I mean how great is South Carolina? It snowed on Monday and it's been 75ish degrees this saturday and sunday! That is the very reason I love the south, but our state in particular. I do love New York and the big city-ness, but only for a few days at a time. Even though their summers are hot, it's too cold for too long. We have a nice long span of warm weather for a good amount of time, and usually we avoid the path of hurricanes or too many tornados or tidal waves. So yea, I love living here. But this morning in church I realized mentally I'm best suited for California or somewhere cool like that maybe. We had a really great pastor preachin in church this morning. And the way he talked about the church and what the world has made of it and what Christians have made of it, makes me want to leave the south, which in my opinion is where you'll find the heart of most issues. I wouldn't consider myself a liberal thinker, by however that word is truly defined. But with the southern baptist church being where I got most of my religious influence, I feel like my opinion can have some personal credibility. The church that I've been attending for 3 years now is not perfect. Shocking. In fact, I have had several thoughts of moving to another church, most of those thoughts within the past few months as we've searched for a new pastor. The former pastor was wonderful and it's taken a really long time to find a new one and that has bugged me. Not that I have many consistency issues, but not knowing what you're gonna get or who you're gonna get each sunday will make you tired as a church-goer. But within recent weeks of really trying to understand what a church is, I find that it's not about pastors or youth groups or vbs or coffee. It's about community. And not just the type of community where everyone has their part and each part does IT'S part, and then it stops there. Even though that is true, our "part" individually doesn't stop inside the church walls and it's not confined by a certain ministry or bible study or sunday school class. Sometimes churches today have it right when they say everyone in it has gifts and we should each use them to unite the body, but then it ends with that.
I was so convicted this morning in all the talk about what a church is and the difference in what the culture has made it and what Jesus desires it to be. I was convicted in a way that I haven't been in a really long time about how I treat other people, believers and non-believers. How I really use the gifts the Lord has given me and just how far that reaches. We are very set in our ways in most churches. I've attended churches before that have tons of programs with little or no effect on anyone as a result. Those programs and activities please the Christians. Not that I think this is different in all churches in California. I just use that as an example because I lived there for 10 weeks and the spiritual conversations were very different than they are here. I talked to people who literally have NO idea what you're talking about when you say the name Jesus. And here in the south we have this Christian culture that pretends like it's ok to go to church but you can live however you choose. I know this because I've been a part of it for 9 years now. I hate books that just throw out all these things that are wrong with the church, so I'm trying to avoid that here. Truth is the church is a bunch of sinners and it would be better if we acted like it sometimes I do beleive. This idea of loving unlovable people, people who are significantly different than I am, makes me want to get out of this state. Makes me want to spend my Sunday mornings on Blackmon Rd in the trailor park rather than inside the perfectly constructed church walls. That also goes for those churches full of twenty-somethings who meet under a tree. Some churches might meet inside a run-down high school building or a tent, but still have those selfish and close-minded attitudes because their focus is coolness instead of Jesus and his desire for the world.
Rant! sorry. but not really.
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