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What if?

  • Jan 1, 2007

Have you ever asked the question, what if church could be different?  What if church was real and engaging?  What if church actually helped the community and encouraged people to live full lives?

Well, if you have ever thought these types of questions, then you will enjoy this article.  I have been asking these questions for years and as I have searched for what the church was intended to be, I have come across several key ingredients that if included, would allow the church to be all that she was intended to be.

Loving God & Loving People  These two things capture all the church should be about.  In fact, when Jesus was pushed into the corner by the religous, He single handedly painted or in this case re-presented what the church should be about.  Let me elaborate...

Jesus was instantly famous going into his public ministry because of the miraculous things He was doing.  As he performed mind-blowing miracles, he also taught the truths of God.  With an attempt to make Jesus look blasphemous or as a law breaker, the Religous Rulers...the keepers of the Law, asked him a question.  Jesus, what do you say the most important commandment is?  With every bit of patience he had, the answer came with such simplicty yet such depth that it silenced those asking instead of making him look foolish.  "Jesus says, Love God with all of your heart, mind and soul, this is the greatest.  And the second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself.  These two things are the pegs that all the Law hangs upon".  This is very powerful.

What would a church look like if it actually lived out what Jesus intended?  What kind of impact could be made if our local churches were about loving God and loving people?  I imagine such a place.  In fact, I can vividly see a local faith community living this out.  My hope is that this place will be forever lived out in Jackson County.

Can a local church be comprised of people that are striving to love God?  I mean, not just showing up, singing a few songs, hearing a message that doesnt really inspire and pitch my two cents in the plate on my way out of the door.  Can a place of life transformation exist in a community.  I believe it can and it all starts with Loving God with our whole being. 

Loving God with all of your heart is something that is hard to wrap our head around.  The heart is our emotional wheelhouse.  Everyone of us, act and react based on the emotion of our heart.  If you think about all the emotions that we experience and feel in life, each of them are connected to our hearts condition as we are living in this world.  God's desire is for us to love Him with our heart...our emotional self. 

Loving God with all of your mind can be an impossibility as we live and interact with culture.  If you are like me, my mind runs rampant with things that if projected in High Def, would cause me to run and hide.  The mind is an amazing thing and many times it is what gets us in trouble long before the trouble begins.  We "think" about things long before we act on them.  In a spiritual sense, the mind is what helps us have faith...believing in something that we can't see or feel.  Faith comes when our Heart and our Head get together.  We consider all the options, look at all the data, think about the impossibilities and finally make a decision.  Loving God with our mind, first of all is making a decision to believe in our head that God is who he says he is and we intellectually put our faith in Him.  Loving God with our mind then shifts to honoring God with our thought life...understanding that this is a journey that can take years to travel.

Loving God with our soul could possibly be the easiest way to love God.  What are you passionate about?  I am passionate about creating, teaching, playing my guitar, helping people, loving my children and eating good food.  As I do these things, I come to life.  They are my passion...they are my life.  Loving God with all of my soul is giving each of these things to God and being so thankful that my being or soul comes to life as i do these things.  I love and honor God by doing them.

So, our desire is to bring into existence a place that encourages and challenges all of these things to happen:  Loving God with every bit of who we are.  And then as we do that, Love People.

Now the Sunday School answer would be to just simply say, "we must love everyone".  Jesus says, "love your neighbor".  My question is this, who is our "neighbor"?  Is it all people, is it literally the person we live next to or could it be the people that we have daily contact with on a regular basis.  When Jesus says, "love them as you love yourself", how can we possible live that out.  I mean, I love my self a lot and how can I love someone I don't even know as much as I love myself?  This is a question that I wrestle with constantly.  In my wrestling, I have decided to make a decision on what this means.

Loving People...the way of Christ.  This is how I see it.  Christ loved people in a big and safe way.  There was unconditional love extended to everyone he came into contact with and as he connected with this culture, everyone was safe...well, everyone except the religous.  Jesus made it very clear that he was here for the broken, tired and weary.  He made it very clear that his yoke or teaching was easy and that is way was light.  This was a man that hung out with people that weren't welcome at religous gatherings.  He spend his time with the undesirables.  Jesus made time for people that were overlooked.  He gave himself to the very ones that couldn't give him anything in return.  This is a picture of Love.  Loving People is this.  Loving People is extending a big and safe love to anyone and everyone that we come into contact with.  Loving People is being OK with all of their Junk & Funk.  After all, we all have it.  Loving People is being OK with people taking their time to investigate the teachings of Christ and being patient with them if at first they don't believe.  Loving People is simply this...loving people because we can.  No agenda...no hidden purpose.  Love for love sake. 

Can this exist in the local church?  Yes.  But it will be the hardest thing to teach, model and follow through with as a faith community.  We are going to give it a shot. 

My heart in all of this rambling is to say, I desire to love God with all that I am and also love people.  If I can live this out...if I can influence a few people who turn around and do the same thing, then something really cool could happen in the greater Braselton, Jackson County area.  That is my hope and my desire...this is what brings me to life.

Grace and Peace...