By Dean LuskGARDENDALE | Fri Mar 2, 2012 8:15am EST -- Several years ago in Gardendale, Alabama, a suburb of Birmingham, a group of people with similar interests began to meet in a community center they rented every other Saturday. The facility in an upper middle class section of town; an area where people took pride in their landscaping, had solid high-paying jobs, two and a half kids, etc.
There was nothing at all unusual about people meeting in the community center, but when word got out that the crowd was made up of parolees, convicted felons, and people who'd been accused of any number of crimes from petty theft to rape and arson, the community was none too happy, for obvious reasons.
Fairly soon it was discovered that the meetings were essentially seminars where attendees were given what amounted to step-by-step tutorials on topics like disarming alarm systems, offensive combat techniques, and weapons training. As this leaked out, the well-to-do neighborhoods nearby became paralyzed with fear. Sales of high-end security systems, video monitoring systems, and home window security bars nearly tripled in the first two months of the group's meetings.
Over time, however, the community residents were surprised that although there was an occasional burglary in the neighborhood or a petty theft at a nearby convenience store, the crime rate didn't actually rise. On top of that, the extra income generated by the facility rental allowed the community center to make improvements on its property, initially adding a baseball diamond and after a few years, a swimming pool. The leader of the group continued to make occasional appearances on local-access TV channels and in spite of being outspoken and having rather alarming commentary on some issues, his ideas never gained traction outside the group.
It wasn't very long before the group of people meeting in the community center came to be classified as "mostly harmless."
The above is a work of fiction; a parable submitted for your consideration. Has the Church become all bark and no bite? Are our meetings just informational seminars that rarely result in action or implementation? Do we expect to get by on our reputation or things we've done in the past? Are we really "mostly harmless"?
If we lived and practiced what Jesus taught and what we teach in our meetings, wouldn't we expect to see some crazy changes in our communities?
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Comments (6)
I love this.
@RevoHor@xanga -
Awesome. Thanks!That's why I like a church that gets out among the community and does things, rolls up its sleeves and gets to work. Plenty of elderly that need their houses painted and shrubs trimmed back, plenty of impoverished that need renovations to their houses. Always can use help at the food bank or soup kitchen, always time for a grafitti detail or litter pickup. These things help God's earth and His children, and demonstrate God's love of all through love of one another.. Yes, funding missionaries is fine, but loading a busload of people to help with Katrina or other natural disasters is a good thing too. Far too many churches have far too many committees which have far too many meetings...
Individuals both with and without belief in religion do much good work. The perception is that the level of belief doesn't make a difference. Church charitable organizations are perceived to offer "soup with strings attached". It is essential for Christians to do good works if they are going to influence anybody at all. Too many talk the talk and that's it.
Thank you for that parable. It touches on an issue that has been coming up recently in my own heart, and I enjoyed the way you worded it.
As I see it, there are multiple issues with different local members of the body of Christ here in the USA. If these statements offend you, please do not get mad at me, but read your Bible for yourself and examine your own heart to see if what I say is right or wrong.
1) There are churches where the members have become so inward focused that they don't live the life of love that Jesus commanded His followers to do. Once we have and know the love of Christ in our hearts, that love should come out and be making changes in our lives and the lives of others, as we show love to those around us. "We love because He first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And He has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother"
(1 John 4:19-21). And also 1 John 2:3-6"We know that we have come to know Him if we obey His commands. The man who says, 'I know Him,' but does not do what He commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But if anyone obeys His word, God’s love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in Him: Whoever claims to live in Him must walk as Jesus did." These churches are the ones that Ork58@xanga mentioned, and they are probably the ones that are on his heart. However, there are other churches that aren’t doing what they should be doing, and these are the ones that are on my heart as of recently.
2) These churches are have "goodwill to men" with no "seeking
and saving the lost" (Luke 19:10). They teach Jesus the Humanitarian, completely cutting out and making insignificant the cross and the shed blood of Jesus. They have gone so far as to say that they don't believe that Christ is the only way to get to heaven. That, right there, is heresy, and nothing short of it. You cannot claim to believe the Bible and somehow think that everyone gets to go to heaven apart from Christ. You cannot get rid of the message that is central to the entire Bible! Without the death and resurrection of Jesus, humanitarian efforts amount to good works, which get the doers and recipients nowhere in the long run. It is of them that Jesus says “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from Me, you evildoers!’”(Matt 7:21-23). It is commendable and desirable to want to make the lives of our fellow humans here on earth better, but a church can go too far in the area of humanitarianism when they make that their primary goal. If we are all about helping people’s material lives and social lives and physical wellbeing, but not their spiritual wellbeing and the eternal state of their souls, the work we do is not long lasting.
Instead, as Paul says in his second letter to the Corinthians, we have been given the ministry of reconciliation (2 Cor 5:18) and the message of reconciliation: "that God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them" (5:19). This is to come first, as the message of reconciliation IS the message of love. "This is how God showed His love among us: He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins" (1 John 4:9-10).
1 Corinthians 13 is known to many as the love chapter and is read at many weddings. This chapter, in context, shows to the church in Corinth how people can falsify the gifts that come from the Spirit, but it is because of the love that comes from Jesus
that there is a difference, since unbelievers cannot have that love. However, continuing past the spiritual gifts, we come to chapter 15. In this chapter, Paul reminds the believers at Corinth of the gospel of Christ, the gospel that saves them—"that Christ died for our sins... that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day... and that He appeared...." (1 Cor 15:3-5).
In 1 John chapter 3, John writes that that we know what love is because "Jesus Christ laid down His life for us" (1 John 3:16). Verse 17 goes on to show we must show this love by caring for others, but specifically for others in the church, other members of Christ's body. Then come the verses I mentioned above already: "We love because He first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother" (1 John 4:19-21). People will see that Jesus is good, as well as that we are His followers, if we "love one another" (John 13:35).
There is a need to do both—to show love and care for others and to evangelize. However, these tasks cannot be delegated to anyone other than ourselves, each and every one of us who claim to be followers
of Christ. Each of us is called by God to share the good news of what Christ has done for us to the people around us. We do also need to become more like God, Who is love. To fully understand what His love is we need to understand what He did for us out of love by the sacrifice of Jesus. “But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8). We need to understand the gravity of what we do apart from God, the uselessness and foolishness of it, to understand the awesomeness of the grace He gave us through His sacrifice. When we know how fully we have been loved, we can better understand how to fully love others. And this love cares not just for the outside, but for the inside as well; not only for the temporary things of this world that will eventually die, but for the eternal things like a person’s soul and where it will end up. “What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Matt 16:26). Good things here are good here, and without Jesus they don’t help once a person is standing before God. “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matt 10:28). I also include myself in the list of people who need to be aware of these things.
Today I posted another day in the neighborhood:
http://pphilip.xanga.com/759813537/just-another-day-in-the-neighborhood/
A lot of people show pride in their neighborhood by cleaning things up. Just talk and relying upon the government is just not enough.
I don't know if doing things in secret is really ok. People do tend to take things for granted and project stereotypes. To keep order, you have to practice order. To keep spiritual you have to practice more in being spiritual. To just write is not enough.