Does Anyone Care if Private Ryan is Actually Saved? - My 20th blog

Does anyone care if Private Ryan is actually saved???

You ever watch a movie and an image or scene just burns in your mind?  One of those for me was in the movie Saving Private Ryan when it showed a young soldier on the beach bending over to pick up his detached arm and carrying it off to who knows where.  That scene was amazing for all the wrong reasons, and it has just stuck with me since I saw it for the very first time.  That scene came back to me while reading 1^st Corinthians 12 the other day. Was this scene what our church looks like today??

1 Corinthians 12:12-19 says “The human body has many parts, but the many parts make up one whole body. So it is with the body of Christ. Some of us are Jews, some are Gentiles, some are slaves, and some are free. But we have all been baptized into one body by one Spirit, and we all share the same Spirit. Yes, the body has many different parts, not just one part. If the foot says, “I am not a part of the body because I am not a hand,” that does not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear says, “I am not part of the body because I am not an eye,” would that make it any less a part of the body? If the whole body were an eye, how would you hear? Or if your whole body were an ear, how would you smell anything? But our bodies have many parts, and God has put each part just where he wants it. How strange a body would be if it had only one part!”

The church is one body made of many parts.  There are feet, hands, legs, arms, etc…  And yeah I know what I’m about to say is common sense, but feet not attached to any legs are pretty useless.  Hands with no arms aren’t gonna do you any good.  Try sitting on your shoulders sometime…not gonna work too well you know?  So back to Saving Private Ryan and the beach scene.  There were body parts everywhere because this was a warzone…and in a lot of churches that is exactly what it looks like.  Body parts everywhere detached from the body and useless to serve because of the separation.

Now before I go any further let me say this, I am not bashing the church.  I never will because that is what Jesus died for and in the end that is the only thing left standing.  So don’t read this and be inspired to write your “let’s love and not bash the church” status or tweet.  And if you feel inspired to do that, I challenge you to look at what many churches have become, and if you are happy with that or you think Jesus is happy with what we have made of church go right ahead.  More power to you.  I personally think that a lot of people are gonna be held accountable for realizing what is going on in our churches and doing absolutely nothing and saying absolutely nothing about it in the name of this is “my” church and this is “our” way or I don't want to upset the "money" in the church.  Also I’m pretty sure God was not too proud of the church when it killed Jesus, just my opinion.

And man oh man am I as guilty as I can be of detachment.  Working with youth for about the last 12 years I not only wanted to but actually did try to distance and shelter the young people from many aspects of the “business meeting” side of church. (By the way don’t you have to know that the devil’s favorite services are those churchwide business meeting services!)  But anytime you’re a foot and you try to distance yourself from the leg you’re just killing yourself. And anytime you try to be the head it definitely doesn’t work.  There is only one head and it’s not the pastor or chairman of the deacons or the little old widow lady with all the money…it is Jesus.  And when you try to replace Him with yourself or with anyone else you better look out!

But when the body parts works together and function and perform their role in conjunction with the other parts then the pastor doesn’t care about being perfect, just transparent.  The charter member of the 100 year old church doesn’t care when the music changes and the songs lyrics are shown on a big screen and the 1611 Baptist Hymnal isn’t our only source of song.  The chairman of the deacons doesn’t know the church bylaws better than he does the Bible.  When someone gets saved we are more concerned about going crazy and rejoicing because hell just got smaller than making sure we got a first, a second and a church wide vote to make sure WE accept who God already has.  Religion and tradition (by the way the reason that the church killed Jesus, addiction to those two things) do not matter, what matters is that we have the one thing that can save people from going to hell and we want as many people to know about Him as possible.  People are more important than protocol.  (And I am not against protocol but I have seen WAY TOO MANY times when Robert from Robert's Rules of Order was way more important than Robert the lost man who is visiting our church.)

When the body parts work together we go meet lost people where they are and don’t expect them to just come to us.  Because the legs carry the feet allowing the hands to meet at the back of the ones our arms are embracing and showing the love of Christ to.  When the body parts work together we realize that being an alcoholic, pornographer, drug addict, child abuser, or a sex addict isn’t the problem with lost people, it’s that they don’t know Jesus.  

When the body parts work together the hands don’t mind washing the feet, the legs don’t mind the load that they carry, the arms are always open, and the eyes are always on the lookout for someone that the mouth and tongue can share the good news with.

After all, the body of Christ is the one body we should always want to get bigger.

Your Church Canceled Sunday Night Service for the Superbowl?? Blasphemy!!! - My 19th Blog

Your church canceled Sunday night service for the Superbowl?  Blasphemy!!!

In full disclosure, this is not only something I would have said a long time ago, it is probably something I did say a long time ago.  

And I don’t write this blog to defend the church I am a member at now because I have learned people are going to be critical no matter what, and saying this as nicely as possible, you cannot argue with ignorant people (or religious people).  

So yeah my church canceled their Sunday night services on Superbowl Sunday and moved them to Saturday night.  I started attending there last year at this time and I heard the announcement of what they were doing and I was like “Uhhhhh…uhhhhh…what?”   You see I had heard so many times from so many pastors and church leaders about churches doing this and about how they would not cancel or move their service because of a football game no matter how big the game or how many people would be watching!!   So you see for 33 years I never watched an entire Superbowl because I was always at church with the 25 or 30 other people that showed up on that Sunday night.  (Okay that last sentence may have sounded kind of ugly, but the truth…she ain’t always pretty you know?)

So last year, the day before Superbowl Sunday, I actually attended the Saturday night service at my church instead of the traditional Sunday service.   And I was absolutely blown away at the attendance.  The building was packed out!!!  And during the invitation, I personally counted 25 people who responded to the call of salvation and I couldn’t even see the entire church.  You know how I know this?  Because I am that guy who when the preacher says every head bowed and every eye closed still looks around trying to avoid awkward eye contact with you as you look around too.  

In that moment it really hit me.  Over 100 million people watch the Superbowl every year.  It is not only appealing to the men because of the game, but it is very appealing to the women because of the commercials.  Let’s face it, most of America is at home watching this game.  Satan wants to get as many people out of church as he can and he is gonna use whatever method it takes to make something appealing to all sexes and to as many people as possible!  You see my church fought back against that…and that is really what struck me.  You see so many churches are just out there playing defense trying to make their membership happy and are so worried about the people inside the walls of the church that they lose their focus on the people outside the walls of the church. It is time our churches started playing some offense too, and if you read about the armor of God in Ephesians God actually gives us a sword to play some offense with!  Let’s unsheathe it church!!

The world is a different place than it was even as little as 10 or 20 years ago.  Technology has changed. Family structure has changed.  People have changed.  America has changed.  And a church or a pastor that is unwilling to change their methods in my opinion is in danger.  I’m not talking about the message now, but the methods.  This really hit me the other night as I was reading my three year old a story from her picture Bible.  It was the story from John 21 where the disciples had been fishing all night and caught nothing.  Jesus simply said, hey change your method and throw your net on the right side of the boat.  They did this and there were so many fish they couldn’t even haul their net in.  All night they fished and caught nothing until they changed their method and then they caught everything.   I bet if most churches looked at their numbers over the past 5 and 10 years they would not only see a plateau, but they would see a decline in their numbers.  Yet they will not change their methods.  WHY?  I am so glad that God did not call pastors and deacons to be military leaders.  Except you know what, He kinda really did!! You see because when God saved us He put us on the battleground and when we can’t or won’t change our methods yet the enemy is constantly changing his it puts us in a very perilous place when our church leadership refuses to respond or even acknowledge this. 

I’ll close with this.  Don’t be critical of a church that changes their service for the Superbowl.  I know of at least 25 souls that are glad my church did last year.  And my church is far from perfect, believe me, but I appreciate the way they go after the lost people where they are.  And by the way, and I don’t mean this to sound snippy or arrogant, but my church never cancels night services for Father’s day or Mother’s day like most churches do.  And we don’t cancel our services on Easter or Christmas either, in fact we have service Thursday night through Sunday night for those two important Holy holidays. This Christmas we had 44 services meaning 44 opportunities for people to attend.  

And of course there is this…if anyone can tell me where the Bible says you even have to have church on Sunday night I’ll take all this back :)

P.S. This thought just hit me, a church changing their Sunday night service to a Saturday night service because of the Superbowl isn't the world "entering into" the church, it is the church "entering into" the world...which is exactly where it is supposed to be.