What a crazy world we live in...

“I have been labeled blasphemer”

“Really?”

“Yes, it is too dangerous for me, for my family, we had to leave, they will kill me, and maybe harm my family, I must move, I did not want to leave, but I must think of my children…”

I really had no idea how to respond outside of “man, that sucks.” Even though I wished I could say more, somehow respond with something of value, reassurance, exhortation. Yet, I had nothing, I cannot identify, I really never can when I hear all these stories with everywhere we travel.

Unreal words that most of us will never even come close to uttering…because we live in a society, rather we exist in a church that is so part of the capitalistic, consumerist entity that is America that such persecution is pretty much impossible. We have so integrated the Church with the culture that Christian is no longer a liable distinction of difference. As our buildings grow larger, our services more friendly to both the seeker and the ‘disciple’ we are losing that which has made the Church exist: Christ and His mission. I read books that talk about capturing the genius behind the early church and the modern day movement that is happening in China…amazing stories of persecution littered with perseverance and triumph. Its really encouraging don’t get me wrong but to apply such spirit-led devotion and movement is tough when the entity that it is being applied to is so vastly in a different position than that of the applied. The American church has nothing to fear as it stands…no authority, no principality etc…as it stands. Oh there is certainly a battle to be fought there, its just that our Church wishes not too. Conformity is the name of the game. Going back…

The rapid spreading, grassroots, apostolic movement of Christ became immediate, expected, wide scale and predictable when Constantine decided the Edict of Milan was a good idea…the age of Christendom was born and the church and the state were then one…now as the modern age has slowly closed and the postmodern era as it has become labeled secures its name in society, Christendom has been lost but we have failed to see that. As a church we miss the days when the country was ‘christian’, when there was a common morality that was given through the dictums of the Catholic mass. Although those days have long past we seek to restore the Church to something it was never intended to be…a partner of the State if not the State itself. Our new flashy services do nothing more than feed the consumerist desires of the epitamy of a consumerist society. Come to our service where you can one-stop shop for all your religious and ‘spiritual’ needs. The great tragedy here is the as Derek Webb says is the, “neutering of the Gospel of Christ” The loss of the mission, of the going out, of the reverance for the sacred. We cannot expect or just wait for mass renewal and movement if we remain a Church trying to hold strong to a dying, rather dead ecclessiology of Church + State = One.

We want to see that crazy church transformation, I know we do, but as always the pieces must be in place prior to such a thing. Jesus spent 30 years setting stuff up before he started to get down and dirty with his ministry and even then he spent most of his time making little miniature models of himself in the scraggly 12. It is in that investment, that devotion to the end goal rather than the immediate fulfillment of our needs that we get in a consumerist society that we must be focused on. Before the church can stand up to rulers, before we can revolutionize communities as a church we must be distinguished as such.. We get there by investment now, faithfulness to Christ; in his exampe and in His mission.

A man James and I are currently working with is the only believer amongst his village, which is a part of a small tribal people group in Southeast Asia. A few years ago, wealthy in the local standards (home, small business, loving wife, children, etc.) he walked past a Church, stopped in out of curiosity and stayed. Now he has no wife, his children also taken away, his small shop is now refused to be shopped at by his own people and yet he works with us, recording a movie that will hopefully lead more of his people down the same path he has walked…one that considers all things a loss for the sake of knowing Christ. I asked him “why did you stay faithful even when your wife was walking out the door”

“The way of the Lord is true, I cannot do anything else”

…that simple I guess.