I'm living in Sydney, Australia currently and will be here for a few months, maybe a bit longer if I can find a job. I was going to Hillsong church for my first month but started going to a church plant instead this week. Hillsong was a 45 minute walk and I just felt like I was getting lost in the crowd. It was over the top for me too. They had camels in their Christmas Eve service...really? Camels? Every Saturday night I went I was dumbfounded by all the laser lights and the fog machine which never seemed to shut off during the worship time. When I went to the welcome area for guests my first time a man asked me if there were any big churches in my area back home. I told him there were, and then said a bit sarcastically, they had just bought a $20 million campus. Then I realized they had probably done the same at Hillsong. When did church become about spending millions of dollars on campuses while millions of people go to bed hungry each night? Are we that insulated from the world around us? A few years ago I remember a friend telling me his church had a building campaign as churches often do to raise money to build a new building. Then he also mentioned that they were raising 5% of the cost on top of that to go to missions. Really? Is that something to be proud of? Say your building costs $1 million; that would be $50,000 for missions. Are we more concerned about building new buildings and campuses or building the kingdom? So many times people have the goal of bringing their friends to church with the hope that they'll hear the gospel. As my friend Graham said to his wife, when did the goal become to bring new friends to church? Shouldn't the goal be to bring the gospel to them? Are we not also priests? We can't just rely on the preacher to preach the good news to people, we are equally responsible for that job, especially when it comes to the people that we interact with on a regular basis and who would never set foot in a church. Don't get me wrong, I don't think big churches are all bad, they do a lot of good too. I just wonder if they're wasting resources on building all these huge buildings when those millions of dollars could be better spent meeting the needs of the world around them. Why not start new businesses and provide jobs for people? Or start a health clinic for people in poverty to go to before they get sick enough to where they need to go to the emergency room? I have a personal goal and a goal for my church plant back home to get to a place where we're giving 50% of our wealth to missions and meeting the needs of the world around us. How counter cultural would that be? Our goal should also be to send people out to meet the world's deep needs, not just bring people in our doors. Of course people need to hear the gospel, but aren't things usually more caught than taught? I'm not advocating a "Preach the gospel, use words if necessary" approach here at all. We need to open our mouths. As soon as we do though, we need to realize we're going to be watched a lot more closely to see how our faith effects our lives and how we handle situations.
We need to look at the life of Christ as our ultimate example. On the subject of attractional church versus missional living, I would argue that he advocated and practiced both. He definitely lived among the people and went to them, but he also often attracted crowds to hear his preaching. So many times people say we must live one way or the other when in fact we need a lot of both. If we truly live missionally than that will attract people to Christ. The Christian life isn't meant to be lived in isolation, so we need that community of believers. A community of believers shouldn't be exclusive though, then you would just have a holy huddle that doesn't effect the community around them. We need to live and preach the good news and show the world that there is a better way to live. There is a more abundant life available, and not more abundant in terms of material possessions. In fact, often times the more possessions one owns the less abundance they're able to experience due to always needing to take care of all their precious possessions instead of actually living.
This church plant I discovered is doing some really cool things. As I understand it, the pastor opened up a bar with another guy and then the pastor focused on the church that they run out of the bar while the other guy took over the operations of the bar. How cool is it to have church in a bar? Almost as cool as having church in a movie theater, shout out to Cooper Creek! This community that they're located in is 35% homosexual. Obviously, that's one of their main target groups. Now, I have to admit this is way out of my comfort zone. I've had gay friends in the past and all of that, but it's definitely not what I'm used to. Tonight, I went to the bar/church to watch a movie. There I am, meeting different people, when a drag queen walks in. My jaw almost dropped. This was clearly a man, but dressed as a woman, complete with breasts! I knew I would be uncomfortable, and I certainly was, but I am proud to announce I talked to him/her for quite a long time after the movie was over. A friend of mine said that when you're out of your comfort zone is when you grow the most. Hopefully that will hold true in this case, because I'm definitely out of my comfort zone here. It's so refreshing though to hear of a church reaching out to the gay community. Christians are known as being homophobic so this is a nice change of tone. When did being gay become worse than fornication or lust or any other sin for that matter? People within the church though, seem to draw a distinct line between 'us' and 'them'. Are we not all equal in Christ's sight? Mike, the pastor, told a story of where a guy was going through classes to become a Christian and when he said he was gay and that he didn't know what to do about it, his pastor told him he couldn't become a Christian. What? Christ died for us while we were still sinners, no matter the sin. Just like I'll always struggle with lust, a gay person will probably always struggle with homosexual thoughts and feelings, even if they convert to Christ. Sometimes Christ washes that away, but not always. Anybody else out there still struggle with a particular sin over and over again even after they've accepted Christ? I strive to do good but evil is right there beside me. We need to point them to Christ, not moral superiority. Christ is the one who changes a person, not us and behavior modification. Jesus hung out with the despised in his day, tax collectors and prostitutes and 'sinners'. Should we not also hang out with the despised in our day?
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