Crying wolf?

The question that burns in my mind (at the moment, and it has nothing to do with the pills) is this: what do we really want?

I hear a lot of talk about how the culture is going down the drain. And rightly so. The culture is going down the drain. Some good, of course, has come from it, but the modern moral consciousness is shot. This is something I think we can all agree on.

But what are we doing about it? Answer the question personally. What are you doing about it? Derek Webb has a great line from his song “T-Shirts”. It goes They’ll know us by our picket lines and signs. They’ll know us by the pride we hide behind. Which is actually two lines. But there’s a point there that needs to be made. Are the things we know a source of pride? Or are we just apathetic? Or are we afraid?

Try, in Ontario, in conservative Reformed circles, to get out there. In your personal life, that’s easy enough. But the church as a whole? Not! If you want to be involved in the culture as a whole, you have to move outside our circles to do it.

I went to Baptist church in Mississauga for a while. They were active in the community, doing things that brought them out of their comfort zones. There was no culture shock, walking in the building on Sunday. It was something of an eye-opener for me, even though I didn’t grow up in Reformed circles (which in a way, I think, was good thing for me). That’s the kind of church I want to see, and the kind of church I want to be, considering there’s no sense in just talking about things.

Let me ask you — what sort of outreach programs does your church have? Yes, personal evangelism is a primary way of change. But the church’s individual members are also part of a whole, remember, and if the whole is involved, that brings across the ethic of evangelism that we need. It also gives us a chance to flex our communal muscle, for people to see how we work together and how we love eachother. How we’re not just another social club that happens to sing hymns.

Now, you may be thinking “We’re in the middle of the country. How do we do stuff out here?” And yeah, that’s a problem. We’re a lot of rural churches. But then again, how many of our churches are close to a major urban centre? I can tick ten churches off the top of my head, from URC, OCRC, ICRC, whatever. If you’re not actually in the city, what’s stopping you from being there? Or being close to there? Start up an outreach service, by all means. Rent a gym on Saturdays or Sundays. Serve a free meal to people — no strings attached — in between services. Do it on the sidewalk. Talk to passersby. Involve yourselves in street ministies. Soup kitchens. Homeless shelters. Drive cancer patients to their therapies. Whatever it takes.

Derek Webb also has a line in one of his songs, If you love Me, you will love My church. And if (like Sarah says) love is also pointing out flaws, let these paragraphs be my little bit of old fashioned lovin’.

But that brings me back to my original question: what do we want? To be God’s arms and feet in the culture? Or to sit back in our pleasant suburban homes and hope no one bothers us? In that case, how are we any different from the culture surrounding us? That mostly what they want, too.

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Posted September 28th, 2004 in main.

4 comments:

  1. SGT:

    Good question. I’d like to say that I passionately want to be Gods hands and feet, but the honest response would be that I’m apathetic, too eager to acquire things only for my comfort and my desire to help others as much as I can is sketchy. I’m one of the reasons why the church isn’t doing all that it should.

    September 30th, 2004 at 9:28 am
  2. Anonymous:

    so then, dax, why don’t you make it happen in your church? you’re very good at talking…and probably full of leadership potential. instead of looking for the right church, make your church the right church.

    October 1st, 2004 at 5:28 am
  3. Scatterfingers:

    Congratulations for pointing that out. But it’s also easy to talk about making a difference in ones church, to make it happen, yadda yadda yadda. It still takes more than one person to do something. To face up to a church culture unnacustomed to such things?

    Why do you think I write these things here? So everyone can say “Yay, look how spiritual he is?” Anyone can see through something like that in five seconds. I write so maybe people other than me will stop, take a thought, and start thinking the same thing. Not so that they can say “Hey, stop talking and start doing” from the anonymous comfort of their computers.

    And there are some churches that are simply never going to be interested in evangelism simply because they are afraid of change. They won’t go anywhere. And anyone who wants to go somewhere will and should go somewhere else. Local church membership is not marriage; there’s no concept of that in the Bible. Our traditions of membership and transfers and such are just that: traditions. Traditions that are based on a philosophy that says that local and universal church membership are essentially equal. But just because a local church is part of an organic whole provides no cogent basis for this train of thought. But I digress.

    The conservative Reformed Church — and me along with it, notice all the “we”s in there? — is just too conservative. We’re acting like a ghetto when we’re the only genuine counter-culture that exists. What we need is an overhaul from top to bottom, because there is no rule against being doctrinally conservative and radically liberal in love to the world.

    October 1st, 2004 at 6:24 pm
  4. MastaK:

    “And there are some churches that are simply never
    going to be interested in evangelism simply because
    they are afraid of change. They won’t go anywhere.
    And anyone who wants to go somewhere will and should
    go somewhere else. Local church membership is not
    marriage; there’s no concept of that in the Bible.
    Our traditions of membership and transfers and such
    are just that: traditions. Traditions that are based
    on a philosophy that says that local and universal
    church membership are essentially equal. But just
    because a local church is part of an organic whole
    provides no cogent basis for this train of thought.
    But I digress.”

    If I follow you right, you’re pointing out that we are to be loyal to the church as a whole, not a specific denominational, local grouping. It’s true from a Biblical standpoint. But I would point out that from a practical standpoint, the local (and I use that term loosely, seeing as both of us drive more than 1/2 an hour to get there…) church cannot function without dedication from it’s members. If we all disappear when we find things that our local body is doing something wrong (or in this case, NOT doing something RIGHT), the body falls apart. This is why we must work to improve our churches ourselves rather than looking for somewhere else that is (not insinuating that you personally are doing that, just arguing the point). And in response to your comment that posting here is not just to complain but also to gather support so that you can begin to change things, I would submit to you that speaking to people face-to-face generally rallies support a little better.

    peace dood…

    ps -> we need to have us a sit-down about this… and your anti-picketing philosophies…

    October 4th, 2004 at 3:18 am

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