The Long and Short of It (cont.)

[HKHaugan]

For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal (2Cor.4:18).

I probably left you hanging on what the answer might be to the spiritual predicament of our modern age with its growing rejection of faith in Jesus. I believe we need to address where we are as believers. Let me tell you what I am getting at right up front before you read on. We have got to shed our ‘church member’ mentality and take on a ‘Body of Christ’ spirituality. Two concerns stand out for me, where we are personally with Jesus and where we are as brothers and sisters in Jesus, our personal bondedness to Him and our interpersonal bond to each other in Jesus.

First, as disciples of Jesus we need to take that very idea of being bonded to Him as Paul did and be aggressive with where we really are in Him. We have to think ‘born-again,’ have a ‘born again’ perspective, a ‘born-again’ mindset. In one sense we need a rebirth of what it means to ‘be born again.’ We need a return to what the earliest believers thought like as we approach our every next moment. They were absorbed in the person of Jesus, fascinated with who He was, what He did and what He was doing in them through the Holy Spirit. They were hungry to share Him and find out how others experienced Him. They longed not only to be with one another and worship Him but were overcome with the need to let others know about Him. Think about those first days after Pentecost when thousands were converted. It wasn’t about the numbers like it is today. It was about the Holy Spirit. We need to shovel out from under the cultural sludge we have imposed on our ‘born again’ experience.

Second, every believer needs a ‘born-again’ understanding of what Jesus meant when He used the word ‘church.’ We need to strip the layers of cultural conditioning that have made it vulnerable to the slow redefinition of and saturation with, worldly principles and their visible symbols. For Him it was His personal and interpersonal spiritual Body, His Body, the real Body of Christ, each cell being the people who together have made a conscious decision to ask Him to be their personal Savior and Lord. Their lives were transformed, open, honestly sharing their joys and faults, confessing to one another their failures and praying for one another’s openness to the Lords will. I realize all who are reading this believe that is exactly what they have done. That’s what I did and that’s what I believe and want to pass on. But is it like the early believer and the early Body of Christ? Are we regressing or progressing? We need that early spiritual honesty.

However, in spite of how we have thought we did this, we have to remember the conditioning of the culture in which we live. It has always operated based on the secular corporate model that builds buildings, showcases ‘dynamic’ clergy, grows large, has big specialized programs, offering a marketable commodity using cultural advertising techniques to attract attention and all the other stratagems to meet what the culture calls success. I would suggest,--- and I’m open to any logical differing of opinion here ---, that behind all of this hype and cultural adaptation is competition and comparison, the cultural pressures we have inherited from the secular world. ‘Successful’ churches are copied and programs built around their approach, seminars offered, leaders developed who are skilled at their repetition while smaller, less ‘successful’ churches look for the ‘experts’ they produce. They hope that they can get half way there when the ‘right’ leaders are found. This culturally conditioned approach causes anxiety, dishonest resumes, unfulfilled hearts placing undue weight on leadership like burnout and ego satisfaction which in turn causes believers to look around for younger and more dynamic leaders so they don’t have to ask, “Why aren’t we growing like they are?” What is it that ‘successful’ churches are doing and can we copy them? See what I mean? Look at the process churches have to go through to assure that they get the right leaders. Compare this with the ‘Jesus/Holy Spirit’ enflamed heart of Paul and the like hearts in those home churches he started as recorded in Acts.

In my past observations there is a subtle by-product among those who belong to the modern ‘church’ mindset. It’s called spiritual pride. It’s having a bumper sticker on my car that tells the world where I am a member. In fact ‘my successful church’ becomes a conversational bumper sticker that always seems to slip into casual conversation. After all bigger is better isn’t it? But also another set of problems arise. There are a significant number of individuals who tend to ‘fall through the cracks’ after they come because what they were hoping to find was personal hope in their situation but somehow they got lost in the crowd. Others come to be in the crowd and remain anonymous. Another interesting thing happens. Hired staff begin to develop a sense of entitlement and have special perks because they ‘work’ there. Professional clergy see themselves as superior to lay people who are considered ‘the sheep.’ And what’s more, people tend to slide personally and defer to those who know more and let them do the ‘church stuff’ since that’s what they are paid for anyway.

In all of this we become blind to our real goal which is spiritual, to make disciples for Jesus who make disciples for Jesus. We have got to change our mindset and be spiritually aggressive in the way we take in everything we see, we think and we do. We have got to stop thinking about how to get people to go to ‘church,’ getting people involved in ‘church’ programs so we can grow the a ‘successful church.’ We need to take hard look at where we are and shift.

Now bear with me on this shift. It’s not easy. I suggest the following as a way to answer. Keep in front of our minds and hearts the spiritual nature we possess. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. What will we do with our human experiences in every next moment?

From the moment we wake up in the morning in our self-conscious state, to relating to family, to eating breakfast, getting in the car, going to our next appointment, we have got to put everything in the hands of God and see the world moment by moment through the eyes of God. We can do that. We have been given a spiritual relationship, a bond with God in Jesus. We have a spiritual manual, Scripture and we have the spiritual tools of prayer and decision making.

We have the Holy Spirit in our hearts because it was He who brought the Lord into our hearts. Think of your new nature. You have a spiritually born nature; a new heart that has spiritual eyes, a new mind to hear spiritually and a new sensitivity in your spirit. You have the ability in the Spirit to view yourself, people around you and the society you live in, with spiritually gifted awareness. Next time we get very specific.