Is Christianity about to slip and go down the drain?
I don’t know much about most things, but I know a lot about churches – having worked with several thousand on six continents for almost four decades. I’m not bragging. It’s sort of a holy obsession.
I was in worship at a church last week and the band played a “new” contemporary song, written by some bozo who probably is a great musician, but slept through Mission 101. Basic to everything Jesus demonstrated – you’re supposed to communicate the divine message in a language your audience uses. Who, in the English 21st century world, uses “thees” and “thous?” Are you kidding me? Yeah, the medium is the message, too. The message becomes “God is old, out of date, or a Shakespearean actor.”
It got me thinking about church leaders and how we train them. If you want to go to the “pagans” (implying someone different from you in a far-away place, not the lady at the coffee shop), you take a different training track: you become a missionary. You know, as in mission – outreach, witness, reach people for Jesus – that stuff.
So what are the rest trained to be? If not “missionaries,” perhaps “maintainaries.” Maybe that’s why the worship leader, band members, pastor, and all but about three of us in worship didn’t almost throw up at the mission insensitivity of Old School English. Pastors are trained to maintain – “maintainaries.” They equip people to be maintainaries. They run churches as maintainaries. Too harsh? Look at the time, money, bulletin content, website, and sermon content. What percentage is maintenance? Mission? Compare the balance of Jesus, Paul, the New Testament.
On my watch, I don’t want this all-powerful faith in the living God to miss anyone. On my watch, I don’t want any church to go down the toilet. Do you?