Some more thoughts from Chp 3 of Brian McLaren’s Everything Must Change:
Trying to spur some more discussion for our book club….
In Chp 3 McLaren talks about his visit to Bujumbura in Africa. As a meeting he was scheduled to speak at began he writes that the guy who brought him to the conference says that as a son of a preacher and going to church all his life, sometimes five times a week, in all his childhood he “only heard one sermon.”
Ouch! He says that one sermon was heard over and over again every week. “You are a sinner and you are going to hell. You need to repent and believe in Jesus. Jesus might come back today, and if he does and you are not ready, you will burn in hell.”
Growing up I can’t say that this was the case for me, but then again I can’t say I remember any sermons from my childhood through probably high school.
After graduating high school I began attending Baptist churches, including on very conservative Baptist church and I would say that that was almost the case for that particular church – only mixing in sermons about the importance of tithing.
How does that compare to your life growing up? How does that compare to English and Scottish churches or churches around the rest of the world? How do messages like that help Christians grow?
Is that typical in other churches? Do our churches continue to ignore ideas like hatred, distrust between tribes/neighbors, poverty, suffering, corruption, injustice? I feel that at encounter we’re closer to addressing these issues but we could be doing more.
“They told us how to go to heaven. But they left out an important detail. They didn’t tell us how the will of God could be done on earth.”
McLaren suggests this isn’t just an African problem – and I would tend to agree. Did North American church leaders teach the early colonists to treat the Native Peoples with love and respect? Did they consistently and with one voice appose slavery? Did they express outrage over the exploitation of factory workers or the second-class status of women? Did they/do we stand up for refugees and immigrants? Did they oppose white privilege, segregation, anti-Semitism, stereotyping or Muslims and other forms of ethnic prejudice? Did they see the environment as God’s sacred creation that deserves to be cherished and conserved?
Lots of places I believe the church has failed and continues to fail…
Jesus continued to talk about “the kingdom of God.” McLaren says this idea – contrary to popular belief – was not focused on how to escape this world and its problems by going to heaven after death, but instead was focused on how God’s will could be done on earth, in history, during this life.
McLaren continues and says the Gospel is not just a message about Jesus that focuses on the afterlife – but that the Gospel is the core message of Jesus that focuses on personal, social and global transformation in this life.
What does that mean to you? Is that idea contrary to your beliefs? Does it help answer some of the questions about your faith?
