A WAY THE CHURCH MIGHT BECOME VERY UNSTUCK

I think there is a church practice among us that is so widely accepted that we are unconscious of it.  Furthermore, it is so lethal we are functioning in near coma state. While this trend satisfies self to a large degree, it injuriously betrays the greatest fabric of His calling.

I speak of how deeply we are driven to seek the things we "like" about church.

Just how rigid has this like button infiltrated the Kingdom of God?  We face it at every turn; yet, it hardly gets recognition because we have been faked out to believe our preferences are God's preferences.  That's how we often talk.

A way the church might become very unstuck is to recognize a suffocatingly destructive pattern among us.  It's rather simple really; we like what we like.  You think this isn't true?  Consider our stream of quite normal conversations when looking for a church home.  Everything about it revolves around what we like.

1. Do we like the preaching?
2. Do we like the music?
3. Do our teens like the youth group?
4. Do our children like to go to their classes?
5. Do we like the mission efforts?
6. Do we like the personalities of the staff?
7. Do we like the decisions of the elders?
8. Do we like the location of the church assembly?
9. Do we like when church starts?
10. Do we like when the morning services end?
11. Do we like the ministries offered?
12. Do we like the Bible class themes?

This number of questions can be multiplied.  While these seem legit, there is an underlying factor that rages against the true church intent; yet it so goes unnoticed. These questions are contradictory to the suffering servant on the Cross.

We sing of the Cross.  We give honor to the Cross.  We read, study, and discuss where we are to take up our crosses.  But we are so subtly sabotaged by our demanding like-isms that we have grown numb to our practicing violations of the very nature of self-sacrifice needed to reach a selfish world.

A way the church might maintain its unstuckness is to practice what several have and are; stay with it when you don't get your way.  Throughout the church landscape one will find men and women who have been highly disappointed, even offended, who will not give up.  These realize the wheat and the tares are in the same field.  And what each who endure has realized is that, at times, while they thought they were wheat, they were the tares.

The Kingdom of God is not focused on what we like.  It drives us to be attentive to hardship, strain, loving people who oppose us.  This, my friend, is quite an unstuck direction which will even bear much fruit and bring in an eventual harvest.

The bottom line is that we are not in this for the family comfort.  No.  We are about enduring mistreatment so that others can run into somebody that sees their value buried beneath a facade of anger and abuse.  We must not be a people who use the church as a place to hide from a cruel world; but rather who wade into its hot spots that others might be rescued as once were we by someone else of great courage.