Thoughts About The Church: Post 1

Over the next few days I intend to post several short writing that were inspired by Derek Webb, the documentary Jesus Camp, and Philip Yancey. The following is the first of those posts.

So I purchased the newest Derek Webb album recently. Nothing stirs me up about the state of the Church in America like Derek Webb. Sometimes when I look around at the Church, Christ’s bride, I want to avert my eyes. I watched the documentary Jesus Camp recently and you know, the church featured in Lees Summit, MO (a suburb of Kansas City, where I live) wasn’t really so disturbing to me when compared to the clips of Ted Haggard. I don’t think it would have even mattered if the scandal involving Haggard had been uncovered or not, red flags went up for me when he spoke.

It was Jesus’ intent to depart, to ascend, from the beginning in order to carry on his work in the bodies of his disciples and the body of his church, which is the new body of Christ. As St. Augustine said, “You ascended from before our eyes, and we turned back grieving, only to find you in our hears.” It is beautiful language that conveys the truth of the church being where Christ lives. It is God’s plan to extend the healing, grace, the message of God’s love, that Christ brought to a few, through the church. But Philip Yancey makes a profound observation, “Living two millennia after the disciples, I look back and marvel at how little difference the church has made in such a world.” Yancey also comments on how he finds it much easier to believe that Christ incarnated as God into Jesus of Nazareth than in the people who attend American churches.

I see such an emphasis on politics in the evangelical church. I hear voices like Ted Haggard who say, “If the Evangelicals vote, they determine the election” (from “Jesus Camp). Yancey says it better than I can; “Political movements risk pulling onto themselves the mantel of power that smothers love. From Jesus I learned that, whatever activism I get involved in, it must not drive out love and humility, not otherwise I betray the kingdom of heaven.” The truth of this statement resonates in my heart. As Right and Left struggle to gain power, love is lost. The power of God’s kingdom is much more like a force that goes unnoticed. It works from within.