Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Inwardly focused

There are a couple interesting developments lately about church we might need to discuss. First, Joel Osteen's wife Veronica went bat-crazy with her statement: "...realize that when we obey God, we're not doing it for God, we're doing it for ourselves. When you come to church, when you worship Him, you're not doing it for God, really -- you're doing it for yourself, because that's what makes God happy. Amen?"
There are numerous problems with that statement, but this is not an Osteen blog. I try to stay away for Joel. 
The No. 1 problem, to me, with that statement is how inward focused it is. It is concentrated on oneself. In fact, if one were to study Osteen's theology, it's all about oneself. It's a coach pumping up the team at halftime.
But then I read a survey and blog that points out that the No. 1 problem with the church today is how inwardly focused we are.  Yet, to fix things, we're rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, painting lipstick on a pig, and every other cliche one can think of. We're doing Sunday worship, thinking if we just do it better it will be good. We're building larger and prettier facilities or in our case rebuilding them. But through it all, it's an inward focus -- which we've said is the No. 1 wrong thing to do.
Then we turn around and look at what happens at Osteen's church, and it's the No. 1 attended church in this country.
Does that make a lot of sense?
Listening to a row of younger folks the other night at a local church that is hopping with four services over two sites in our city, it was a text book in networking. A guy on the row was coming to the church for the first time, having been invited by a young woman who was seated next to him. They both had come because of invites from someone down the row. 
That is how it works, must work, and will work in the future.
The church must meet the communities, young and old, where they are, and church leaders can't buckle when older members say "that's not how we've done it." Because the reality is if the church continues to look inward, taking care of persons who talk like they want younger folks in their midst but not enough to actually change things to make it happen, the mainline churches will shrink past the point of no return.
We pray that point hasn't already been reached. 

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