me church. part one

It's funny how I have returned to blogging after all these years. I remember me as a young lad blogging out of anger, wanting to be heard. Or maybe it was out of injustice that I saw or a fallen world that crewed into the "real" of life.

However, I hope that this blog doesn't become just a place to vent but that it allows me and others to process our thoughts and reflect on how we need to submit ourself to the kingdom of Jesus in the "real" of life.

I have titled this blog "Me Church" because this is at the heart of my present pain. I feel a disgust in me for how me, myself and other pastors have wrongly presented and promoted the bride of Christ... His Church. So let my confession be the first... I have not seen the Church as Jesus' bride and have made it about me. I have encouraged others and served others in a way that tells them that it is about them and not Jesus.

Today as I preached, I stopped to ask the church... "what is the church"? It's funny how it became silent. If I was at a Baseball game and asked the fans, "what is Baseball" I think that the answers would roll off their lips. Now to the churches credit, it might of caught them off guard or they may have been afraid of saying the wrong thing. But don't we think it's time we stop and ask that question? Not out of Rebellion but our of allegiance to our King and to His bride.

Could it be that we have so made "church" about me, about us... that we don't even know the answer to a simple question? I am not a smart guy and I am not going to try and over think this. However, Jesus left His bride, the church, in the hands or a bunch of uneducated, untrained (by worldly standards) men. Yet I never get the feeling that they sat around asking the question, "what is Church"? or, "How do we get people to come to our church"?

Maybe this blog is only for me to unleash these thoughts of my own pain and sin that makes me think church is about me. Or maybe this blog will serve as a launching pad for disciples of Jesus to start making disciples of Jesus instead of making them groupies of "our church".