As is painfully evident, I have been grossly negligent about keeping this blog up to date recently. I have a hundred reasons—and no reasons—for this, all at the same time. I could blame the amount of time I have spent in my study of theological German. Or I could plead about my travel to San Diego, California and Rochester, New York. However, the discerning among you would recognize that these are but excuses, not reasons. Excuses, an old teacher once told me, are lies stuffed in the skin of a reason. Well, I may not be lying, but I would venture that all my excuses combined don’t constitute a good reason!
However, I do have a desktop covered with incomplete articles for the blog. And that points to what is perhaps the true reason for my recent dereliction of duty. I suffer from the constant temptation to—and bondage of—perfectionism. Things have to be in just the right condition before I feel comfortable enough to release them. And that requires a fair bit of time and effort. Now I’ve heard that this is something of a catch-22; one gets better at writing by releasing that writing. It may be pride that causes me to stumble. Yet in all honesty, it is more than just pride that inhibits a quick and continuous posting of my views from this road less traveled…. Bear with me as I try to explain.
It takes a lot of editing before my thoughts come together into something approaching accurate expression. I can be quite lazy in my choice of vocabulary, and I have a problematic tendency toward the use of a confrontational style of rhetoric. I can sound as if I believed that it is “my way or the highway,” and while I wish it could be that way (heh!… as do we all, if only we are honest!), I actually am more tolerant of other opinions than one might think!
Apparently, when I taught in South Africa, many of my students were afraid of me, which, if you know me at all, is one of the most amusing delusions imaginable. Yet I can understand it, because I tend to declaim quite forcefully. I would do that in the hope of provoking thought and reflection. However, as I have “matured,” (ah, euphemisms!), I try to be less fanatical and more hospitable in my expression. I am no less certain of my insights, but I have come to a better appreciation of the intricacies of life, especially the life in Christ. So I want to insure that my writing does not lapse back into that authoritarian cadence. Today I am more interested in dialogue than monologue, and my writing must reflect that. This blog is not a place to come to hear words from a Master, but rather a place to exchange observations with a fellow traveler. I am only a guide, not the Designer. And my purpose is not to tell anyone the way to walk, but rather to take someone by the hand and walk the way together with him or her.
Therefore, I feel a need to pay even more attention to how I say these many things that I observe on my journey. I sense a special obligation to express myself accurately, not in the least because so much of what I have to say runs contrary to the ways things are, especially within the Church. Listen, anyone can sit outside and throw stones at the Church and its ministry, but the end result of that is the hurt and destruction of people. The Church is the people of God; it is God’s chosen place of presence in this earth. And God loves His church! So if we wish to speak anything about it or its ministry, we must be sure that it springs from right motives, is edifying, and ministers love and compassion. Again, as a sin-scarred human, it takes work to get the words right.
I am helped by the constant admission that every critique is first and foremost a critique of my self. I only recognize evil because of my own personal acquaintance with it. Therefore when I encounter something that makes me want to shout from the housetops, I must first consider how it applies to me. Only then can I consider writing it down for public consumption. For in all these things we are all guilty, and the phrase, “There but for the grace of God go I,” is perhaps most applicable. So we strive to write, not with the intent of painting ourselves as superior or wise, but in the hope that others may join with us in purging ourselves from the sin that plagues the Church and us in these days.
I share this in the hope that you will catch a glimpse of my heart. I am increasingly distressed by the condition of the church in North America. I am saddened that the role of the pastor has been changed into that of a corporate CEO. I grieve to hear of individual people being processed through the church, where they matter only as components of attendance numbers and offering income, charted and graphed as a means of evaluating the “success” of the ministry. I am sickened by the change to the definition of ministry: once it was a calling, now it is a career. And I am disgusted by pastors who buy sermon outlines and PowerPoint™ slides and video introductions from some mega-church organization to splash across their stages each week, because they don’t have or take the time to do the hard work of fasting and praying and waiting on God to receive a message for the people. But then, what does it matter, for that pastor probably doesn’t know those people anyway; he doesn’t know the challenges they are experiencing or how they are living. He knows the crowd, and the bigger the crowd, the more he is fulfilling the Great Commission, right? God’s individual people are dying, starved for the Word and hurting; the world is going to hell and the church has lost its prophetic effect on society. But boy, aren’t our new churches so big and wonderful! May God have mercy on us all.
You can perhaps see why I struggle with releasing some of these impressions that I have been collecting. I had only intended to make a brief apology here for my lack of postings, but it is good that I got sidetracked into this exposition. We live in a dangerous time, a time of great deception and duplicity. Unlike many of my more positive brethren, I believe things will get much worse before they get better. And, as much as it frightens me to say this, I believe that one of the most deceived institutions of our time is the North American church. It has been corrupted by money, power and commerce, and it has chosen to abandon the Word in favor of the felt-needs of culture. I sense a calling to speak to these things, and I want to do so accurately, carefully and constructively. God loves His Church and so do I. It is His body, His presence in this world. I know that if these things disturb me, then He must weep and grieve over them even more. So may I ask you to pray, for the Church, yes; but also for me. Pray very hard. And let us begin anew. Thanks for reading.
