Church Doc Talk

In a recent post I posed the question, Is it a sin to click send? - see Are Christians Using the Internet Appropriately?

I ended the post with the answer, “Yes! there is some sin involved in clicking send.”  How you ask?  When clicking send involves gossip.

I know, most people think gossip is only accomplished through talking…not true. Gossip happens through all forms of communication.  The only difference is that through the internet gossip is more damaging and happens at broadband speed.

Remember, once you click send you are no longer in control of where the e-mail will end up; even if you only send it to one person. Yea, right, like you’re going to send a juicy tidbit of information to just one person.  Let’s be honest, it’s just as easy to send an e-mail to multiple recipients as it is to one. Enough said.

Sending one e-mail to multiple people is bad enough, but it never stops there.  Your recipients are sure they have a few people in their address book that need to read it too…Fwd… Send…Click… and so on…. and so on…

The result: In less time than it took your mom to call through her rolodex, your gossip has gone global and who knows how many people have seen it.

The ramifications are huge!  Reputations are damaged.  Tensions are escalated.  Not to mention the brand new Christian who receives your gossip e-mail as a Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: Fwd.  Do they really need to read this kind of toxicity from “Christians” as they are taking their first baby steps in the faith?

Solution: Remember gossip is still sin wether you do it face to face or through clicking send.  So don’t click send!  Remember that listening to gossip is also a sin.  In e-mail terms this means don’t click send, but DO click delete!

–end–

My good Friend and fellow pastor, Richard Hopper, shared this video with me.  It’s worth a look so I’m highlighting it on this post.   It’s a little under 10 minutes, but worth the investment of your time.

If you want a snapshot of Emerging church thinking, this video clip is it.  Pay close attention to the theme of relationships: Our relationship with Christ, and our relationships with people.  A key component to the coming revival in America is that it will be driven by relationships - not by institutional need or model.

Enjoy!

Recently I received yet another e-mail challenging the integrity of my Christianity. The e-mail implied that if I’m a real Christian I’ll show God how much I love him by forwarding the message onto my friends. Really????

Seriously, have we come to the point where the whole of our Christian Experience has been reduced to the click of a mouse? Will God really love me more because I click Send? More to the point: will He love me less if I don’t?

It may not seem like much, but the ramifications are huge! “Spamming in the Name of Jesus” is highly detrimental when it comes to making a difference in someone’s eternity.

Why any Christian wants to associate the grace of Christ with something people dislike is beyond me. Yet every time we forward these e-mails that is exactly what we are doing!

Make no mistake, forwarding these e-mails is called SPAM. As a general rule, people don’t like SPAM. They go to great lengths to filter SPAM. Along comes an e-mail from a trusted friend, but instead of warm words of greeting it’s religious guilt in the form of SPAM.

Sure, your Christian friends may or may not care, but what about the person who is hurting, and really needs to know the power of the Gospel? Is the best we have to offer them a trite “If you love God send this e-mail to your friends?”

Allow me to be blunt: Through the endless forwarding of Christian SPAM, the perception of irrelevance toward the church has gone viral. Which begs the question, why would any Christian want to do this?

So Is there any sin associated with clicking send? Yes, there is…but that is the topic of another post.

It’s an alarming trend in church ecclesiology…at least it should be. The very thought of it should set off bells, buzzers, whistles, flashing lights; the whole smash! Yet, surprisingly it doesn’t.

So what is “it”? “It” is Intentionally striving for mediocrity.

At first glance my words may seem contradictory, but they are not. I chose them very carefully. Settling for mediocrity, or the practice of “just getting by” requires an intentional effort on our part.

Allow me to be perfectly clear: I am not talking about subjective opinions as to weather or not something could be better. I am talking about a mindset; a way of thinking that says, “Just getting by is good enough.”

It’s a mindset that removes striving for excellence from the equation. Once that happens our ecclesiology no longer lines up with the Gold standard found in Scripture.

Can our Christian experience settle for anything less than excellence? Honestly, I don’t think it can!

Scripture is full of God’s standard of excellence. The Book of Hebrews, for example, can be boiled down to the message that Jesus is better. He is the better High Priest. He is the better sacrifice. He is the better atonement. I realize it is an over used cliche, but when it comes to the salvation of our souls, God cared enough to send the very best!

So, how do we respond to this wonderfully, excellent gift of God’s grace? Well, many Christians, and churches, respond with a mindset that settles for getting by. Even more criminal, in my mind, is that we have accepted the lower standard as the new standard of excellence. Not only have we offered bronze in place of gold, we have convinced ourselves that bronze is as good as gold.

That said, this root cause is not blatantly obvious. People rarely stand up in a church meeting and say, “Whatever we decide to do, I think we should consider reducing our efforts so we can intentionally settle for mediocrity.”

However, it does present itself in a myriad of symptoms. For example: It’s found when worship team members and leaders fail to show up for practice. In extreme cases practice is reduced to a 10 minute run through on Sunday Morning. It is found when the facilities fall into disrepair. It is found when Sunday School Curriculum is outdated, but not replaced. It is found when people reduce their Christian experience to a couple hours on a Sunday morning.

In short, it is found in phrases like, “It’s good enough”, and, “This will have to do”, and, “God will understand.”

We can do better. No, scratch that. People far from God are desperately waiting for us to do better!

What are your thoughts on how to overcome mediocrity in the church?

I am traveling today and will be gone for a couple weeks  Not sure what kind of internet access I’ll have, but I will try and post when I can.