Failed Co-Mission

I am sitting here in Costa Rica on a balcony looking out to the Pacific with lush greenery, amazing Condos and homes spread around this beautiful resort, Reserva Conchal. Yet within miles of this place it still has much poverty and the need of Jesus.

It reminded me of the American church scene. We are building opulent ‘ghettos’ in the midst of suffering and poverty. We can hide out in our ‘resorts’ and soon forget why we are really here.

The American church scene is full of destruct, reconstruct, makeovers, get back to the basics, new models, new generation paradigms, build it bigger and they will come, have ‘rock concert’ performances and call it worship, etc. all trying to make the church better (?) and getting sidetracked in the process. Hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars are spent on conferences to teach us how to do it better, tear it down and redo it, criticize the current ones, establish new models, etc. Not to mention the countless man hours wasted getting to these conferences then sitting there dialoging about it all. There are even people who want to get paid to strategize, talk, dream and attend conferences. They want me to pay for a lifestyle of meaningless activity that falls short of producing any meaningful change for the Kingdom of God.

We have become a Mars Hill experience and are in danger of erecting a monument to the ‘unknown god’ because we have forgotten Him, His commands and His power. Forgetting that Jesus said He would build His church we have tried to contextualize it, homogenize it, strategize it, box it and then sell it.

My prayer is that all the naysayers will get off their big butts and get back to the stuff. If we don’t the world will still perish on our watch.