Saturday Night saw my mate Darryl give yet another brilliant yarn to the folks at Blueprint Church. I'm gonna give you his first point (with some sam harvey embellishments) mainly because the second point was really good but I cant remeber it that well, didnt really take any notes on it. Something about changing the way we view ourselves or something fluffy along those lines.

Anyway after thinking about it, what was so good about the talk was that it wasn't a "lets get sorted so God can maybe use us" talk, it wasn't a "You are going to change the world" talk, it was a couple of practical things that we should be doing if we profess to follow Jesus. Its so refreshing to hear stuff that we should and can easily do.

Point one: We should all be involved in helping the poor on three levels.

• Sponsor a child. All of us should be doing this even though we are distant from the person and they are often just a picture on the fridge.
  
• Connect ourselves (via a trip to a 2/3rds world country) so that these people suffering move from pictures to a reality in our life. That we would know someone who is living in poverty overseas. I know this is a strong view, but my perspective is that every single person who follows Jesus should go as least once in their life to spend time with the poor. I spent three years in South America as my parents served as missionaries and it has so profoundly changed my world-view it cannot be overstated. We spend huge amounts of money on study, cars, rent, christian confrences. We will be more transformed than all of this stuff combined, and we can all afford it if push came to shove.
  
• Connect in NZ to the poor. Darryl mentioned some of the needs here in NZ that we should all be a part of (as he ranted about here)
  

As he was talking I wrote down the words "we actually act least like a Christian in church".

Following Jesus looks like hanging out with the un-popular kid at school. Following Jesus looks like giving our time and money to those that struggle physically, emotionally etc. Following Jesus is looking at creative ways of blessing people with no strings attached (click here for a great yarn along those lines). Following Jesus looks like the struggle in the secret place not to sin. Following Jesus is hurting and being confused by circumstances and situations that are not right in the world. Following Jesus is being angry about injustice, and giving yourself to make a difference even if it feels small. Following Jesus is sharing life with those that are on the fringes and looked down upon in our culture, with those that are hurting (which is why my friend Stu's latest post blows me away).
Following Jesus is plodding along doing normal life in an abnormal way. You can continue the list yourself this definitely isnt the extensive list : )

All of a sudden it seems that our church gathering (while freaken awesome times and really important) is not just what it looks like to be a Christian.

But where does most of our energy go? If "the medium is the message" then what are communicating?
I for one have had a really huge adjustment about what it looks like to follow Jesus in the last 6 years, and yet have grown up in a healthy Christian family, with part of that time overseas living amongst the poor, being to all the camps and events one goes to, studied at Bible College for three years. And with all this Christian input I still had a really imbalanced idea about what it looked like to follow Jesus.

To be continued...

Labels: darryl, emerging church, jesus followers, justice, personal, rant

This entry was posted by Sam, on Tuesday, February 20, 2007. You can leave your response.