Sucky Christians

It is apparent that God can and must make do with the material available, and since we all suck at acting like Jesus, God has sucky material to work with.


Some thoughts from Greg over at The Parish on the current state of church life in the US. He's especially skeptical about megachurches, which he believes on "on almost every level." Why? Because they are too big for relationships. Instead of turning out disciples, they turn out consumers of religious product. Here's a note from his comment section:

"The practices encouraged in a megachurch shape their people into Americans, consumers, individualists, etc., not into a community of Christ."

And here's a longer bit from a post called "Size Matters"


The megachurch fails at almost every level because the friendship necessary to sustain community is not available. (The moment you argue that you find friendships in small groups, I'll argue the small group is your church. We needn't deconstruct how silly most of these small groups really are and how ineffective they are at making disciples.) I mean community in the real sense of the word: people who are committed to each other, who tell the truth, who live in a state of accountability with each other, who share, support, love, etc. The group has to be small enough that we can share a common story. The story of our lives become the story that shapes me into a disciple. We live the story of Jesus together.


The solution? Try harder to be a little less "sucky" at following Jesus.


Rather than settle in to a place of complacency, rather than be assimilated into the larger culture, rather than live as an enclave away from the world, rather than attempt to use politics to gain power in secular circles, and rather than relativise the Gospel to such a degree that salvation means a decision, we should lay the current picture of the church against the picture that Jesus painted, especially in the Sermon on the Mount and the Revelation, and say, "How are we doing at living like Jesus?" To the degree and in the areas where we are not, we must apply ourselves to do better and actually make an attempt.