echoes of redemption

Late last night, I got an email from a pastor friend about the header here at EchoesOfRedemption.com:

Not sure I can put it into words… the quote – speaks to me about painting a picture that captures the imagination. the pic – picture of what was once imagined being realized and it being even better than once thought.

I wake up in the middle of the night dreaming of what God is doing. I want others to do the same. We are not there yet.

Everyone views that image differently, but here’s the ethos behind the picture to me (and my reply to my friend):

“Missions is less about the transportation of God from one place to another and more about the identification of a God who is already there. You see God where others don’t And then you point him out.” – Rob Bell.

So, yes, we’re painting a picture – and it’s a picture of what we see God already doing. Jonathan Edwards believed that no man can, of himself, come to God. That by the time a man makes a decision for God, the Holy Spirit is deeply at work in his life (for what sinful man would willfully choose God?). The choice itself is an act of grace.

There are so many implications to this belief – chief of which, is that God is working in the “non-believer’s” life as much as he is in the “believer’s” life. And that maybe those terms are entirely too small to encapsulate all God is doing.

And maybe the Spirit is at work all around us and maybe our job as pastors is to be tour-guides for our cities to see and experience this God that is larger than any of us could ever imagine.

God always hears the cry of the oppressed. And we see lack of access to clean water as fundamentally oppressive.

So when water bursts forth, redemption comes with every drop. And God is at work.

Just a little clarification on yesterday’s post…

It wasn’t a dig at large churches (or a particularly large church where I used to serve).

It was a pointed dig at all of us who go to American Churches – regardless of size.

Because we all love our buildings.

I grew up in the church – watching the building fund thermometer on the wall every Sunday morning. We talked about how God wanted us to have buildings – bigger, better, more advanced buildings for his Kingdom.

And we all fell into the allure of the thermometer.

It was a way we could measure our faithfulness – or effectiveness for God.

Of course, all those thoughts are silly. And in the end all our buildings will burn to hell.

Yesterday was about all of us. Because we’re all guilty. None of us will arrive in heaven to hear, “Well built, my faithful building fund manager.”

If we took half our passion for building buildings to Haiti, Port-au-Prince could be rebuilt in the next few years.

If we took a fraction of the money we put into ourselves and unleashed it on water or food or human sex trafficking – we really could change the world.

So, in a way, yesterday’s post was meant to shake us out of the norm. To wake us up. To call us to a greater way of living.

Because it would be tragic to stand judgement for making a building the most significant thing we did for God’s Kingdom.

I read a stat yesterday that I honestly don’t know what to do with.

“While 40 million people died of starvation in the last decade, chuches spent $10 billion on campuses.”

Anger was the first emotion.

Then disappointment.

Followed quickly by frustration.

And then I remembered the line that the article started with: “Thirty-four million Americans have given up on organized religion…”

And I thought: if that’s how organized religion is caring for the oppressed, maybe that’s not so bad.

After all, this was personal to the author:

“I went to seminary, and after several years of study, I began my career as a professional minister. It wasn’t long, however, before I discovered that the church was more lost than the world it was trying to save.

“Go into many churches today, and instead of finding an institution interested in saving the world, what you may find is an institution vastly more interested in saving itself.”

I’m pretty heartbroken – only because his words ring so true. (You can read the rest here.)

We have to change things. We have to abandon the old way of doing things. We have to bring the freedom found in Jesus to the world. We have to raise up communities of people – churches – that are connected to one another, to their cities and to the world.

We have to dis-organize, de-centralize and de-construct what we have come to know as church.

We need to rediscover the path of Jesus.