A Product
I was with some business people the other day at a friend’s house.
We were sitting around discussing the way of the world, solving all of its problems over a beverage at the end of the week.
I noticed two of the guys had sort of started a conversation in a corner to go over plans and strategies for expanding their customer base.
I heard them talk of unit sales, market penetration, developing spheres of influence, sustainable and viable future markets, etc., etc.
I was introduced to them later to find out that they were both ‘Christian Ministers’ and their product was their ministry.
I initially was really ticked off. I mean, drag-them-outside-and-do-the-man-dance-in-the-car-park ticked off.
But then I got to thinking…they are nothing more that the product of the commercial Christian environment here in America, and they obviously do not have the internal fortitude (real guts) to live externally to the machine.
The perversion comes when you take your Christianity from Christians and not from Christ.
What started as a relationship in Jerusalem, moved to Europe and became a religion, and then came to the USA and it was turned into retail.
Christ has become a product that people buy and ministries sell.
Not the Savior of our soul.
The redeemer of our eternity.
The healer of our body.
The provider for our future.
And if that is YOUR industry, you have to do all you can to move your product.
The Problem
I have gotten to know these two guys over time. There no ‘bad men’, they are just the average traveling itinerate minister.
They have no connection to the local church outside of a token attendance. They see no value in the local church. They don’t have a role inside of their local church.
Their pastor isn’t going to pull their chain if they get out of line because they bring some big money to the table every month. And so they come to believe that silence is approval and they go on down the road doing their deal and hawking their wares. The effect is that this becomes the model to the next generation of Christian leaders and the mess gets perpetuated.
The Person
When Christ was incarnate (God became man), He walked among us with a very specific purpose, to deliver us from the wrath of God that was poured out on all flesh because of the pollution, perversion and power of sin.
The vehicle that He founded to ensure that all generations would hear His message was the local church.
Christ could have set the boys out to start itinerant ministries – He didn’t.
They went out and planted churches.
Paul could of written his letters to his financial partners, he didn’t, he wrote those letters to the churches that he had planted and those churches where supporting him in the planting of more local churches.
Our Lord could have started a healing/miracle crusade program….He didn’t…He put the power of God in the pews and told the pulpit to shepherd them (that is guard, guide and govern) to ensure the peoples success.
The Perversion
Just because your experience in a local church was neither dynamic, relevant or right….doesn’t make the model wrong, it just means the person who ran it didn’t know what they were doing.
It doesn’t make the gospel of no effect, more than likely you have never truly heard the gospel, you have probably sat under a marketing spiel or a lifestyle enhancement program and not the truth.
The Solution
Well, giving these two and every other twit I run across a good bollocking in the car park won’t change things.
But spending my life time showing people the reality of Christ and building a church and Christians who are living the gospel and not playing the gospel…..that might just have the desired effect.
If you allow someone else’s failures that form the basis of their philosophies to be the parameters of your experience, then their floors become your ceilings.
Don’t allow someone else to make your world for you, they will ALWAYS make it to small.
Christ is the answer and His vehicle for bringing a living Jesus to a dying world has always been and will always be the local church.
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