Jesus Christ has been stolen...

Jim Wallis – changed the way I think. I read ‘Call to Conversion’ 20 years ago and I saw the world in a different way. Suddenly years of going to church came together. Suddenly I began to see the life of church as being as being so much more than just a Sunday singing type thing! Suddenly the fragmentation of the world seemed so much more acute. Suddenly I realised it was not enough just to sit back a gripe. Suddenly I was involved.

I don’t do conventions – I break into a sweat in mega-crowds, it does nothing for me. But Roots 2004 was a temptation a real temptation. Jim Wallis was on the speakers list. I’ve only just got round to listening to the teaching tape. Someone gave it to me with a shrug "shame really – I found him a bit dry…too political…perhaps his books are better…you can keep it"

Without a joke or a borrowed story or anecdote in sight - I was hooked as I drove.

"The trouble with the church is that Jesus Christ has been stolen from it – it’s time to get him back. Jesus today in the post Christian west is suffering a huge misrepresentation – he represents power, money and intolerance"

Looking at Deuteronomy 15:11 – he spends the next hour arguing that the church needs to realign itself to those who have lost hope. "We’ve lost our proximity to the poor – getting that sorted is the route to getting Jesus back". "What the church can offer is true hope…and hope is believing in spite of the evidence then watching the evidence change…"

Maggi asks…"What are the things that we should be pursuing?"

My fear? I'm not sure the church is that bothered. Sure we'll do the rhetoric, say the right words but I'm scared that we are too pre-occupied playing ‘mirror mirror on the wall’ to realise that Jesus has been stolen – despite good intentions rather than modelling an alternative the misrepresentation rumbles on.

"The trouble with the church is that Jesus Christ has been stolen from it – it’s time to get him back."

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A bit of sally bashing....

Came across a good bit of Sally bashing over at salvationsoldiers I have to say we try and make sure that everything we raise goes into projects that build local community in Poplar but hopefully if you read this blog you get that sense anyway.
Read more

Lost Voices of Mission...Fred Brown

Image
Along the world famous Oxford street in London's Westend; nestled in among the classy frontage of designer shops there is almost an unnoticeable, unimpressive wooden door. It is more or less alongside The Regent Hall's main entrance onto the busyness of Oxford Street. People pass the wooden door oblivious to the equally unimpressive wooden steps that go up three storey's to what was Regent Hall's youth club. When I was 10 I played on these bare wooden steps totally unaware of the significance behind and upon which I played. Many years later I discovered a university youth work course - as an induction to Youth Work - stopped outside this insignificant wooden door to point out that Youth Work as we know it in the UK started behind this door. ...whether that be the surbanite flower people that flooded the Westend to express their free love; or the hard core drug community this unimpressive wooden door became the 'portal' that blurred encounter between church an...
Read more

Types of Christian Spirituality...

Image
It is easy to think and to limit ourselves to a single approach to Christian spirituality. A 'if it works for me it should work for you approach' tends to narrow our appreciation of other ways which actually impoverishes our experience of spirituality. Urban T. Holmes has developed a means of exploring spirituality and helps develop an appreciation through discovering links between spirituality, temperament and predisposition. The diagram illustrates his ideas together with potential inherent dangers. The vertical continuum speaks and helps us understand our relational orientation to God. This ranges from engaging with God through understanding and theological process to a more emotive response. Horizontally speaks of a persons preferred means of pursuing the spiritual life. Kataphtic speaks of affirmation and the need of something tangible in an individuals spirituality- this may take the form of worship, art, even imagination with the use of metaphors, symbols and images play...
Read more