SIMPLIFY!

This morning I heard a few stanzas from the old Christmas hymn Go Tell it on the Mountain. As I reflected upon that well known refrain, it occurred to me how very simple Christ's message and mission really is: "Go tell it on the mountain that Jesus Christ is born..." The angelic pronouncment to the Bethlehem shepherds encapsulated it in these familiar words, "... Peace, goodwill [from God] toward men!" (Luke 2:14). When commissioning his disciples to carry on the work he had started, Jesus instructed them to just go and proclaim the "good news" everywhere (Acts 1:8). Summarizing the gospel to the Corinthians, St. Paul put it this way, "Become friends with God; he's already friends with you" (2 Corinthians 5:20, The Message).

Unfortunately that simple truth has been buried under an avalanche of religious supplementation and tradition. As it stands today, the mountain we have to climb to tell the great news is the mountain of man made improvisation and tinkering that has made the Christian religion (not to be confused with humble Christ following spirituality) the divided, quarreling, complicated, expensive, institutionalized obstacle to the dissemination of the gospel it has become.

Here's a little exercise you might want to try. Next time you are in attendance at a church service make a list of everything that you see--the order of service, the arrangement of the furniture, the number of times you are expected to stand up or sit down, the volume of the music and preaching, the style of music and preaching, how the collection was done, the attire of those on stage and in the congregation, the musical instruments used, the length of the service, who conducts the various facets of the service and etc. Be as thorough and observant as you can be of all the little nuances and traditions you normally wouldn't give a passing thought.

Afterward sit down with your Bible and see how many of the things you wrote down are required biblically. Does the Bible say we should have a specific order of service? Does the Bible say who must speak in a Christian gathering? Did your church follow biblical guidelines on when to stand or sit? How about the programs for children, are they biblically mandated? Ask yourself what Bible the first Christians read from. Better still, (trick question) did the first Christians even read the Bible? How did Jesus teach his followers to conduct church services? How are church buildings to be designed according to the Bible? What does the Bible have to say about ushers, greeters, Sunday School teachers, elders, deacons, the choir, special music and video announcments? What has the Bible to say about how long a service should be? Where did we get the phrase "church service"?

Of course, just because something isn't specifically mentioned in the scriptures doesn't mean it's wrong to do it. In fact, we only get into trouble when we try to force the scriptures to be the last word on matters they never address. On the other hand, if it can be demonstrated that our accumulated traditions and practices are unnessary distractions and hindrances to our primary purpose of proclaiming Chirst's good news, perhaps it is time to go back to the basics. As you might have guessed, my own assessment is we have way overdone the church service thing. It has gotten to the point that I'm encountering more and more people who have given up going to church altogether while eagerly claiming Jesus as their beloved Savior. A common sentiment is, "I love Jesus but I hate going to church."

Humble simplicity is a central theme of the Nativity. "Light" and "easy" were terms Jesus used to describe what he was asking of his followers. Certainly there is nothing in the teachings of Jesus that would indicate he expected us to organize our lives around elaborately planned religious services conducted by religious professionals on specified religious days in dedicated religious buildings week after week year in and year out. In fact, he got into big trouble for predicting the central religious edifice of his day, the Temple in Jerusalem, would shortly be destroyed. Not a problem for his mission since he would ask his followers to head out from Jerusalem with the good news into places where no such sanctuary was present or needed anyway.

That Christ came to earth and lived among us for a while so he could remedy and remove everything that stood in the way of God's expressed love for us is truly awesome great news! And there is nothing complicated about telling it to others. If one's religious duties and activities are getting in the way, then I urge you to SIMPLIFY!

Gallivanting Toward the Future

In his challenging book, The Importance of Being Foolish: How to Think Like Jesus (Harper San Francisco), Brennan Manning offers this provacative commentary:

" Why are so many Christians mummified by middle age? Why do we stop growing in the spiritual dimensions of our lives? Why do our liturgies become so stagnant...? Why have creativity and flexibility given way to repitition and rigidity? Where is the life lived as new creations?

We trot out once more what worked in the past. The breath of God is bottled and the gallivanting Spirit (my emphasis) is stymied. The new, the creative, the fresh is looked on with suspicion, not with fascination. 'To live is to change,' wrote John Henry Newman, 'and to have lived well is to have changed often.' ... In the lives of many Christians, apprehension about making mistakes stunts growth, stifles the Spirit, and ensures the progressive narrowing of their personalities.

The church of Jesus Christ is a place of promise and possibility, of adventure and discovery, a community of love on the move, ... But the security seekers are the enemies of openness. Their insistence on preserving the status quo thwarts innovation and spontaneity and discourages the exploration of new roads into the mind of Christ Jesus; wanting to keep things the way they are automatically introduces a new insecurity with more cautions, threats, and nervous tension" (pp. 67-68).


Manning has hit the nail on the head. Sizeable segments of established, insitutional Christianity are floundering because so much of their structure and policy is devoted to preservation not exploration--revival (of the past) not discovery. Hobbled by fear-based doctrines into which they have retreated to avoid tainting by this big bad world until their exegetically contrived escape from it takes place, many Christian groups now find themselves fighting with everything they have to preserve and justify their existence. The language of return--to the faith of our fathers, to "holiness", to the old time religion, to the Bible (as it was taught "back in the day")-- flavors the sermons and enclaves of such Christian entities. Some are making genuine efforts to regain effectiveness (usually defined by numerical and monetary growth), but usually only end up trying to do what they used to do only better. New marketing strategies and reconfigured flow charts will never accomplish what a ready to change pursuit of the "gallivanting Spirit" will. In my opinion, nothing short of a radical break from the past (see my blog on "Abraham Momemts") will result in the vital Christianity we long to see in the 21st Century.

Among the things of the past I think we should leave behind are clergy dominated churches, building centered entertainment oriented church services, fear-based doctrinal schemes that lead to isolation and exclusion, the cerebral-biblicism-supercedes-humble-spirituality approach to the faith, and all the pitfalls of routinization and institutionalization that have been characteristic of "mainstream" Chrisitianity. Unencumbered by all this baggage, who knows what Christ's church might look like? No one does and that's the point! It's time we go gallivanting into our future and find out.