On Top of The World...

I can recall a time when I arrived at a church and I was a nobody. People hardly said hi to me, People completely overlooked me. People forgot my name, or just flat out didn’t know it. Nobody wanted to be around me or hang out with me. Nobody wanted to take the time to get to know me. Fast forward a couple of years and I was at a church where everybody loved me. Everybody wanted to get to know me better, even wished they knew what I was thinking. Everybody wanted to be my friend and have me be part of their life. My phone was constantly blowing up, people sent me encouraging messages. Vastly different places, right? Wrong! Same place, same people, different position, title and level of influence. In the latter part of the story I was a youth pastor.
Obvious problems with this scenario:

1. People judged me – There is no hiding the fact that Christians are seen as judgmental. The truth is that many of us are. To expound upon this truth, we must note that people in general whether with Christ or without, are judgmental. We may become a bit more open minded or go through an experience where we judge and promise never to do it again, but the truth is that we constantly judge others. With this said, there is no reason for Christians, followers of the most loving man in history, to exclude anybody! People eventually abandoned Jesus, but Jesus never abandoned people. We must learn not to exclude or abandon people!

2. People were fake – In the great scheme of things I was able not only to go from the bottom to the top but to make note of it for future reference. Many forget what it was like to be the new person, to feel lost, to feel like quitting, but I didn’t! I took it with me and confronted everybody with the truth. Sometimes this has to be done! People need to know the error in their ways and when you are in a position of influence, you need to use that influence to expose the flaws and correct the mistakes, not to allow them to permeate the culture.

3. People want to be around those that appear to have it all together - Nobody likes to be part of the b-squad (as I like to call it). People want to be popular. People want to be likened to those that are considered great: the Leaders, those with authority, those at the forefront of everything, the poster-children of the organization, not those that are the least of these! (hopefully about now, conviction sets in your heart!)

4. People feel more accepted in a local bar than they do in a church – One of those ideas that I have the ability to speak about freely. I have been in bars and churches. I have been part of party crowds and congregations. You know what the main difference is? (aside from salvation) The fact that a drinking crowd, loves and accepts anybody willing to have a good time and let loose, as opposed to the church who wants people that already have their shtuff together when they step through the door! People are more drawn to destruction because destruction accepts them as they are and Christians make it appear as if Christ does not!

5. People don’t show the love of Christ – The truth of the matter is that the Church needs to repent and begin showing the true love of Christ! This fake, status driven, demanding, biblically inaccurate, judgmental, graceless, perfection demanding version of God’s heart that Christians call love… NEEDS TO STOP! That is NOT the heart of Our loving father who sees us, takes us up as messed up as we are but loves us too much to leave us that way.

6. People are insecure – People don’t know who they are. They allow everybody else tell them who they are, who they should be and who they should hang out with instead of believing what the Bible says about them, listening to God’s voice Who is constantly pouring his encouragement and love out to us, and unapologetically living their lives the way the Christ lived his!

7. Creating the negative systems in the church – Remember in High School there was a caste system that everybody was forced to obey? Well we brought that into the church. Remember when social networking became the societal fad and people forgot about friendship, replacing it with an electronic version which included small messages, birthday updates, and the ability to “KIT” without ever having to see them or talk to them? We brought that into the church. It’s ridiculous!

8. I was fixed on Christ, what about new people? – When I started going to the above mentioned Church, I already had a relationship with Christ… what if I didn’t? What if that had been a new believer or somebody stepping into the church for the very first time and that was the first impression I received, do you think I would want to step into a church again? The answer is no!( thank you captain obvious!)

9. The fact we view it as a top to bottom caste instead of an egalitarian brotherhood, a family. – The Church is not a Family anymore, it’s a high school clique. It’s little groups in the cafeteria, talking about what is going on in their little social circle instead of life being poured into each other in love.

10. This happened in a church! – I love the Church but it can be so negative a lot of the time. I understand it, and what it is composed of but most people don’t. I know I’m not alone in seeing this and wanting to end it and yet not many are doing much about it. We need to change Church culture to be more of what Jesus wants and less of what we want!