I understand why Marti is asking that I stop avoiding conflict. How can I sing a new song of deliverance to those who have no hope if, at the same time, I insist on remaining comfortable among those who do?
She reminded me of my early Christian days where I was honored to be part of a movement built around songs of salvation. We were personally involved in ministries of mercy and issues of compassion and significance. We took on the voice of the prophets, penetrating into those aspects of our culture where the truth of God had a sure and true word for us. We articulated the vision of a radical kind of Christian discipleship. Our voices shined the light of God on the darkness of racism and injustice, and we awoke others to the realities of poverty and corruption.
Many miracles occurred during that season. Yet sadly, few churches were ready for this new influx of radicals, so the movement thrived without many churches participating or offering invitations of welcome. There was more freedom and a far more receptive audience outside.
Why were so many churches not ready? In my opinion, they were much too comfortable with the status quo. One of my earliest songs, “The Cold Cathedral” cried for spiritual reality in the midst of religious deadness, sameness, and a comfort-seeking isolation from the real needs of people – inside and outside the church.
While no longer cold, I fear many of our churches today are in similar places of complacency for other reasons. Instead of cold cathedrals, we might refer to many churches today as “cool” cathedrals – “cool,” as in stylish/fashionable/in vogue. They are so ‘cool’ to the needs of their people that relevancy could in some instances be considered the new god. Today, we seem to again reflect the concerns of the status quo, and the easy acceptance of a world where how we feel is the great crisis of our time. We produce a massive consumer niche of ready to buy, wear, and applaud whatever fits in our pre-described mold of entertainment-oriented discipleship. We dress the way we want to dress, sing songs we want to sing, and hear messages we want to hear. Everything is catered to us. It’s also about a short list of predetermined social issues and not the widespread prophetic agenda of justice and compassion. It’s the church where we want more of Jesus and less for the unjust, hungry, oppressed and displaced. After all, why care as Jesus did for the sick or feed the hungry or release the captives, or treat individuals as an ongoing creation of God when He is coming back tomorrow?
It is time to stop avoiding conflict – stop dodging Jesus – for our more comfortable, more cool Christianity. God wants to drive us right into conflict so He can demonstrate His love and mercy through us where it is most clearly needed.
It is time we sang a new song – a song of deliverance and hope without judgment, as we apply the Gospel in a way that embodies Christ’s heart for the hurting, the weak, and the outcast. It is a new song of reconciliation that causes those with no hope to hear, to run to Him and not away from Him, because acts of love are occurring and not just words.
We have a new song made even surer than the songs of those who mounted the countercultural Jesus movement of the early 70‘s. It is time for isolation and protection to cease. It is time to be the hands, feet and heart of the gospel. Time to venture out of our comfortable places and meet Jesus where He is.
And where is He? He is with the vulnerable and the poor. God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives. He is in the place where our deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet. God is with us if we are with them.
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John Fischer The Catch 
John, I’m glad to see you and Marti developing this theme. The Catch has another life outside the devotionals that somehow has to be turned into words and brought in to the blogosphere. Stories and reflections are good, but who out there knows in their gut what the two of you do, the freedom, labor and fruit of it, when you aren’t writing? We need ministry modeled and taught, we need exposure to it so we can catch the heart of it like a disease.
A caution here, to beware the happy ending and the trodden dead-end path, as far as can be done in a couple hundred words. All the things that happened out of the Jesus movement happened as side-effects of an insistence on a real experiential personal relationship with Christ in real time. They translated, among other things, into “love and mercy going where they are most needed,” but it was not a social gospel, a grand fix-it strategy that left God in the dust; nor was it liberation theology, class warfare on behalf of God. Justice is not merely the equal allocation of dollars and cents, else how explain Marti’s Hollywood runway party for homeless women? Or to spend money she doesn’t herself have, on paper, to give a disposessed woman of wealth an afternoon of familiar comforts (which “could have been sold at a high price and the money given to the poor!”)?
Stay the course, make mistakes, and finish this good thing.
love – D
As I read today’s Catch I was reminded of words from two songs – two of which I was led by the Spirit to sing during my time with a local Christian rock band – motivated by my frustrating experiences with too many churches…sadly almost 30 years later I feel the same frustration.
“And the church is fast asleep – in her mansion of opinion high above the street.” (Mansion of Opinion / Scott Roley)
“Lookin’ through rose-colored stained-glass windows – never allowin’ the world to come in.
Seeing no evil and felling no pain – making the light that comes from within so dim.” (Rose-colored Stained-glass Windows / Petra)
And of course, every word of The Steeple Song by Don Francisco.
My ministry today in the motorcycle community cause me to be absent from many Sunday services – reason being most, if not all, biker events occur on a Sunday when most people are off work. Instead of praying for this mission the Lord has led me into – too many people are praying that I will be convicted and led back to where they think I should be – in the church pew with them.
Thank you John, for counting the cost…and still having faith that it’s worth fighting the good fight!
Blessings!
Sandie,
I believe you are right on. Go where the need is!
You carry that gospel on your bike. Way to go.
Wow–if the words to those songs aren’t indictments of some of today’s churches (my own on occasion, at least in the past), I don’t know what is!
Karen – sounds like you either know these songs or went to YouTube to experience them.
Sailaway – if you feel that way about your church’s condition, the conflict / conversation already resides in your heart. When God lays these truths on us, we are honored, but we are also held to a higher responsiblity for how we utilize it. Ask God for the courage and faith to give it a voice – but remember to treat those on the opposite side of the equation with the utmost consideration and honor – for they are just as dearly loved by Christ as you are – and they hold a piece of the answer you seek. As frustrating and slow as the process seems to us, remember we’re all headed in the same direction – perfection in Christ – and we are responsible for one another. Colossians 3: 12-17. Oh boy, yet again
I need to hold myself responsible!
Another thought: Mission generally doesn’t happen in the pew–it’s being out in the world.
We can’t or don’t even have this conversation in my church. I am so hungry for conflict, the kind that brings God to the forefront .