THE SACRED HOLY HEROIC  PT. 1

It was the summer of 1997 and I was tossing and turning, in bed, just hours before I would walk down the wedding aisle. My final restless night was filled with worry, doubt, concern and excitement about the biggest transition of my young life. Almost twenty years later, and still happily married, I have had the opportunity to counsel many couples before their wedding and find myself telling them time and time again, you are never really ready to be married. After you have prayed, counseled and made your decision you just need to GO! I often chuckle when I observe people attempt to over plan their life. Often this type of person desires to have their income at a certain level, living in a certain neighborhood, planning enough trips and vacations, etc…and then, all of the sudden, a monkey wrench! Maybe it’s a baby, a temporary set-back, or a life-changing circumstance but “the plan” now has to be adjusted. Planning is great! In my family we live on a budget, have a yearly plan and even try to set some goals for four to five years out; but we have also shared in enough life to leave room for transformation. It is easy to imagine that we can get to a place where we are complete and ready, but preparation is not suddenly accomplished, it is a process steadily maintained and often adjusted with minor tweaks and, at times, major changes.

There was a time, long ago, when the sense of sacrifice appealed to a young Christian. Humanly speaking, the one thing that attracted us to Jesus was our sense of the heroic and being a part of narrative that special, sacred and mysterious. It was this inner working (by the Holy Spirit) that compelled us to be bold, courageous and go! But that has changed, especially over the past twenty years, with today’s modern church method attempting to reach people who are not longer seeking the mysterious and heroic. Despite the churches size, technology and budget today’s American Church experience, in large part, has managed to provided the seeking and searching with a perfectly planned and sterile environment that encourages a worldview that says, “what I (the church) can you do you.”  And something sacred has been lost in translation. (More on this later)

Community can be a funny thing. I live in a sub-division where I pay a monthly fee for certain community services. By the “letter of the law” I am apart of my community because I pay dues; but even though I am apart of the community it is still possible for me to live with limited relationships and connection to the events, and lives, of my subdivision. Likewise, this same dynamic can exist in a church community when we only view this habitat of faith as a place to “pay our dues” followed by an expectation of the community providing us a service. I would like to challenge our thinking as to how we really view the community of faith with a great moment is US history.

A young, optimistic and confident President Kennedy once challenged Americans to reconsider not what their county could do for them but what they could do for their country. Perhaps no truer secular words summed up a consecrated creed for the sacred community. What we have lost, within the message of the Church USA, is the sense of what I call the Sacred Holy Heroic. I mentioned earlier the unique church experience where our worship services, along with support ministries, are so programmed that they actually are designed to manage your expectations. I have sat in countless planning meetings where the entire service is planned down to the very second and nothing occurs without it being planned our predetermined. One such successful and popular church pastor / planter proudly said he hoped a visitor would experience the exact same service in any of their satellite churches.

To be victorious, he/she must appeal to voters throughout the state. sildenafil tablets 50mg In the erected state, the medicine increases the time and a male can provide better secretworldchronicle.com prescription viagra pleasure to a female. The system at present is so standard within the US that almost fifty p.c of patented medicine have their cialis sales australia generic equivalents. During rehabilitative your visits will be less frequent and strengthening care is less often still. cheap cialis So what does such programming create within our community of faith today? In a race to keep up with current trends, and measuring analytics, our building must get bigger, our outreaches must become louder, our video’s look edgier and our pastors and teachers perform as rock stars or CEO’s while the message, of the Gospel, sounds less sacred and more like an echo of our society. Seldom do we now gather with the expectation of seeing, touching, living and experiencing the sacred, mysterious, holy and revelatory. Even more dispiriting is the purely western notion of building projects and glamorized ministers serving as a new frontier for heroic Kingdom action. The raw community of faith needs to exist outside the created bubble of “self” and reconnect with the Sacred Holy Heroic that is only  rooted IN HIM (Jesus). Today’s church, as with the church of every age, is called to reconnect with the same heroism and sacrifice of the ancient and historical church and GO BOLDLY INTO THE SACRED HOLY HEROIC !

The “go” of preparation is to let the Word of God inspect deep within and force us to answer the call and commission of heroic sacrifice. If we are to enter into the narrative of the mysterious, sacred and historical Christian faith then we must also be willing to allow the Holy Spirit to detect, in us, the nature that will never work in His service. No one but God can detect that nature in us. While we may be tempted to plan every last detail, in preparation to go; we must also understand, like with marriage, we are never fully ready. But, in all of our planning, if we leave room for His Spirit to guide us we will join in the Holy invitation of true community and fellowship (Biblical Koinonia).

Once we understand the holy invitation is one of heroic participation and sacrifice we will no longer get trapped by a selfish or self-serving Gospel but live courageous and bold for the selfless and sacrificing Gospel. Planning is good, preparation is great; but never over plan and prepare, in such a way, where the Spirit is disinvited and the mystery of the sacred holy heroic is lost. If you pack away your lights, building, designer jeans and programs, and welcome people to join in the mystery, then you may just discover who is really in your true community and hungry for the message of the sacred, holy and heroic.

Grace and Peace

JOSHUA