors. We do have a greeting team now, but it's not different from what we've had and for the most part, the only difference is name tags. We do get a weekly update on new folks coming to the church and the deacons are reaching out to them, so that is progress. I'd prefer a face to face, but that's me. Discipleship remains absent, but actually, not sure what this will look like because not sure how much senior leadership even agree's with having a discipleship program. So, I guess things are happening. So, what is the problem still? 

Maybe what I see is still just this split in the church. There remains so much emphasis on fellowship inside church walls. And my concern they are just re-training current adherents in an old model. 

I've been trying to shift the way I look at worship, focusing more on God versus my own selfish needs. And yet, it's so hard to listen to a message absent of the gospel, and absent of application, while just getting the same theme the pastor likes to give. Last week was awesome, but this week was back to just submit talk and not just talk, but in your face wake-up talk. I don't know. Maybe the problem now is we have so many choices. As a kid, to hear a different message, you stayed home from church and watched TV or you went to a different church. Now, you can pull a new message from a pastor you like out of your pocket. And so you go to church because God tells you to, but you just sample the areas that you like. 

I talk to people every week that gave up on the service. But, they love their small group class and have community there and their kids love the classes they are a part of and so they just do their thing and skip church service. What are they missing? Worship songs? I don't know. Corporate fellowship I guess. I wonder if they are giving. 

And life goes on.