Complainers, Blamers, and Sloths!

Wow, weeks since a post! I trust your holidays went well, and hopefully you have eluded the crazy flu that has been going around! Our holidays were busy, and then our family was decommissioned for a few weeks as we all got punched in the face with sickness! We are back on track now and posts will become consistent as I have lots of ramblings in my head and this helps.

Many of the posts to follow in the near future will have to do with a common theme I will introduce today. I can't tell you how many conversations I have with people regarding churches some pertaining to church culture, others focusing on church growth, and others that are just flat out disgruntled with anything resembling the institution of church. I personally have said and also have heard others say things that are just flat out crazy talk!

 It seems like everyone has an opinion of what should be different, how it could be better, what's wrong, we need bigger, we need smaller, we need more songs, we need less songs, we need better preaching, shorter preaching, relevant preaching, it's a big ship...change takes time, its a little ship we can change tomorrow, and on and on goes the list. I have concluded that at least for me those comments, some of which I have said tend to be based on my personal preferences or experiences. And I don't consider myself a highly intelligent individual, so I have deduced that for me to base what church should or should not be on myself is reckless at best. So as I hit this hot topic during the next couple of weeks, I am going to try to avoid personal preference and ideas. I also don't want to point fingers or suggest that others are doing it wrong.

The bottom line is this, CHURCH CULTURE NEEDS TO CHANGE. People are leaving the church at a staggering rate, churches are closing daily, the church has lost its voice in the public realm, and on and on goes the list. I have not found to many people that disagree with the above statement. Many agree but don't know what can be done, others claim that that state of the church is directly related to the end times. While I don't fully disagree with the later, I don't ever want to become complacent because I have put an excuse in place.

So what do we do? Where do we look for an example? The answer...JESUS! Jesus changed the culture, Jesus is still changing the culture, I mean Jesus has been on the cover of Newsweek and Time magazine and we don't even have a picture of Him. And you say well Jesus was the Messiah of course He was able to change the culture and society. Didn't He empower the disciples to change current church culture in the book of Acts? Didn't Paul also tell us that the same power the raised Christ from the dead lives in us? If that's true we need to quit complaining about the way things are and start changing to be more like Christ!

In the posts that follow I will share some key characteristics of Jesus that I think are vital in understanding who He was and how He influenced society. The importance of these is crucial since we are commanded to be like minded with Christ.  It's going to be a ride, I have been challenged and know that the beatings will continue and I hope you decide to regularly join in so we can grow together!And for those of you that are grammatically minded, see I told you I was not very intelligent!