Church and Stuff

So, I promised that I would bring about some new beginnings here by writing "stuff" rather than attempting to stage a theological revolution. I am here now, with my forth empty coffee cup of the morning, to deliver on that promise.

There is no gentle way to ease into the conversation that I want to have right now, so I'll just jump right in:

I think most "churches" these days are really "institutes of Christian sociology." They serve to appropriately socialize those who wish to think of themselves as Christians into the stero Christian bubble. Beyond that, they just circulate a lot of money, mostly upon the conveyance of religious obligation.

The "church" I have experienced for the past six or seven years (with the exception of the ministry of Bob Shaw) is the capitalist-sociological reflection of the gospel but is not the institution of the gospel itself.

I never hear preachers actually preach the gospel any more, or even really talk about the gospel, except in "aside" obligatory comments like "because Jesus died for our sins..." as to explain something else.

I usually feel that I am being spoken to, from the pulpit, as though I am a foreigner to anything spiritual and could not possibly "handle" the actual gospel message, or anything like it. It is as though, presumably, I need to be spoon-fed the rhetoric of distant religious notions, and such as according to the familiar pattern of "ordinary ideas." This manifests as sermons that are preached through clumbsy analogies and vauge emotional imagery, to be metabolized in the imagination rather than what the Bible refers to as the heart (the seat of conviction).

In the same, I never hear preachers actually talk about God Himself anymore either. I hear a lot of talk about "God, the idea," or "God, the founder of this theology." I hear people talk about God Himself so scarcely now that I wonder if anyone will even know what I mean by this...

I mean the way that people would talk about God if they actually knew Him - if He were the person who owned their truest affections, and by the knowledge of His love, commanded their waking thought each day. The one of whom they might say with the bride of Solomon, "I am my Beloved's, and my Beloved is mine."

That is the God that I really want to hear about at church. My soul is sick from discussions of God, by Christians, who speak of Him as though He were a "black-box" character upon whom we experiment to please. I know they do not mean to be irreverent, but they miss the real point of any of true form of Christianity.

I had a dream a few months ago that I was being interviewed for a ministry position at my church. In the dream, I was asked by the pastoral staff, "So, Daniel, what is it that you feel you can offer to this ministry?"

I replied with the words of A.W. Tozer:

"It is not mere words that nourish the soul, but God Himself; and unless and until the hearers come into the intimate experience of God Himself, they are none the better for having heard the truth."

In the dream, I was hired, and put in charge of a kindergarden class.