So I (Seth) am a Relevant Magazine subscriber and really enjoy their content about God, life, and progressive culture. Apart from their printed magazine, they also do a number of online articles and music on www.relevantmagazine.com.
I read Relevant because it is what its name says. The message of the gospel has to be presented in a way that is relevant to the people hearing or receiving it, and Relevant does just that. It is all about living a life out in this great big world we live in, while building your faith. If you are looking at the website and thinking,"Jeez Seth, this doesn't look like a typical 'Christian magazine'" then you have hit the nail on the head. We are called to be in the world, not of the world, and too many times as Christians we seclude ourselves or make our own little "bubbles" to live in, even with the media we take in.
That all said, I found this article entitled "Is the Church Lost?" extremely practical, since its a mindset that many Christians fall into. Please check it out!
Now, when I first saw the title I wasn't sure what exactly it was about (I did like the picture next to it though, as seen above) so I clicked on it. As I read the article though I could really understand and relate to what it had to say. Many times in my life I have heard people make comments about churches like, "I'm not being fed" or "This church just doesn't have that much to offer." It is often the reason why people say they switch churches or stop attending altogether. Often times it sounds like people are looking more for a club than a church. I think too often we lose sight of the fact that the church just a body of believers and not some organization we join.
Perhaps if we kept that fact in mind we wouldn't be so consumeristic about our faith. Maybe we'd shift from asking what our church can do for us and actually consider how we can serve. We'd stop looking at serving as though its a job or an obligation and realize its really serving people. People who grasp this don't just leave a church they see faults in either. They instead seek to resolve the conflicts and problems because they know its not a club or institution, it is really about people.
I mean, a church is truly just a bunch of Christians, coming together to move toward Christ, loving, teaching, growing, and reaching out to those who do not yet know him. Although the Church as many parts, we are unified in the fact that we each have been given the same spirit, and are part of one body (check out 1 Cor. 12:12-30). If we browse through Paul's letters to the churches, we don't see him talking to an institution, we see him talking to people. Most of the time he isn't addressing problems with structure, organization, or the quality of their worship/preaching. He is addressing the core values of what it means to follow Jesus and talking about relationships within the believers, how they live together, grow together, teach/learn together. Paul is trying to help the churches love God and love one another authentically. When we analyze our churches, do we dwell on these things, or is it more often on institutional aspects? Are we looking at people and saying, how can I serve them? How can I love as Christ loves, or do we ask how can I be served? How will this church feed me?
When you start to look at church as people to love and grow with, you'll start to really enjoy yourself. You'll finally see the relationships and the value of serving others. Furthermore, I think the consumerist view of church tends to put the church between us and God, in an almost idolatrous position. Churches simply weren't meant to fill all our needs and be our everything, since that's God's place. Church isn't meant to be a chance for us to "get filled up." As Christians, we are instead supposed to be pouring ourselves out in love, through the excess we receive from God. If we stop looking at our church as something that must fulfill all our needs, and instead give that position back to God, we can finally take up our position serving, loving and growing the the body of Christ.
