So whats changed ? (3)

Whew, we have been through some hectic weather here over the past few weeks and apparently still some more to come ! It amazes me when chaos is all around and people help each other out. We lost power for 24 hours and had showers, food and good company at a friends apartment along with 3 other families – thanks to the Ulbrichts ! This a picture of a ship grounded and hour north of us - on the beach !

Early on in the year I had what I would call a crisis of faith. I came to a point where I was not sure if what I was doing, where I was going and if what was being said and done matched my personal belief. It got to a point where I had to write down what I believed – what are my core doctrines … they where almost the same except for a few that I always had suspicions about…

Tithing – don’t get me wrong, I am all for giving and even to give all to God and others. Tithing looks too much like a religious line drawn that says God will bless you if you do this – I thought God loved us unconditionally, and pours out His blessings on us even when we don’t deserve them. I’ve seen too much condemnation around the tithing issue – theres a lot of poor people struggling to keep a rule. I cant find Jesus talking about tithing – if you find a scripture where He talks about it, please let me know ? I do read about the rich young man and Jesus said give all you have to the poor, He did’nt mention a tithe at all. Its one of those rules, if you can do it you feel good, if you don’t you feel bad and condemned. Not much grace there…



Large 'mega-church' – I’m all for effective governance and stewardship of what God gives us, but building a congregation that supports a clergy and pays millions for offices and buildings each year while people struggle with Aids, lack of water and sanitation, starvation and have no homes makes no sense. God does not live in temples, He lives in us and collectively we are the expression of church, the people, not the building or the organisation. The first martyr, Stephen found out what happens when you talk about peoples temples, he was stoned for suggesting this – how strange that we now build so many buildings to congregate so many people. Have we slipped back to temple building ?

It is important that we as followers of Jesus are very clear about what is church - otherwise we can get the wrong vision, one of buildings and sanctuaries. Yes, I know a vast number of christians worship in buildings we call 'churches' but we spend a lot of time, money and effort on the buildings we call church when we should spend that time, money and effort on the people - churched or not.

Jesus said "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. " Somewhere we have ended up going into all the world making denominations out of men and teaching them how to build organisations......

I'm not anti organisation but I do belive that there must be a better way - surely a more effective way of impacting the world for the kingdom. We need to get a balance between congregational worship times, personal worship time and time we need to spend 'salting' the earth.