Something that I have found myself doing and desiring to do lately is finding Christ and knowing who He is. Not like "where's Waldo?" or "Where in the world is Carmen San Diego?" But finding who the Christ- like are. Now I know many Christians but they aren't being Christ. It kind of reminds me of that song by Casting Crowns. "If we are the Body, why aren't his feet going, why is his love not showing…?" it seems to me like Christians have left the body to form separate little ones. I mean you have these little denominations and types of Christians who get all into the details but never into the BIG PICTURE that is God and his glory and the Gospel. Its like some competition. We aren't loving, we are begging the community to come to us when we have been called to "go into all the world". I don't get it. But people hear the name "Jesus" or "Christ" and they think of these little bodies running around saying that that is who they are when in fact, they are nothing like him. The other day, I was talking to a church planter on a college campus. As a college student, I am wanting to help plant it and be effective and do church RIGHT. to me, church has become just as the church was in Jesus' day and age. It was all about the rules and technicalities and logistics and not about GOD. We've lost him somewhere. He's whispering from the back row, with tears running down his face, asking us to return to HIM. Today, Church does not equal Christ. Where did we go wrong?
But anyways, back to my talk with this college church planter. We were talking about the different church organizations on the campus. I proposed that we joined with them all in creating this church. He pointed out to me that some of the organizations were afraid to get lost in the shuffle and the crowd. Why should it be about a little body getting lost in the forming of the big body? Now we aren't trying to make a bigger body but create Christ.
I went back to public school while being in the private Christian system for 7 years. Its almost culture shock. Nearly every day, my faith is mentioned and often shot down. But its not necessarily Christ or Jesus but what we have made "Christ" and "Jesus" to be. We've tried to piece the body of Christ back together with these little bodies and made it look nothing like Christ. We've simply made a caricature of Christ when people need to see the real deal.
Here's another thing. I wonder how the Holy Spirit is doing right now. Its like we've all gotten together and voted him off the island or something saying, "oh its ok, people want to see what's going on. We can take it from here." Now the Holy Spirit still works and moves and has remained but its like He's sitting next to God on the back row longing for us to call on him to get Christ moving again.
I was watching a podcast the other day and the pastor was talking about the Love of Christ and how he is incomprehensible yet loves us so much. He showed a picture from the Passion of the Christ when Jesus was hanging there. And I was so moved. Not by what the pastor said but just the love that my Savior showed me. I had an "awe" moment. Do you ever get those? Where you can't say anything because words can't describe it? God has given me a lot of those moments in the past year or so. I wasn’t drawn to the Pastor, I was drawn to my SAVIOR. I was drawn to CHRIST.
What would happen if we made CHRIST the center again? What would happen if we WERE His body, not some caricature of him? What if we actually let God and the Holy Spirit actually be the center of our leadership and the way we do things?
