Moses:
It is one of the great moments in the Old Testament history. Perhaps it is the key moment: a moment of spontaneous combustion as the bush ignited into flames. “Moses” it said, “Moses” it resounded. At the sound of his own name he was caught, as we also would have been. We listen, whether we want to or not, because the Voice that calls us by name in such a theophany, is a voice that knows us and has something to say. For all we know, everything may depend on our listening and answering.
Moses, the stranger and exile, stood there with the muck of the sheep on his shoes, guilty of a man’s murder and he listened and answered. The end result of God’s conversation with Moses was the word GO. God gave him purpose and a direction, not necessarily a road map…but a sense of Hope. Through His encounter with God, his faith was so bolstered that he developed a hope that he could be a part of something that would make a meaningful difference in the world.
Myself:
There are times for all of us when life seems without purpose or meaning. Who am I? What is my life really meant to accomplish? Am I experiencing the life I was created to experience? Every day just seems like a do-over, is there more?
Even in church we read our purpose/mission statement (if we have one) and wonder what it really means. What can we do? Where can we turn? We come to church week after week, year after year, but can we say how, if at all, our lives have been changed as the result? Is the life with Christ just a list of do’s and don’ts that seemingly keeps me stressed out?
To be honest, I suspect we would say we haven’t been changed much by today’s Church, which mirrors more and more the culture of the world and less of the Kingdom. Yet, we keep on going. Beneath all the reasons we have for doing so, exists a deep foundational root. If I could give only one word to characterize the element of the root, the word I would give is Hope. Hope that eventually we will experience a change that frees us to experience life abundantly, personally and corporately.
It is through our hope that He will call us by our name and give us courage to pursue the radical life of discipleship He would have us live and become; and in our community of faith, He will come to heal, to save and to teach us how to provide the Hope He has given us to others.
My Church:
My church, the church on the other side of town and the church on the other side of the world; all churches everywhere at some point or another feel they are stuck. In my denominational role, I have had the unfortunate task of assisting congregations close their doors for the last time. They got stuck while sitting in the pew, passing time and prayer for someone to come and release them from their mired-up condition. The divine intervention never came. They died being stuck to the things of old that break easily.
In most congregations throughout our nation things went well in the past, especially in the 1940’s and 1950’s, but the things that brought those past successes do not work today. Now we can sit and pray, thinking the whole time we will die without divine intervention. So we sit and pray and hope. Our hope is not in divine intervention but in the life in which Christ has called us.
As individuals, He has called us to accept His grace, redemption and new life. Pastor J.D. Greear writes concerning the need for us to recover the power that made Christianity revolutionary: the Christian pilgrim must be radical enough to lay aside the “rules, do’s, don’ts and expectations that have historically been ingrained in us” and radically reconnect with the Gospel of Christ.
Our hope should be grounded in the daily prayer: In Christ, there is nothing I can do that would make You love me more, and nothing I have done that makes you love me less. Your presence and approval are all I need for everlasting joy. As you have been to me, I will be to others. As I pray, I’ll measure Your compassion by the cross and Your power by the resurrection.
As the Church, God has called us to make a meaningful difference in the world. Unfortunately, the overwhelming focus of our budgets, activities, programming and ministries are tied to the church campus. A reconnection with the passion of the Gospel will challenge the Church to focus less on the church campus and more upon the world community. The hope of the future Church will be dependent upon a new kind of Christian. The answer lies not in the one who sits in the pew and prays for divine intervention but in the one who enters the door afresh, whose connection is not with a campus but with a Christ who calls out, Go!
Can you imagine a spiritual journey that is not confined by the expectations of religion and society but freed by the principles and edicts found in the four Gospels? Can you imagine attending a church that feels more like community of faith whose passion is driven less by the needs of the campus and more by the needs of the global community? It can happen, are you willing?
