Well! I've had a lot of things going on inside of me lately. First things first, I got back to church again on Sunday. I hadn't been there in about a month due to traveling and issues with a ride. Heavy G has been busy so he has also been going sporadically. The reason this is an issue is because it's almost a 2 hour bus ride to church. One way. I don't know if that sounds fun to anyone, but it's not the ideal way to spend your Sunday. However, I really wanted to get back to God's house this Sunday so I handled the long ride and got myself to church.
My church has been pushing what is called the "G12 Summit" lately. I mistakenly thought this was the global leadership summit when has been going on in America for years, and something I had heard of last year with one of my pastor friends even coming to Chicago (Willow Creek Community Megahugemonstrous Church) for it. I asked him about it, and he corrected me that they were not the same.
I am pretty skeptical about this trend to make everything bigger. So far that's what I gather from this G12 Summit. Apparently it started in Bogota, Columbia. From what I've heard the general idea is that a church designates leaders. Those leaders create small groups of 12 people, and train those small group members to be leaders who then go out and create their own small groups. This continues and the church grows exponentially by factors of 12. Here is their wikipedia description: "The G12 Vision is a Christian evangelism and discipleship strategy to fulfill the Great Commission. It is founded upon the idea that every Christian can mentor and lead twelve people in the Christian faith, following the example of Jesus." Sounds great right?
I'm not so sure. The Bible says to test spirits to see if they are from God or not. The vibe that I'm getting from this is that it's a big show. A magnificent show, but a show nonetheless. The church showed videos from the last 2 years to try and hype up members to go. I should also mention that there is immense pressure to go to this summit, and the cost is not insignificant. I believe tickets themselves are $50, and the total cost per person comes to around $120 including travel and lodging. Apparently they have set the goal for our church at 500 people. That's all fine and great if we didn't only have roughly 200 members. The emphasis is clearly on growth.
I'm not one to pass judgement without seeing it for myself though, so I'm planning on going. From what the videos showed this event is 3 days long completely devoted to worship and praise. That's awesome. There are famous Christian bands booked to play, and also famous pastors to preach. Apparently they are expecting roughly 1,000,000 people at the Seoul location alone! What an incredible number. I assume that people from all over the world will be linked via video conferencing, and people will be worshiping worldwide together! That's the dream right?
I don't agree. This push for a global church is worrying to me. You see a lot of these giant events in America. These pastors travel around and make a killing selling out giant NFL stadiums preaching to people. It seems like a great idea, reach a lot of people, support those who are preaching the word, and everyone is happy. The problem is that these people go to these events, and A) they fail to take any action on what has been preached, B) what is being preached is watered down so there is no action to take, and the worst part C) we are creating demigods out of these men who go around getting rich off the Word of God.
I don't have anything personally against these guys, I'm sure when they started out they didn't strive to make a ton of money off of religion. They probably are just smart businessmen who happened to love God and their decisions led to growth of their church, and popularity for themselves. While this isn't necessarily bad in itself, it leads to the downfall of not only these men but their followers. Think about it, you're a pastor in charge of ministering to a crowd of 50,000 people. What do you become beholden to? Over time it stops being God, and starts being people...and their money. You start preaching a watered down version of the Gospel in order to keep those donations coming in. It becomes about maintaining your lifestyle and popularity instead of reaching people for God.
There are many examples of these famous evangelists making terrible decisions. Just google evangelists and their private jets. I realize that not everyone lives this way, and maybe there's a man out there who can completely give himself to God while still being prosperous. That would be against the Bible though, as Jesus says "Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a
needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God." (Matthew 19:24) On top of this, Paul (who is arguably the greatest human example of how a Christian should live) did NOT make his living off of preaching the Gospel, and was very proud of it. "13Don’t
you know that those who serve in the temple get their food from the
temple, and that those who serve at the altar share in what is offered
on the altar?
14In the same way, the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel.
15But
I have not used any of these rights. And I am not writing this in the
hope that you will do such things for me, for I would rather die than
allow anyone to deprive me of this boast.
16For when I preach the gospel, I cannot boast, since I am compelled to preach. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!
17If I preach voluntarily, I have a reward; if not voluntarily, I am simply discharging the trust committed to me.
18What
then is my reward? Just this: that in preaching the gospel I may offer
it free of charge, and so not make full use of my rights as a preacher
of the gospel." (Corinthians 9:13-18)
The push to make things bigger, and involve more money looks great, but inevitably will lead to evil as Satan can assuredly use good intentions against us when given an opportunity. Ok so bigger is not better in this case, what is the answer? I believe in house churches. This is how Jesus setup his church originally and I think there are many many benefits to this approach. In your typical church these days people come to hear the sermon and leave almost directly after. There's no involvement in each others lives, there's no true love shared with each other. A home church with 10-12 people would be able to get involved with others lives. This would also enable a grass roots movement, people reaching out in their communities to their neighbors. Jesus didn't reach out to righteous people, but to those who were sinners and unbelievers. If we truly want to follow his example, those are the footsteps we need to step in.
This doesn't have to be awkward, as most people might initially think it would be. Invite your neighbors over for dinner, cook for them, serve them. You'll be surprised what conversations can come up over the dinner table. Over time you develop relationships, know what problems these people have in their hearts, and are able to pray for them and minister to them. Especially these days in America where people are so turned off by marketing that walking up to them on the street with a Bible will instantly get you turned away. I admit I do the same thing. A Jehovah's Witness came up to me outside a train station the other day and I watched the video he showed me, but wasn't interested in what he had to say, and I'm a Christian myself. Granted it was more due to the fact that I couldn't talk to him because of the language barrier, but if I were able I didn't have time to get into a discussion about how our beliefs were different yet mostly the same. Anyways I digress.
I also believe that church buildings are an issue. This is also a money issue. Again this is where pastors begin to be beholden to the patrons with money. Churches unfortunately are still businesses, and with overhead and a full time staff, they need money to run. I had some long discussions at my church back in Chicago about this. Our building was in severe disrepair. It's an old school building that they built and turned into a church, however there haven't been any repairs to it in around 40 years. Ceiling panels were falling out, there were leaks, electrical issues just to say the least. They finally got a loan to fix a bunch of things, but there were a lot of complaints from patrons along the lines of "if I bring someone here they will leave after one week because our building is falling apart". We also had discussions about how people are much more likely to be attracted to beautiful buildings such as Catholic churches. Catholic churches tend to have the "wow" factor. While I realize this is a logical approach based on the tendencies of human beings, it completely and utterly robs the power of the cross. If God has touched someone's heart, they will stop at nothing to get the good news. The evidence of this is our persecuted brethren in the Middle East and other countries that don't tolerate Christianity.
I haven't really finished my thoughts on the global church vs house churches but this is a good segue to my next thought. I can go back and add more detail later, I think you get the general idea. The "nice" church building is a side effect of living in a society where we have been safe from war and death for so long that we've forgotten the fear of it. We've forgotten the fear of God, and the love that he shows us on a daily basis. We've become apathetic. Disagree? Watch the news for 30 minutes and see how long it takes you to forget the next time they cover a murder. We are being turned into robots, and while that does have something to do with what I'm talking about that's a discussion for another time.
My thoughts here are with our brothers and sisters in Christ living in fear of their lives daily due to persecution. I prayed to God this week to help me to never forget these brave men and women who are truly putting more on the line daily just to worship God than I may in my entire life. What an incredible and sobering thought. The same pastor I mentioned earlier who came to Chicago for the leadership summit posted an article on FB this week about this very subject. While the global media is covering terrorist attacks like Manchester, the ones against Christians are getting covered up. I'll be brief in the description, but recently in Egypt a caravan of buses carrying Christians going to worship on Sunday was stopped by a group of Muslims. One by one they were asked to get off the bus and denounce their faith in Christ and become Muslim. One by one they refused and were murdered for it. I can't help but think what I would do in this situation. I can only pray that I would look to God for the courage to somehow resist, but likely I would fall in line and be slaughtered in His name. A fate not undeserving of glory. These people are incredible, and we need to be supporting them more directly instead of THROWING CONCERTS AND GLOBAL WORSHIP SUMMITS!! WHY DO WE NEED MONEY FOR BIGGER CHURCHES AND SUPPORTING APATHETIC CHRISTIANS AND CAUSES WHEN OUR OWN ARE DYING DAILY FOR THEIR FAITH?!
I'm sorry, I got a little emotional there. Something came over me, I realize I could just go back and make it all lower case again, but I want to keep it so that you can see my anger. If you know me at all, you know that I'm very even keel, I almost never get upset. However, lately I've been very emotional over this subject, as well as the threat of Islam in general. I've gone through a whole gambit of emotions in the past week or so. Some of which include, anger, depression, self-preserving righteousness, and terror. I've been having dreams lately as well regarding this. I'm not sure what they mean yet though I've been praying for interpretation. Last night was a very vivid one. I was in a school bus driving backwards down the road away from a great evil. The sky was dark and the hills were rolling ever higher up to this monster that had tentacles and was difficult to distinguish otherwise. There was a storm wherever it was, and it was chasing us. Two of my special needs students here in the K-PACE program were driving the bus backwards. This terrified me, but I soon realized that they were very good at it. We were in full military gear with AR-15's and prepared for battle. (Also as a humorous note for some reason Zac Efron was in this bus with us) Don't ask me why this is, I haven't seen him in the news for quite awhile, but my brain must have some reason for it lol. Anyways, we were headed for this underground bunker terrified for our lives, but prepared to fight if we had to. We drove the bus backwards into the bunker and waited. The plan was to allow the monster to follow us into the bunker (That was more like the size of a city) and then sneak out and continue on our way, only fighting if we had to. I guess this bunker was self reliant as we weren't worried about the monster destroying it or any people in there (it seemed pretty empty of people in my dream). That's about all I remember, though I do remember rolling down the windows a few times and my teammates (Zac Efron lol, and some girl) firing their guns into the storm at the monster but doing next to no damage. I do remember specifically that I did not fire my weapon, I seemed to be waiting for the right time.
I woke up and tried to logically add a few things to the dream that was so vivid I still remember it. If the monster could fit in this bunker, why didn't we try to fight it at the mouth of the bunker so as to funnel it in? Why couldn't we trap it in the bunker instead of running away? Anyways I'm pretty sure the monster represented Islam as that's something that has been on my mind a lot lately. Usually before bed, and it was especially intense last night.
If you couldn't tell I'm really F'ing fired up right now. I don't get this way often, but I feel the Holy Spirit rising up inside me, and I have some righteous anger growing. I should go back and let you guys know where this all stemmed from. It started with my first visit to the Buddhist temple in Busan. I had a good conversation there about other religions and what they believe, and that got me interested in Islam being it's a major violent threat in the world right now. I want to know what they believe and why they believe it. I decided to read the Quran.
I honestly could not finish the second chapter before I was completely turned off. I mean, farbeit from me to criticize other religions and beliefs, I'm normally very respectful, but this book is a complete and utter ripoff of the Old Testament, and contains no original spiritual benefit. The book is however full of verses commanding revenge, and violence towards those who are not Muslim. This includes Christians and Jews. I encourage everyone to read it for themselves to be educated, but I almost instantly was turned off. I did my best to go in with an open mind too, reading it as someone would for the first time without any religious bias. I don't know if it was God within me or what, but I just couldn't do it.
Anyways these thoughts started to give birth to current events. I had another conversation about women here in Korea who are getting married to Muslim men. (Apparently the word on the street is that Muslim men are really good in bed). Anyways, when they find out it's not all it's cracked up to be they try to get a divorce. Apparently there are illegal Muslims here in Korea who will go around to the family's house and beat up the wife and her parents and take her back to her husband and say "No divorce". I realize this happens all over the world, and has been in the Middle East for years, but for some reason hearing this at the time that I did sent my justice meter to "RAGE". I can't honestly believe how messed up that is, and how messed up the world is getting. I try to stay out of current events mostly for this reason, because while I'm many things I am obsessive about things being fair. The world right now is neither right nor logical, and it infuriates me that people are furthering the agenda of evil while masquerading as "fairness and goodness and love". I guess the point is I can't turn a blind eye any longer. God is awakening my spirit and has something planned for me.
So here I was for the past week or so in my dorm room feeling helpless and angry, and depressed, and tortured for these people who were being mistreated at the hands of a religion claiming "peace and non-violence". I wanted an eye for an eye, I wanted revenge, I wanted justice. Period. Except it's not period. If it was period I would be no better than them. What would that create? A cycle of anger and hatred, truly only escalating to worse things because of human nature. The thought of I must get revenge plus some so that the other person feels what I feel.
No. That's not what God commands us to do. After wallowing in my own emotions for awhile I realized nothing good would come of my fleshly reactions and I looked to God. I prayed for his guidance. I prayed for protection and courage for our brothers who are persecuted. I prayed for justice for those who are wronged. Ultimately I prayed for how to respond to everything. (Mind you my personal internal battle right now is how to deal with a religion that wants to wipe my kind completely off the earth and makes no qualms about it) but this doesn't have to pertain only to Islam. There are plenty of hateful groups out there masquerading in the name of love and justice and equality right now. Certainly many Muslims either don't take the Quran seriously enough to go out and kill others in the name of Allah, but they also can't be found working against those that do. The Quran commands that Islam be spread, and spread by violence until the whole world is Muslim.
Anyways, on to what I'm going to do. I prayed with how to deal with myself first of all, my own selfish emotions desiring justice in this lifetime, when truly who am I to see that happen? I am neither judge nor jury nor executioner. I see nothing of what God sees. So I realized I need to pray to be as Christlike as humanly possible. I need to respond with love, and that is what I will do. I believe in a greater God, one that sent His son to die on the cross for my sins. One that is all powerful, and that I submit to. I believe in His sovereign plan for my life and I don't know if I will ever even come into contact with what I fear, but if I do I pray that he will give me the courage to do His will. All I can do is pray for the Holy Spirit to give me the words when the time is right. I cannot come up with the right words to speak, only God can change the hearts of those I speak to.
P.S. I've thought of a lot of things to add to my earlier ideas, certainly too much to add to just this post but I'll go ahead and discuss one thing I thought was important. The G12 summit and house churches sound very similar in ideal. You have small groups that get involved with each others lives. Once those people are well versed in their own faith they are strong enough to go out and form their own small groups, thus growing the church and reaching out to others. I believe the problem is the governing body. Just as with government the more people you get involved and the higher the structure the more red tape and issues that come with it. Plus who is ordained to sit atop this global church? Who is this business genius? Or better yet who is this "holy" man? Sounds a lot like the Catholic church to me, but that's for another post at another time. I am all for whatever God wants, and if he shows me that this is the future of the church he is building then I will be the first to get out my shovel and pickaxe and get working. All I'm stating is that at first glance my spirit is not getting a good vibe from this. I hope I'm wrong.
Well! What a first post back! Thanks so much for reading. I hope you enjoyed what you read. I will continue to post about things I eat and things I do, but I anticipate my posts being more spiritually based from now on. If that's not for you, then I understand but I pray that one day God moves your heart to Him. Fini!
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