Back to WHAT?? Are You Kidding Me?

I have missed blogging for a while and honestly needed to back away for sabbatical from this.  I have truly been inspired today.

The latest Church Campaign being promoted is called “Back to Church” on September 16, 2012.  The idea behind it is to get disgruntled church folk back into church as well as non-church folk on that particular Sunday.

Of course, you realize and I hope you are thinking that I have some problems with this.  One, for decades, the rural church in America are still having “Homecomings” once a year to do this very thing.  We also have “Friend Day” where we urge folks to invite their neighbors to church as we recently did at Telephone BC.

Two, the website urges churches in CITIES to get together as a city wide campaign.  So, this doesn’t appeal to the churches in the rural areas.  I would tell you that in my disagreement with this, churches in rural areas tend to work together more than city churches do.  IMHO, I find that city churches are too “CASTLE-Y” to let the drawbridge down to work together.  Too much is at stake for them to risk working together for the kingdom of God.

Third, I find it interesting that the company that made and market this product made it on the video and the material that it has to be on September 16, 2012.  There is no flexibility to have this event on another Sunday if you even have it at all.

This is what we have done to EVANGELISM.  Baptists have always hailed Vacation Bible School as the largest outreach of the church, and second is revival meetings.  I guess third would be the worship gatherings on Sunday.  What happened to meeting your neighbor with the intention of loving them as Jesus taught in Matt. 22 and sharing the gospel message with them by showing them Jesus and telling them about Him.  What happened to that?  Do we really have to have a campaign for going “back to church"?

Institutional Church can become......

EXTRA...EXTRA...Read all about it!!  Jesus overturns tables in temple courts!!
Mark 11:15-25
THERE ARE THE IMAGE BUILDERS AND THOSE WHO FOLLOW IMAGE

But you have made it a den of robbers..Image Builders rob God of His glory…the glory He deserves and the honor He is due…why?  He is Creator…He is author of life…He sent His Son to be our Savior…He works in our lives!!

Building an image of ourselves is something.  We spend a lot of our lives building upon our names, building upon a career, and building up a family.  And we bring that attitude to church.  We want that for church…to make sure Telephone Baptist Church has a name and an image…that we are all clean, hard working middle classed good old country folk.

Image Builders think that God is pleased when we build an empire.

The Jewish Passover celebration commemorated the deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt, when the death angel passed over every home where the blood of a lamb was applied to the doorposts of the home (Ex. 12-13). Passover reminded the Jews of the time the angel “passed over.” It also initiated the Feast of Unleavened Bread, so the entire celebration lasted over a week.

Passover attendance for Jewish males 12 and over was compulsory. On the 10th day of Nisan (March/April), a lamb w/o blemish was taken to Jerusalem and on the 14th day, between 3-6 pm, the sacrificial lamb was killed. Passover was a sacred holiday for the Jewish people. It represented the very essence of who they were—God’s chosen people.

It is difficult to imagine how Jesus must have felt when He approaches the temple and finds it filled with merchants and money-changers. You might ask, “What were they doing there?” Multitudes of people flocked to Jerusalem during Passover. People from all over the world traveled to the holy city for the celebration.

The purpose of these merchants and money-changers was two-fold. One, many of the people did not bring animals with them for sacrifice, so they purchased animals there in Jerusalem. Second, all Jewish males and proselytes were required to pay a half-shekel temple tax in the coinage of the temple (taxes were prevalent even in the first century, the worship tax). Furthermore, foreign monies bearing the image of a pagan deity or ruler were unacceptable; therefore, the money changers would exchange their coinage for a small fee.

In days gone by, these activities took place outside of the temple, but now the merchants, animals, and exchangers have moved inside the temple courts. The sacredness of the temple has been bartered for profit and convenience. And as Jesus approached the temple, he becomes angry at what the temple has become.

The temple had become a business/institution and it was built on business.  Let me ask you this….What have we become…what is the product we are producing?

Image Builders are happy with physical results, not the spiritual results.

I mean what is it that we are really trying to accomplish here…to make disciples.  We are worried about the spiritual, a hospital for sinners.  But yet, we focus on the business process because we are about the IMAGE that is Telephone Baptist Church, not trying to do all we can for the glory of God.

For the future, we would love to see the work of God in people.  Salvations and baptisms.  Peoples lives are being changed.  Walking through tough times with people and helping them be faithful and strong in the Lord.

Blessings, Brian