The largest struggle in my life that may have caused these questions, is that I've always felt called to be a leader, or the actual WORD used for what I feel called to is pastor. I spent a lot of my life believing that meant one day I'd become a pastor of a church. And no matter what I do, the minute I walk into a church, I get red lights all over. But I keep pressing on, thinking, nah, it's just my nerves, or I'm being judgmental or what have you. Then like clockwork, I get sucked into church life. I get involved in everything, people start noticing me, and what I bring to the table. But then something happens... also like clockwork. Things start breaking down. It's gotten to the point where I'm realizing the red lights I feel when I start wanting to be part of a church, are ACTUAL warnings that perhaps God himself is throwing my way saying... "This is NOT the way I have set for you"
After this last year of thinking and pondering why this keeps happening, I think I may have realized something. My style of leadership, simply does not fit in the current way we see "church" being run. For years, I thought, there's something WRONG with the church. I'm learning, that's not quite accurate. There's a MAJOR difference in the hearts and minds of many folk in my generation and younger (especially younger) that sees VERY little use in what we Christians call church. It's sort of... obsolete, like encyclopedias and land lines. Yeah, there are many people who swear by it, and they get along just fine with them, but there's so much more available now.
Here's what I believe caused this obsolescence. Old school study techniques are slowly subsiding, because we have learned as a society that information is just a click away. Why would I spend hours and hours forcing my brain to remember chapter and verse numbers, when I can just whip out my phone and look it up. Not only would you get the verse but about 100 versions of the verse, probably about 100k websites that talk about what that verse means to the author, probably a TED talk on youtube on the topic, and a bunch of official commentaries. Also, why do we need one bloke to do tons of studying every week just to give us an hour long lecture, when we could learn a WHOLE lot more if we were to do our own research... And there's the situation in a nutshell. People are now learning on their own, on their own time, with their own resources. People with their "regular" "non-pastor like" life are learning as they go, while doing things that everyone else in the world are doing as well (working, watching their children, etc)
Knowledge is free, knowledge is easy to come by. Why do we spend 90% of our Christian interactions spewing out knowledge to each other? Why are our get-togethers called Bible Studies? In the eyes of the coming generations, we're doing it wrong.
We are called to fellowship regularly. This... is the basis for which we've built what we now call "church", but fellowship is just a Christianized word for hanging out. In other words, hang out with your friends on a regular bases, focus on relationship, don't separate yourself from your community. Church, as it stands today, is obsolete. It served a good purpose for it's time, but it's grown old and tired, like the encyclopedia set sitting on a shelf at your local Goodwill.
The problem that I have, is that it's stupid hard to find a community of believers without catering to this dead horse, because we all have learned to put up with this game we play, just so that we can be part of a community. I'm saying, we need a new game. And we need one quickly, or the next generation will find a community elsewhere... like I have, playing Minecraft of all things.
And as silly as this sounds, THAT is where I learned that I can be a pastor anywhere I go. I'm not spewing out information, I'm not running a local bible study. No. I encourage people to be creative, I encourage people to work together, and work past each other's differences. Just by being who God made me to be, I've gone from a regular player to being a mod, and now I'm a full on admin of the server. People enjoy what I have to offer there. Well, my knowledge of how servers work helps, but by being the kind of guy who Christ has called me to be. I've effected more lives spending time with regular people "in the world" than I could ever do while playing the game of modern church.
That is what God called me to. And I will be that guy where ever God places me.
No comments:
Post a Comment