Our “services”, whatever form they take, are one of the real reasons we aren’t real. We treat our liturgies and their accompanying time tables as sacrosanct. We can’t stop and “be” real because the schedule is the slave driver, we have to get it done with because let’s face it, if we actually stopped the “service” we would have to take time and actually know people in all their messiness. Nothing would go smoothly. (Oh the horror!) I can hear all the questions and excuses: “But how would we worship?”, “Well, we have small groups for that” etc etc.

We see new people, familiar people, but we rarely enter into their existence. “Ah, the “Service” is going to start” The Church of our Lord needs to quit treating the Body as an organization and treat it as an organism and each member as someone that needs tending to and nurturing. We need to quit leaning on our leadership for the things we are responsible for. The worship is, to borrow from Michael Card, “to take up the basin and towel” That is the service God is looking for, not some ever-orchestrated narcissistic show that keeps us from fellowshipping the body of Christ and truly serving one another.

Blessings from Iraq,

V

The letter of James counsels: Confess your sins to one another (James 5:16 ). This salutary practice aims to guide us in accepting ownership of our ragamuffin
status, but as Dietrich Bonhoeffer noted, “He who is alone with his sins is utterly alone. It may be that Christians, not withstanding corporate worship, common prayer, and all their fellowship in service, may still be left to their
loneliness. The final breakthrough to fellowship does not occur because, though they have fellowship with one another as believers and as devout people, they do
not have fellowship as the undevout, as sinners. The pious fellowship permits no one to be a sinner. So everyone must conceal his sin from himself and from their fellowship. We dare not be sinners. Many Christians are unthinkably horrified when a real sinner is suddenly discovered among the righteous. So we remain alone with our sin, living in lies and hypocrisy. The fact is that we are sinners! At Sunday worship, as in every dimension of our existence, many of us pretend to believe we are sinners. Consequently, all we can do is pretend to believe we have been forgiven. As a result, our whole spiritual life is
pseudo-repentance and pseudo-bliss.
-Brennan Manning

Thanks for sharing Micheal. I always find the drunk-a-logue…er…Pharisee-a-logue one of the best parts of your blog.

A very powerful piece. You have an amazing writing ability, I felt like I was 16 again and sitting in that pew.

Grace and Peace

{{{Candleman}}}

I have been a lurker at the Boar’s Head for some time….and something you wrote awhile back stuck with me, how the Bible is used by some many as a magic book, the ultimate self-help guide. When you pointed this verse out to me, I grabbed onto it with all my might:

John 5:39
“You search the Scriptures because you believe they give you eternal life. But the Scriptures point to me!
5:40
Yet you refuse to come to me so that I can give you this eternal life.

Man, that nails it….

So I continue on in my journey, not denying who I am, but falling down and with God’s grace getting back up.

I can’t pretend that life is perfect since I became a Christian. Actually in many ways it has become much, much harder. When I hear people talking about how once they gave their life to God everything is just hunky-dory I see someone who is pretending, or who hasn’t been broken yet. I used to pray that I would be spared from life’s miseries, now I pray for grace to get thru them.

Instead of pretending that all is well I rejoice in the fact that I have been broken by life…..I struggle with doubts. I sin, fall on my knees, and then get up again.

I wish that more people would own up to this….I suspect that alot of happy faces are holding back tears, guilt, and unresolved anger.

Many people refuse God’s grace for themselves and to others by pretending. When my father committed suicide I remember thinking:

“I can’t agree with his choice, but I sure as hell can understand it.”

I also remember that for a long time I couldn’t share this thought with anyone, and when I did finally, how shocked everyone in our small group study at church reacted. Shocked that I even brought it up, much less that I could identify with my Dad’s brokenness.

The church needs to get over itself to stop pretending it is a museum for saints instead of a hospital for sinners. It is not just a social club, a food pantry, or a teaching of morality. All these things have a place, but the church is should be a conduit of God’s grace. And until we stop pretending we are saints, and not sinners we are resisting both God’s grace and denying it to those who need it the most.

The world is broken, we fool ourselves by thinking otherwise, and if the world is broken why would we think we are to be spared. There glimpses of happiness, don’t get me wrong I don’t want to be completely negative. But that happiness is tempered by pain….and is rendered so much sweeter as a result. You can never know what happiness truly is until you have felt the pain. You have never known redeemtion until you haved sinned (and fully acknowledged it). You can never know Grace until you realize that every single day you fall down, and with God’s grace you get back up.

The world and ourselves are broken, the only thing that keeps me going, is that God said “Someday I will fix it and you as well”

It is the only thing I can truly hang onto….and I hope that God continues to bless and keep you as well.

Nice piece of writing.

Personally, I’ve given up on “church”, and instead I’m spending my time looking for a room where that preacher would have fit right in.

I’ve changed my blog header slightly to reflect the words of a writer who told a story that embodies who I want to be. This blog has seen a couple of interesting posters in the last couple weeks, for whom I am grateful. It seems appropriate, however, t…

Michael Spencer has a couple of terrific posts you ought to check out. To Know We’re Not Alone – a pastor reveals just how human he is by telling his congregation of how he has just found his wife with

this touched something deep and broken in me and all i could do, was cry.