Sunday, February 21, 2010

I have many ideas and thoughts running like an out of control river through my head right now and while I need to get them out and express them I'm not sure that they will be coherent or make much sense....So if you are reading this good luck and I hope I don't completely confuse you. I guess the first issue that is driving me nuts is this saying that I hear week after week at church. That the desire is for the Bible to be made simple so us simple folks can understand it.... I have a problem with this statement and mentality. While yes I do want to be able to understand the Bible I don't want it to be so simple that it loses any depth and meaning and far far too often that's exactly what happens. I think there's a line that we must be careful with when teaching scripture and that we need to make it so that the listeners can understand what's being said but we can't completely water it down in the process. I may not be the brightest but I don't want to be a simple folk and I don't want the person teaching me to see me as that either. How are we supposed to grow and be challenged when it's all made so simple we don't have to really think? There has to be depth and questioning involved. And when speaking to any large group there will always be some that you end of speaking over their heads but to completely dumb it down to the slowest person makes the vast majority bored. I think this is the problem in too many churches. We water down the message so people understand and in turn all we are doing is feeding milk over and over and never getting to the meat of any issue. Then we wonder why people are apathetic and stop caring because they are never challenged. It's like when dealing with children, you have to set the bar high and when you do they will rise to meet it. When you set the bar low it shows that you think so little of them that they will never strive for more or better. Same thing in the church, we need to raise the bar and start feeding the people meat! Challenge and stretch people. Make them see things from a different point of view and make them question things. It's in the questioning and stretching that real growth takes place. To say the same things week after week, over and over again just frustrates the people and makes them tune out and bored. I guess it all comes back to the point and who we're trying to preach to or to teach. Are we spending all our time and energy trying to reach that one "lost soul" all the while leaving the rest of the people bored and unchallenged or are we engaging in discipleship where we train, teach and grow the majority of the people to then go out and do that to others? I want so desperately to be part of the discipleship group! I want to walk away each week challenged and not frustrated! To feel stretched and pushed because the person teaching thinks enough of me to know that I can handle it and I need it. Looking back at my time in youth group I know that I was so incredibly fortunate and privileged because it was during that time that I experienced what real growth looks like. My incredible youth pastor and amazing mentor pushed me and challenged me to look at things differently. They gave me meat, and although I may not have always been ready for the meat they cut it up and helped me work through it. They never watered it down and thought I couldn't handle it. Sometimes it was frustrating to want to get more then I did but I was challenged and I strived to understand. It was because they believed in me, more then I did in myself, that I wanted to understand and I wanted to go deeper. When we treat people as babies and too simple to get it we can't be surprised when that's how they act. We treat the church as babies and kids and then are shocked when there's no growth or depth or yearning for more. What have we expected from them? I guess the question is what's the goal or focus from the church? Saving people from the pits of hell or raising up disciples? I want to be part of a church that's focus is on discipleship. When the focus of the church is to grow, challenge and strengthen believers the natural overflow of that is that those people then go out and do that with others. Seeing believers excited and eager for more is much more likely to get people to want what they claim to have then to expect people to sit there and hear what they "need" while all the people around them are bored and stagnant. It's time for those who need and want more to demand more and to stop settling for milk when they deserve food.

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