Church: Pretender’s Playground?
Here’s a question: Has the Church failed in its mission because it pretends? Maybe the question seems negative to you. Ask yourself this:
Have you ever carried a heartache or deep hurt with you to church services? Did someone ask, How are you today? I’ll guess your answer was, Hey, I’m fine!
Even if you didn’t do that, have you been the one who asked the question and heard what you knew was a pretender’s answer? This is just the tip of iceberg. It’s past time the Church stopped pretending. And the stopping must begin in the pulpits!
Being the Church
My heart is for the Lord’s Church to gloriously meet its God-given purposes. This devotional blog is intended as an aid to that. I see and hear many things. Sometimes what I read has only a kernel of truth in it. In those cases, I may pick up on the truth at hand and expand it in my own writing.
Other times I find something that is so messed up I can cite it as something NOT to do, replicate, or believe. Sometimes I find something that is so well done I just share it as it is obchod. That’s the case today. I’ll probably add some thoughts to this over the next few days, but this article is enough for today. A link to the full article follows!
Stop Pretending To Be So Perfect – Andrea Lucado
“What is the death of the Church and the Christian life,” I recently heard a pastor ask. His answer caused me to do an out-loud “Hmm.”
He didn’t say the death of the Christian life is a lack of prayer or Bible study. And he didn’t say the death of the church was poor leadership or low attendance. No, the thing that will surely kill the Church and your Christian walk is this: pretending.
Just imagine if hospitals 2,000 years from now looked like what many churches do today. People enter the hospital doors, bleeding, ill, miserable and afraid. Someone greets them cheerfully at the door, ushers them to a seat in the waiting room and there they sit. The wounded don’t tell anyone what’s wrong with them. And no employee asks them what’s wrong.
Instead, they remain seated by fellow sick people in the waiting room, all pretending they’re fine. Everyone acts oblivious to everyone else’s pain until they’re dismissed to leave, and each patient returns home with the same ailment he or she arrived with.
It doesn’t even make sense, right?
I wonder, at what point did Christianity become about being good and making sure others perceive us as doing good things? At what point did church become a place for people to come and pretend they aren’t sick? Read entire article by Andrea Lucado at Relevant Magazine.