When Church is a Turn Off

Mark Twain once said: “A cat who sits on a hot stove will never sit on a hot stove again. He’ll never sit on a cold stove either. From then on, that cat just won’t like stoves.”

You begin to talk to be people about God and quickly you’ll find out their feelings about the “Church”. Although they may be spiritual and interested in matters of faith their negative concept of what church is like is often deeply ingrained. That’s rough because church can be one of the most incredible things in a person’s life. A place for community, a place that challenges you, a center for joining your arts and gifts to better each other and the world we live in. So often church becomes so much of what it never was intended to be and there’s the rub.

People begin to see it as a place that is internally focused where people whose heads are buried in the sand gather to decree the sky is falling, and while we wait for the sky to fall let’s try to work on making each other look like each other because isn’t that what Christ died for in the first place. So that you can look just like pastor “bob” and his wife and all the smiley people in the halls and foyers. I guess to me I thought we were supposed to look like Christ.

This is the week that Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. A week that reveals Jesus not as the one out leading the masses with charisma and flair, but the one praying so hard by himself that blood like drops of sweat poured from Him. The one who was beaten beyond recognition, the one who was nailed to a cross naked before women, men, and children.

He did all of this for you and for me. He did all of this so that He could gather people together so that they could be better than they ever could be on their own. The Bible refers to Christ followers as sheep, as The Bride, but it also refers to them as “The Church”.

The word church in the Greek is “ecclesia” and it means a group that’s been summoned or called out for a specific purpose. How amazing that God calls us to come together for His purposes. Maybe that’s where we miss it? We gather for our purposes and not His purposes. Obviously this week reveals Christ main purpose to reach others with His love and to see lives changed forever.

We are emphatic at the Embassy that we want to be a place that celebrates and embraces the best that church can be while pushing from us the things that often make church a “hot stove” to those seeking a living God. Have we arrived? No way, but each week we endeavor to push down pride, arrogance, selfishness, self-righteousness so that we don’t block people from seeing the best of Jesus because of the worst of the church. There is nothing like being a part of a healthy church and to remain healthy you have to check yourself before you wreak yourself. Let’s always strive to embrace what Christ embraced the most and that’s people… good people bad people, well people sick people, strong people weak people can all find their place under the steeple. (OK we don’t have a steeple, but I couldn’t resist the rhyme)

-end of rant