British Methodists (And Others) Take A Stand

photo © 2006 Brian | more info (via: Wylio)

Believe it or not, I actually pay attention to what's going on in the British Methodist Church.  That's because there are a couple of blogs, (Richard Hall's Connexions and Paul Martin's Turbulent Cleric) that I enjoy reading.  But it's been interesting as of late because of economic issues.  The British government is tightening its belt. They are cutting a lot of places and there are Christians in Britain who have been watching the cuts very closely, concerned that they were going to hurt the poor in society more than those with financial means.

The following is found on the Methodist Church site in Britain, posted on 11 November 2010 (highlights are mine):

Christian organisations have warned that the Government’s welfare proposals are based on a lack of understanding of the poor. They argue that constructive reforms are at risk of being lost under a wave of punitive measures and cost-cutting.

The Methodist Church, the Church of Scotland, the United Reformed Church, the Baptist Union of Great Britain, Housing Justice and Church Action on Poverty have welcomed plans for a simplified benefits system, but have raised concerns that the proposed reforms are based on inaccurate assumptions about the poor.

“There is a serious danger that people living in poverty will be stigmatised by government announcements that imply they are lazy or work-shy,” said Revd Alison Tomlin, President of the Methodist Conference. “The Government seems to assume that if people are forced into working they will comply and their lives will be made better. The poor we meet are seeking to better their lives in difficult circumstances. They are willing to work, but face difficulties in finding jobs, in meeting caring responsibilities and in living on the wages offered.”

“People who are long-term unemployed are already struggling to find work in a market place where there is increasing pressure on both the public and private sectors,” added Alison Gelder, Director of Housing Justice. “Some need help to develop the skills to find and keep a regular job. What they do not need are punitive measures such as the proposed cut in housing benefit by 10% after a year out of work. Most of all, they should not be forced to do manual labour in return for their benefits for just £1.73 an hour - £4.20 below the current adult minimum wage.”

The group argues that Government welfare policy needs to be based on a realistic assessment of those living in poverty and what they really need to get back into the work force. They are concerned that policy should not be based on a skewed figures and a misunderstanding of the poor.

Revd Graham Sparkes, Head of Faith and Unity for the Baptist Union of Great Britain said: “We meet people on a daily basis who are experiencing long term unemployment. Unemployment, especially in an area where there are few jobs available, damages a person’s self-confidence, health and ability to survive life’s knocks. The Government needs to understand what people in poverty need in order to return to work. It’s not good enough to just tell people to ‘pull their socks up’.”

Niall Cooper, National Coordinator of Church Action on Poverty, said “We ask that the government to talk to people in poverty and base their policies on combating the problems they face daily. Iain Duncan Smith should come to one of our listening events, where people struggling to make ends meet tell their stories. Simplistic solutions such as benefit cuts, telling people to get on a bus to find work, and enforced labour would face a harsh reality check.”

Some of this is getting fleshed out in Common Wealth: Christians for Economic & Social Justice, which has several Methodists as initial signatories.  Their document can be found HERE but I'll highlight a section of it below:

Christians in Britain today are called to take a stand. Faced with the biggest cuts to public spending for over a generation, it is not enough to retreat into the private ghetto of religious consolation.

As Christians, we are convinced that the actions of the current government are an unjustified attack on the poor. The rhetoric of necessary austerity and virtuous belt-tightening conceals a grim reality: the victimisation of people at the margins of society and the corrosion of community. Meanwhile, the false worship of markets continues unchecked and the immorality of the growing gap between rich and poor goes unquestioned.

We call on the churches to resist the cuts and stand in solidarity with those targeted. We urge them to join the forces fighting back against a distorted ideology. Above all, we commit ourselves not to give in to despair, fear and fatalism. Another world is possible, the world announced by Jesus in his teachings, embodied in the love he took to the cross, alive in the Spirit of his risen strength.

This is, I would argue, the church at its best; confronting power with the Word and a call to action.

"Exploding" Christianity in Africa -- What Will We Do?

Image via Wikipedia

CBN reports on the growing number of churches and Christians in Sub-saharan Africa.  Christianity is "exploding."

In 1900 there were 7 million Christians in sub-Saharan Africa. That number is up 70 times today to a staggering 470 million. Christians now account for 60 percent of the population.

That growth by any global comparison or historical comparison has to be one of the most rapid religious transformations in the history of Christianity in the last 2,000 years.

I know the United Methodist Church is growing by leaps and bounds there.  The question is what the Western Church will do when denominations and para-church organizations take on a particular African feel -- socially conservative, emphasis on liberation and health issues, different styles of worship, etc.

Researchers have discovered the most religious place on earth: The area between the Sahara Desert and the southern tip of Africa.

Here Christianity, and to a lesser extent Islam, are attracting followers in numbers not seen in more than 100 years.

Soweto. Most people will remember this place for the role it played in the struggle against racial segregation. Twenty years after the end of apartheid, inside South Africa's biggest black township, another image is emerging.
Soweto is on fire for God.

"People come here and they really sense that they've had an encounter with God," said Pastor Mosa Sono of Grace Bible Church in Soweto.

So...what do we do?  How we we respond?  How do we embrace this growth, encourage it, and learn from it?

Holiness, Hospitality, God & the Church -- A Cartoon

In light of my post below about the holiness of Jesus, I found today's cartoon by David Hayward at NakedPastor to be highly appropriate:

The Wild, Hospitable Holiness of Jesus

photo © 2004 Jared and Corin | more info (via: Wylio)

In today's world (a phrase I use more than I probably should), there seems to be a struggle within the church to define holiness.  This hit home to me when a United Methodist Bishop at General Conference in 2008 addressed the homosexuality debate that occurred on the conference floor by saying it was a battle between two competing goods, "holiness" and "hospitality." 

He said that there are some within the UMC who wanted to preserve the holiness of the church, keeping it pure.  Therefore, this camp wanted to keep homosexuals out of the church.  Homosexual practice is a sin and, therefore, the church needs to take a stand against it.  Homosexuals should not be members.  Homosexuals should not be ordained.  The whole notion of "reconciling churches," welcoming the LGBT community, in this perspective, would be anathema.  Keep the church holy.

On the other hand, there were those who theologically emphasized hospitality, welcoming all.  Therefore, when lines were to be drawn about who was "in" and who was "out" in the church, the biblical concept of hospitality trumped all others.  The church should, as a rule, exclude no one.  All are welcomed to the table of Christ.  As the saying goes, "When Jesus is up on that cross, arms outstretched, who is it that he can NOT embrace?"  The implied answer is no one.  All are welcome.

However, are these really two competing interests, holiness and hospitality?  Are they really opposed to one another?

Alan and Debra Hirsch are two missional leaders over at CatalystSpace.  They address the strange holiness of Jesus that was not opposed to hospitality in a blog post entitled, "What Kind of Holiness is This?"

One of the confronting questions we find ourselves repeatedly asking is: What is it about the holiness of Jesus that caused "sinners" to flock to him like a magnet and yet manages to seriously antagonize the religious people? This question begs yet another, even more confronting question: Why does our more churchy form of holiness seem to get it the other way around – to comfort the religious and antagonize the sinners?

Jesus's brand of holiness (the true form) didn't seem to deter the sinners from wanting to get up close and personal with him. The gospel is full of stories of sinners, the bungled, the broken, and the bent clamoring to be near Jesus. Jesus was different. He wasn't like the other holy rollers, the religious folk, of his day. There was something magnetic about his persona that caused even the most desperate to do the unthinkable and violate not only social etiquette of the day, but risk further marginalization by being close to him.

No doubt about it, Jesus' holiness was compelling. The Gospels clearly show us that social rejects loved to be around Jesus. Think of prostitutes, lepers, tax collectors, adulterers, Roman soldiers, Samaritans, Gentiles, and the list goes on. They couldn't get enough of him. In hanging out with people like these, Jesus shows us that one cannot achieve holiness by separation from the unclean.

The holiness of Jesus, it seems, is a redemptive, missional, world-embracing holiness that does not separate itself from the world, but rather liberates it. And it wasn't that Jesus was simply "a nice inclusive guy." Everyone loves a nice guy, but nice guys don't end up murdered on crosses. Actually, as Ben Witherington says, it's not surprising (because of his actions and teachings) that Jesus was crucified. The surprising thing is that it didn't happen sooner!

A lot of what is given to us as "holiness" today is really nothing more than morality.  I'm not saying that I want everyone to be "immoral" but I don't think "immorality" excludes one from the heart of God--and therefore should not exclude one from the heart of the church. And this is not just about homosexuality.   Homosexuality is just the hot-button issue where this discussion, debate, fight, is taking place.  We could have similar discussions about welcoming the drug dealers, the divorced, the unwed mothers, the goth, the tattooed, the addicted, the poor, the.... well you get the picture.

I have recently been dealing with the death of a young man in the community who was loved by many.  I had the privilege of leading a memorial service for the family yesterday.  This young man, somewhere along the way, got into a hole that he just kept digging deeper into as he tried to get out.  Drugs.  Theft.  Lies.  Turning against the very ones who loved him most.  Very difficult situation.  But in his death the survivors are left with the tough questions like, "Did God love him?"  "Could God welcome a sinner such as he?"  "Is he in heaven?"  These are tough questions and I always fall back on the testimony of the love of God.  That's where it starts.  That's where it ends.  Period.  The holiness of God is intimately connected to his hospitality.  It is not opposed to it.

This is a "wild holiness." It calls into question those of us in the church who would be bound to religious codes, separating ourselves from others.

We must again be surprised by the amazing capacity of Jesus to break religious stereotypes and to embody a kind of holiness that embraces the seriously weird and the wonderful, this is the Jesus we follow.

The Good Samaritan and The Church -- A Parable from Leonard Sweet

Image by Tom Haymes via FlickrThere was once a broken-down old mainline/sideline/offline church traveling on the road from yesterday to tomorrow when it fell among postmodern culture. It was stripped of its place in society, leaving it beat up, left behind, and more than half dead.

Now by chance there was a doctoral student going down the road who passed by on the other side. “I’ve got papers due, and besides, that dead old denomination hasn’t got any life left in it.”

In the same way a prophetic pastor came to the place, saw the broken-down church, and whispered to himself, “O Lord, let me retire before it finally dies.”
 
But then a complete nobody, who didn’t know enough not to get involved, and who had failed the Jesus course, found the church and had compassion on it.  She/he bound up its wounds, pouring on the oil of hope and the wine of Christ’s blood, poured out the oil of forgiveness of sin; then set it on his/her own beast and took it to a place where it could re:flect and re:fresh and find healing. He/she said to the keeper, “This poor old church is almost dead. It may or may not have anything to say to a new world; but make it as comfortable as you can, spend whatever you have to, until I come back…”

Found in Leonard Sweet, So Beautiful

HT:  NextReformation

Church History in 4 Minutes

I have a friend in seminary now. I wonder if this could take the place of her history class.

We're Building a Church. What Do We Mean When We Say "Church"?

This is a great little video from a church in Brussels.

The church isn't a "WHAT." It's a "WHO." It's a people.

Or...as we've stated...it's not a NOUN but a VERB. It's not just a bunch of poeple but a bunch of people engaged in and changing the world.

Or, as the kids' song says, "The church is not a building. The church is not a steeple. The church is not a resting place. The church is a people."

Or...well...take a look at the video...


When We Say Church from Doug Peterson on Vimeo.

How Many People View the Church

Another good one from AbsoJesus.  Even just today we were talking about how many persons have viewed the church negatively...even if they have a history with a positive history with some individual churches and Christians.

Anti-Bullying Post 4: Most Americans Beleive Churches Contribute to Gay Suicide

Image via Wikipedia

(The image to the right is Dan Savage, gay rights campaigner.)

This is from CNN's Belief Blog:

Two out of three Americans believe gay people commit suicide at  least partly because of messages coming out of churches and other places of  worship, a survey released Thursday found.

More than four out of 10 Americans say the message coming out of churches  about gay people is negative, and about the same number say those messages  contribute "a lot" to negative perceptions of gay and lesbian people.

Catholics were the most critical of their own churches' messages on  homosexuality, while white evangelical Christians gave their churches the  highest grades, the survey found.

The Public Religion Research Institute asked 1,017 Americans their views  on religion and homosexuality between October 14 and 17, in the wake of a highly publicized rash of suicides by gay people.

Gay rights campaigner Dan Savage said the idea that churches send out an  anti-gay message "totally jibes with my experience and that of millions of  other gay and lesbian people."

He cited Joel Burns, a Forth Worth, Texas, city councilman whose  emotional tale of being bullied as a young gay man went viral on the internet.

"He remembers being told to go home and commit suicide and that he was  going to hell," Savage said, adding that the source of such attitudes "wasn't  in algebra."

Leaders of the Christian right "have redefined Christianity so that it is  about being anti-gay," he said.

And he cited other poll findings that suggest more Americans than ever  before define themselves as having no religion.

Have we "redefined Christianity so that it is about being anti-gay?"  I think we have at some point.  In fact, I know that I'm sometimes really careful of the crowd I'm with and couch my words carefully so that I'm not dismissed as "being anti-gay" without someone getting to know me and getting to see how Scripture, and reason, and tradition, and experience shape by understanding of this issue and a Christian response.  I hope that I'm not that easily classified and not that easily dismissed.  I hope that, as we deal with issues of bullying homosexuals I will be found on the side of compassion and love and that nothing I have said or done would have contributed to that bullying.

I'm not sure I can say that same for some of my brothers and sisters in Christ.

The Institutional Church -- Quote from Eugene Peterson

"What other church is there besides institutional?" - Eugene Peterson

Saying "No": Apple Computers, Steve Jobs, and The Church

Image via CrunchBaseThe Street business website has an article entitled:  Apple's Jobs:  1,000 No's on Way to Triumph.  The article is by Gregg Greenberg.   The article is one of thousands that puts Steve Jobs up on a pedestal for all that he's done for Apple computers and the Apple consumers...a club I'm proud to belong to as I type this on my MacBook Pro.

And, regardless of whether you're reading this on a PC or a Mac or a Linux machine, I would say that one has to realize that Steve Jobs, love him or hate him, has done great things for Apple Computers.  Under his leadership we have the iPod and the iPhone and iPad.   We have iTunes which has revolutionized the music industry.  And we have computers with no more floppy drives and operating systems that are much more user-friendly than perhaps they would have been without the leadership of Apple Computers.  The list could go on and on and on...but it won't...not here.

Says the article:

Steve jobs once said the secret to innovation is saying no to one thousand things, which means he focuses just on those products that mean something to his customers and to his clients. That also means eliminating the clutter. That's why iPods, iPhones and iPads are so easy to use. Because instead of adding more features, which is what the vast majority of companies are doing, they actually eliminate features to make it easier to use.

So, the secret to innovation is saying no?  Hmmm....   See, churches are great at adding on things.  We're great at adding worship services and adding stuff to our sanctuaries.  We're great at adding programming and adding new worship elements.  We're great at adding committees and committee members.

Oftentimes, in spite of all of this, we're not really strong in adding members or adding converts or adding professions of faith.

Perhaps we need to do a better job at eliminating some of the tasks of the church...particularly in our smaller churches that are trying so hard to be like the bigger churches they see around them.

One could probably argue that the same goes fro our lives as well...that greater innovation will come when we remove some of those things we've added to our lives over the years.

The Largest Churches in America

Image by ChicagoGeek via FlickrThis is a list compiled by LifeWay Research and Outreach Magazine.

Top 5 Largest U.S. Churches

1. Lakewood Church, Houston, Texas, Joel Osteen, (43,500)

2. North Point Community Church, Alpharetta, Ga., Andy Stanley (24,325)

3. Second Baptist Church, Houston, Texas, Ed Young Sr. (24,041)

4. Willow Creek Community Church, South Barington, Ill., Bill Hybels (24,000)

5. Southeast Christian Church, Louisville, Ky., Dave Stone (19,230)

First, take a look at Joel Osteen's church attendance in comparison to the others.  That's huge.  I guess a prosperity theology, where you believe that wealth and power are rewards for pious Christians, is about twice as attractive as a more orthodox belief.  Perhaps this says something about the lure of wealth in our society.

Second, Willow Creek is still up there.  I've attended conferences there and have paid attention to Bill Hybels' work over the years.

Third, I noticed that Girdwood Chapel didn't make the list...yet.

Biblical Literacy -- Romans 12

Our Superintendent, Dave Beckett, brings this to our attention.  Makes me think about the level of Biblical Literacy in our own congregation.  Click HERE to download a PDF version

The Church Has Left the Building

When we come together for worship, we are "the church gathered."  When we leave from that place, going out into the world, to enter into discussion and activity and service and work with others in the world, we are "the church scattered."

We never stop being the church.  We are always the church.   Church is not the place we gather or what takes place on Sunday mornings within a few short hours.  No, church is what we are...together and apart.

Today, we practice being the "scattered church" in our "[CHURCH] is a VERB Sunday."  We go out into the world, representing Christ through acts of service and outreach.

Today is an important day.  May it be a witness of who we are to our community.  May it be a reminder of who we are to ourselves.

Where are Your Fruit?

Image by equinoxefr via Flickr

"I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.  He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.  You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you.  Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. 

"I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.  If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.

John 15:1-6

"Jesus Picture" -- Getting Jesus Outside the Church

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Heard a wonderful, powerful, Spirit-filled sermon this morning in the African American tradition.  There were a lot of "Amens" which filled our worship space.  But I wanted to share, as best I can, the story that began the sermon…a story about taking Jesus out of the church and into the world.


There was a church (as often these stories go)….

There was a church in a downtown area of some town somewhere.  In in this "somewhere church" there was fire that broke out on a Sunday evening.  Some trustees of this church were in the area and saw the smoke coming out through the stained glass windows.  The trustees ran in to the building because they knew that there was a picture of Jesus hanging down in fellowship hall.

Now, this was a pretty traditional picture of Jesus and had been in the congregation, hanging on the same wall of the fellowship hall for 25 year.  It had been painted around, straightened when it got a little crooked.  Persons had eaten many a doughnut and drunk many a cup of coffee at its feet.  Children had run wild.  Youth had held lock ins.  All with little regard to its presence in their midst.

Then the fire came.

Well, those trustees raced into the church, raced downstairs into fellowship hall, and raced on out with the picture of Jesus.

There wasn't much else that could be saved that day.  Those two trustees, some other members who got the phone call about the fire, and a lot of the people from the neighborhood gathered around and watched the church slowly burn to the ground.

They stood there and looked at the picture of Jesus in their midst.  It was traditional.  Jesus was a traditional lily-white, gazing up to heaven.  But their was a beauty about him.  Someone noted an irony of "saving Jesus from the fire."  The trustees got to share why it is that they would run in and save this one thing from the fire.  Church members got to talk about some of the great, holy, life-changing events that had happened in that little church.  And persons, some of whom had been in the community for years, heard about the saving power of this "saved" Jesus for the first time.


We need to be about the business of taking Jesus out onto the streets.  We need to take the message out on the highways and byways…to the neighborhoods and coffee shops and bars and parks and homes and businesses and lives around us.  We CANNOT keep our Jesus confined to our fellowship halls and our libraries and sanctuaries and church offices.  We CANNOT keep our Jesus inside our church.  We have a world out there that needs to hear about and be transformed by our Jesus.

Looking for Authentic Enthusiasm

Image by Exothermic via Flickr

I'm in Nashville, staying at the rather nice Renaissance Hotel next to the Convention Center for the School of Congregational Development for the United Methodist Church.  There's about 500 or so attendees, from what I've been told.  My guess is that there's more than that if worship last evening was any indication.  Lots of talks.  Lots of education.  Lots of worship.  And it's fun having a layperson from our congregation along as well.

My guess is that a lot of my blog posts from the next several days are going to include information that I've been given while here.   This is one of them.

One of the speakers (actually someone giving an introduction tonight) said the following:

AUTHENTIC ENTHUSIASM BRINGS FORTH HOSPITALITY AND EVANGELISM.

I'll say it one more time:

AUTHENTIC ENTHUSIASM BRINGS FORTH HOSPITALITY AND EVANGELISM.

When I look at the churches I've served, and when I look at MYSELF, I struggle to find AUTHENTIC ENTHUSIASM.  I'm not saying that it doesn't exist EVER.  But I am saying that I sometimes question how passionate persons are about their faith, about their Savior, about worship and church and service and all of that stuff I have in my head and understand to be "church."  It's a lack of enthusiasm for both Jesus AND Church, for the Spirit of the religion AND the form of the religion. 

And if we don't have people fired up about who Christ is and what Christ is doing, how can we ever expect to be truly hospitable?  How can we be evangelical?  How can we have a church that persons want to visit and a faith that they would care to profess?

I am a pretty good cheerleader as a pastor.  I don't have the pompoms, but I can get persons to get behind me for one cause at a time.  More than that and I seem to get distracted.  But that's not the same as building up an enthusiasm for the work of God in the world among the members and friends of the congregations I've served. 

I want to see passion.

I want to see enthusiasm.

I want to see some of that Pentecostal Fire in our congregation.





I want to see it in me.


I want others to see it in me, too.

When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place.  Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting.  They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them.  All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.
 

Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven.  When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard them speaking in his own language.  Utterly amazed, they asked: "Are not all these men who are speaking Galileans?  Then how is it that each of us hears them in his own native language?  Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs-we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!"  Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, "What does this mean?"

How to Have Power in Your Life as Pastor -- Quote

To have power in your life as a pastor, it is supremely important that you make it a first order of business for the rest of your life not to do things to impress people or gain a reputation or protect your reputation. It is very clear from the Gospels that Jesus is calling us to deny some basic things in our personality–things that need to die. Jesus says in Matthew 16:24 to deny yourself; take up your cross and follow me. And I think that means dying to our fleshly love of impressing people in this way for glory for ourselves. (Jack Miller)

(This has been passed around several blogs that I read and apparently originates from a now defunct blog called "Dying Church" by Darryl over at dashhouse.com)

Communion By Twitter! -- Leave it to the Methodists

Image via Wikipedia

Well, they're Methodists in Great Britain...so it's a little different.  Anyway, the following is an excerpt from London's Telegraph newspaper:

In a modern spin on Christianity's most sacred rite, worshippers are being invited to break bread and drink wine or juice in front of their computers as they follow the service online.

Churches usually require a priest to take the Eucharist, but the Rev Tim Ross, a Methodist minister, will send out a prayer in a series of Tweets – messages of up to 140 characters – to users of Twitter.

Those following the service are asked to read each tweet out loud before typing Amen as a reply at the end.

The move is likely to upset traditionalists, but the Rev Mr Ross argues that it is an important step in uniting Christians around the world and reaching those who might not normally go to church.

Hundreds of people have already registered to follow the service and Mr Ross hopes that thousands will have signed up by the time he sends out the groundbreaking tweets next month.

I have issues with those churches that do communion with Coca-Cola and Oreos.  I also have issue with this.  Not sure if that's breaking down the "community" part of communion into something that is almost entirely devoid of "community" (he, ironically, writes on a blog which will be updated to a Facebook account :) )

Is this too much of a "re-thinking" of church?

The Small Church -- This gave me chills...really.

As I go to speak at a "small" church in Fairmount, Indiana, this AM....and as I think about the great worship that's going to be had in Girdwood later on, I think this is appropriate.

This post by Jared Wilson at "The Gospel-Driven Church" gave me chills.  It's entitled, "Our Church Isn't 'Cute'" and made me think of all the times we've had visitors say that about our building was "cute." It's a little 90'x90' building with a port-a-potty outside.   So, maybe it is "cute."  But it's so much more than just that word.  It is, after all, a place where the Gospel is read and proclaimed and people are married and buried and baptized.  "Cute" is such a shallow word for what really goes on in that place.

I usually don't post something in entirety, but I'm doing that here.  Please go check out the thoughts of Pastor Wilson at his blog or go buy his book, "Your Jesus is Too Safe" (which I just did after finding his blog).

But read the post below.  It's for anyone who's ever been in a small, but powerful church.  It's good.  Very good.

"Oh, it's so cute."

The photo is of the building in which Middletown Springs Community Church, the church I pastor, gathers each week.

The quote is something I've heard several times -- that or something like it -- typically from friends and family hailing from some steamy portion of Six Flags Over Jesus where church buildings are indistinguishable from office parks or the galleria.

Our church is "cute." Because it's small, old, traditional. "Cute" is the backhanded compliment for those who'd never go to a "cute" church, but want you to know they admire it and perhaps even those who aren't privileged enough to go to a church "successful" enough for a building that is big, impressive, full-service. You know, not cute, but rather "awesome."

But our church isn't "cute." It's beautiful like a bride both blemished and perfect.

Our building is just a building, but it has stood for over 200 years on the stony soil of the oldest part of our nation, the land of Christian pillars Whitefield and Edwards, of the Great Awakenings, of Puritans and patriots, of Green Mountain Boys and hundreds-of-years-old family farms. The building is just a building but it has weathered over 200 years of harsh Vermont winters, not to mention pastors strong and weak, congregations passionate and passive, spiritual ebbs and flows of Old Testament proportions. Once upon a time the church kicked out Joseph Smith's secretary for heresy.

Our building is just a building, but it's not just a building. It's a symbol of the enduring evangelical presence, small but hearty, in this least-churched state in the nation, and of the endurance of the great salt-of-the-earth people who are the church that gathers in the building for which they're called.

The gates of hell will prevail against espresso bars and KidzTowns. But not our church.

Our church is not cute. It is epic.