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mars hill (part 2) —isn’t she beautiful?
instead of posting some random reflections and impressions on the content of the conference, i thought it might be best to post my thoughts and conclusions—my “take-away,” if you will. sorry i was unable to post this yesterday, it was a long drive back home and another great “jam-packed” day.
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as the conference came to an end, bell stood on the platform and announced that as a result of the conferee’s registration fees the church brought in $195,000. (that’s a lot of cash!). he then proceeded to tell us that of that $40,000 of it was the cost of putting on the conference, leaving the church with $155,000—all of which they are giving away. that was one of their dreams for this conference, using the extra money (the profit) and using it to make a difference in different places around the world. so, they are sending some ($30,000) to a microfinance organization in Burundi—and with the remaining $125,000 splitting it in half sending one portion ($62,500) to a microfinance organization in Rwanda, and the other to a microfinance organization in Grand Rapids in order to begin making a difference in the world’s poorest economies and countries. He rattled off a startling amount of information about what exactly this money was going to do, but it was so much to take in and an amazing testament of what the church can do through generosity. i was blown away by that—the registration for this conference was only $89.00—imagine what could happen around the world if the conferences that cost $400+ would do the same?
isn’t she beautiful—the church that is? isn’t generosity beautiful? about a year and a half ago, i couldn’t see the beauty of the church, it looked decrepit and old, an aged institution of crotchety, staunch, stuck in the mud people. it looked like a wonderful dream that would never become a reality, or never could be a reality. but after wrestling with this for a while, i can honestly stand and say that the church is beautiful and can be an amazing expression of the love and hope of Christ—if only we’d let it.
we must begin to strip all the excess crap that we’ve loaded onto the church that suffocates and covers her true beauty and begin to truly allow her to breathe, to have the space and freedom necessary to move, shake and change the world.
i wonder what systems and expectations, ideas and concepts we have and have placed upon the church that aren’t healthy and are strangling her to death? what things must we extract and release in order begin the painful removal process to nurture her back to health? what have we formulated in our own minds of what “church should look” that we need to let go and get down to the very core of what the church is and should be?
maybe it’s our music style (guitars, band vs. organ, piano; hymns, vs. contemporary) or maybe it’s the video and power point and the “way it looks”, maybe we have placed the expectation that the Holy Spirit must manifest himself/herself in a certain way or time or manner, maybe it’s the length of the services or exactly what the services look like, maybe it’s adult education—what is it that we expect church to look like that we need to let go of?
the church must break through and break forth from these things and be simple—we’ve overcomplicated church. the pharisee’s did this by overcomplicating the 10 commandments and the law coming up with 613 different commands. and what did Jesus do? he simplified it down to “love God, love people,” because all the commands—all 613—hang on these two things. this is what the church is, and this is what makes her so beautiful!
if we want to get back to the purest form of church, if we want to recapture the essence of her beauty, then we must strip off all of our own models and concepts of church and seize onto the genuine form of church that is loving God and loving people. because nothing else matters.
(mars hill part 1)
(mars hill)
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p.s. ~ this just in, during a dinner break we made our way through ‘jesusland’ (mcclane’s first visit to one ever) where he found this wonderfully exciting board game!
mcclane highly recommends and whole-heartedly endorses this game for all youth groups everywhere! and who might that be on the cover of the box? well it’s none other than joel osteen and his fantastic and exciting new board game “Your Best Life Now the Game!” hurry and snatch this up for your youth group before they’re all gone!
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7 Responses to “mars hill (part 2) —isn’t she beautiful?”
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Actually I was noticing the striking similarities between McClane and another bald, goateed, bespecaled, and loveably pudgy preacher from Decatur, IL that I know.
This was the best teaching conference I have ever been a part of…it wasnt even all that “surprising” as a lot of what he talked about were things we have been wrestling with for most of the past year…he definitely knew how to summarize my year pretty much though…some excellent insight as always…I will be blogging quote a bit about this in the days to come…glad we were all able to meet up too Aaron, truly miss having everyone around for discussions like this….
what’s a microfinance organization?
check out kiva.org for a good synopsis. basically, people with money loan small amounts to people in third world countries and others in poverty so that they can start businesses, etc, to get themselves out of poverty… it’s good stuff. check out kiva!
Let’s recapture her beauty so that others may see!
FWIW, be cautious with microcredit that you don’t have a personal history with beyond just letters and updates. Many microcredit organizations are fraudulent — I don’t know KIVA, so I’m not aware of how they audit their numbers. For me, the only good audit is one where all moneys are tracked with deposit numbers — where the went, and how they were repaid.
http://www.mises.org/story/337
http://www.mises.org/journals/fm/Dec06.pdf (PDF warning)
These are just examples of the biggest scam, GRAMEEN, which has existed for 30 years or so. Before investing in others, check who the middlemen are.
thanks dada for the cautions. kiva works with other microfinance organizations—so in a sense, they’re the middle man for the middle man. they have a pretty solid track record and here is their process
i guess no matter what you’re doing you have to inevitably choose who to place your trust in… i think kiva seems to be one of those that someone should choose.