Step outside...

Does anyone else share my dislike of our constant need to watchguard what we do and say? Do you ever feel like our messages, both personal and at church are sometimes sugar coated or ground up because either the group or leaders are too concerned with offending someone to tell it ‘like it is’? Or that too much weight is given to making a topic ‘palatable’, or ‘consumable’? I constantly hear that different groups/churches/whatevah are ‘pushing the envelope’, or trying to be ‘edgy’, or ‘real’, but all too often it still comes down to presenting the lowest common denominator?

Here’s an example, based on something I’ve been thinking about from one of Dave’s posts:

Dave states (summarily) that he thinks people should be serving in ministry.

An MC at church says ‘We’d love to have you serve’, but we don’t ever push it.

Why not? Why not push things a little more, make people evaluate why they’re at the Journey in the first place?

One of the things that REALLY attracted me here was going to the welcome night at Jeff’s house.

it was shortly after my previous church had gone out of business, and there were several people from there attending, and he said something like this:(paraphrasing from memory): “I love that all of you are checking out the Journey, but I want you to know what the Journey is about, and what our mission is.” then he went on and told us more about it. He then finished it up with something like this: “If this is where you guys want to go to chuch, great. If it’s not, don’t come here. Don’t come to the Journey thinking that it’s going to be something else that you want, or something that you’re looking for that we don’t offer. This is what we are, and this is what we’re trying to be, and if that doesn’t fit in with what you’re looking for, you’re better off looking somewhere else.”

I was impressed by how blunt Jeff was about it.

This is what we do.

If you want to do it, that’s awesome.

If you have other ideas, then best of luck to you, but not here, not now.

He didn’t pull punches at all.

And it made me very uncomfortable. The idea of getting outside of a saccharine church and into one that really wanted to touch people took a lot of prayer and willingness to step outside our comfort zone.

I challenge all of us: If you’re comfortable in what you’re doing - going to church, being in your ministry, whatever it is - then something is wrong.

Get uncomfortable. Push someone. Make them think about what they’re doing. About why they do it. Even the leaders, even me (especially me). No-one should be immune! Why can’t you tell your friends? why wouldn’t you invite someone? Have you PERSONALLY invited EVEN ONE person to the Journey, or talked to them about faith? or Jesus? WHY NOT?!