Stop.
Breathe.
Think.
When was the last time you really thought about where your ministry at church was going? No, I'm not talking about the time you got together in a huddle, prayed for a 'Word' or heard a goofy 'still, small voice'. I'm talking about a time you sat down, used your grey matter and said " Hang on, what are we doing here?"
We have some seriously smart people in Church. The historical church had some superb contenders of the mind. For example,mI love D.A Carson's writings and sermons. I don't get all of it but what little I get knocks me away. And some of the smart people we have in church have professional qualifications up the wazoo and jobs to match, which begs the question:
Why do they leave their brains outside the church when they go in?
The gym where I train Jujitsu has this motto:"Leave your ego outside before you come in". Anyone who's ever served in a ministry capacity at most churches know that some of the people you work with usually left the wrong stuff outside.
When did the sudden ostracisation of the rational process and the deification of the 'experience' come in? Some of it may be due to the era we live in - a postmodern self-seeking oriented media fed culture. Some say this started when existentialism took off in popularity. I'm not sure but this will be addressed in later posts
The separation of the mind from all of this has dire consequences. It means that decisions regarding religious matters are more likely to be made based on all emotional based receptors; a dangeorous propostion for a pilot will tell you that there's a reason why a plane is flown with the aid of hundreds of objective gauges and instruments, and not a pilot's "gut feel"
So how do you engage the mind? The answer is simple. Stop. Just stop.
Emotions are like eating potato chips. They taste good, so you eat more. The trouble is that you don't know how much you've eaten until you've become large enough to have your own postcode. So if you want to cease eating - you've got to stop first
Take a breath. Go for a walk. Are you really hungry after that? Chances are that you weren't and you were just greedy. Same with some church experiences. You aren't really in communion with the Lord, that was maybe 20 minutes ago but you say " I'll keep singing that chorus 20 times to get that feeling of closeness nback and there's people crying on the floor, so I'll keep doing it till I get there'
You aren't really hungry. You've been filled, you just don't know it
Think. Think. Think.
For example, who told you to 'let go and let God?'. Your spiritual mentor? What's his authority? When did you last question the content of a sermon or did you just laugh at the jokes and file away three Joel Osteen-like points from it?
Thinking is hard work. It involves upsetting your own apple cart so a lot of people hate to do it. But when you take the time to do it, your Christian walk becomes so much richer and deeper. I am convinced that when we surrender our minds, the world will corrall us into a corner and happily zone Christians out of any influential decision making processes that affect the world at large. My deeper fear is that Christians will accept this demarcation and adopt a form of tribalism where they will only concern themselves with matters of a pseudo-religious nature; which the world happily tells us is our domain
Pretty soon, the church will end up like one of those houses suspended in water, where you shake them and the snow falls on it. The type you get at Christmas. And that's what we'll be - a small plastic representation of the real thing; brought out only once a year.
Stop. Breath. Think
SDG
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2 comments:
I totally agree. There is a lot of focus on 'experiancing' God through feeling rather than experiancing Him through knowing who he is...even in the contemporary church where the music plays a role in stirring people to emotional heights. The 'goodness' of worship sessions depends on how good the band is in manipulating the music to stir the proper emotions people are looking for.
And also, some sermons are more like story-telling sessions rather than exposition on the true and living Word of God. The exchange this Word for myths and stories in order to please the majority of the congregation. Sad...
Thanks for your comments, child_of_god.
You bring up an interesting point about myths and stories. This is a feature which I associate more with the current flavour of discourse; which is in a post post-modernist frame of thought currently.
However, I think some of this is due to the cultural context and thus, I run the risk of being labelled supercililous and preemptively stereotypical by saying that Asian societies are generally not concerned so much with the meta-narrative; but the complete opposite.
Thus, the fable or the story that tugs your heart is the one which is an offshoot of the oral tradition that we are used to; no matter how much modernist layering transmitted in school. (And my contention is that it is very little, as Socratic discourse hardly ever touched on)
This presents a huge problem where contention for the faith lies in the exposition of a personal experience which means very little to anyone else but the person concerned. If we scratch the surface, the underlying driver is not concern for making disciples but one where the payoff you get is just a blabberring of your 'testimony' and the results that you derive from that.
It means that unfortunately, it cannot be tested for veracity as personal experience cannot be validated, except on a subjective level.
If one is to argue with me that it means something to you and not to anyone else; you've sunk yourself into a discursive quagmire. And you should be honest with yourself as to how you flesh out this 'experience'
In other words. You are not preaching from the Word. Period.
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