A little clarification

I had a meeting with Pastor Chris last week and it was mostly about my posts in this blog. He was concerned that I was angry at the Church in general and Miami Baptist specifically. He also expressed some concern about what people who come to the church web site might think if they clicked through to my blog and began reading my recent posts. That's my interpretation of what he said. He may have meant something else entirely.

In any case, I would like to take a few minutes to clarify what is going on here. I am not angry and I am not even close to leaving my faith.

I am concerned that over a long period of time the Church as a whole (the worldwide body of Christian believers) has lost touch with it's calling. We've replaced true faithful living according to God's Word with a man-made religiosity that is loosely based on scripture. We are in danger of becoming like the Pharisees that Jesus spoke out against in His time. I believe that the symptoms of this slide towards legalism and superficial expressions of religion are present in most local churches including Miami Baptist. I don't want us to go any further down that path. I want a mulligan! I call for a "do over!"

Whether you are playing golf or kickball, sometimes you fail so miserably that you earn a second chance. Our God is the God of do-overs. He gives us so many chances to right our path when we fail. It's time for the church to dust itself off and focus itself to the fundamentals of the faith with renewed determination. So what does that mean?

For me, it means calling every expression of "religion" in my life into question. The core of my faith is unchanged but everything around it subject to inspection. That means that I don't question if Jesus was the Son of God. I do question whether or not rocking out to Relient K (Christian group) and rocking out to Green Day (secular group) are fundamentally different in any way. Where is the line between entertainment and worship? I don't question my Salvation. I do question whether or not people need me to wear to Christian t-shirt to know that I am saved. How do I minister? How do I worship?

To answer these questions I am throwing the baby out with bath water. I admit it. I am not going to assume that anything we're doing already is correct. If we are going to build a Church then I know the foundation is solid because God established it. But I think people want to choose the paint before the building has been framed. We need to seek out the fundamentals of Jesus' teaching and learn to apply them. That is what these recent blog posts are about. It's about finding the foundation and starting a discussion about what to build on it.