A few days ago, Pinakidion posted a laments about what he calls the move toward a ‘Kinder Gentler ICOC’. In other words, essentially the same as we’ve always been, but with all the rough edges sanded off. We’ll take away the compulsory discipling, the stat sheets, the forced giving levels, the levels of staffing above the individual church level, but we’ll leave the same basic ideas – evangelism and growth focused, performance mindset, everyone ‘sold out’ – in place. He points to a few articles and studies that are getting at real reform as better models.
Sunday our minister articuated much the same idea with different words. He pointed out that when we are confronted with rotten fruit of sin in our lives, the temptation is to react by frantically yanking the rotten fruit off of the tree. Simply pulling the rotten fruit off may make us look better, but it does nothing to produce good fruit. The tree is cleaned up, but remains the same at the root. Instead, we should go to the root of the tree, to feed it, strengthen it and heal it so it would produce good fruit.

Dan does it again. This time he tackles Christian “Adware” saying “Scrape the fish off your car. Please! I’m begging.” I cannot agree more. I’ve always found about 99% of those Christian slogan T-shirts, bumper stickers, fish symbols, etc at least tacky, if not offensive. Why? Dan sums it up best:

To be perfectly blunt (and when am I not perfectly blunt?), I can’t see what having any kind of Jesus fish or bumper stickers gets us except another reason for unbelievers to be hacked off at our lousy driving habits or the sheer hypocrisy of the plethora of other stickers we might have on our cars that cancels out that Ichthus. If a nut goes screaming past me doing twenty miles over the speed limit, he’s just a menace. But if he’s sportin’ the old Ichthus and doing it, well then he’s now a Christian menace.

Long term readers of this blog (both of you) might remember this post from back in May of 2004:

Monday night was a monumental night, or at least it could have been. Time will tell. The deacons of the Columbus Church of Christ (myself included) met with the evangelist to discuss the state of the church and its future direction. Decisions were made that will effect the lives of many here.
Last week the deacons had met for only the second time since our appointment back in November of last year. …
At the end of the night, we had decided that we could no longer sit on our hands and watch. We, along with the evangelist and campus minister, were the appointed leaders of the church. If we did not act, who would? We decided that we needed to take our place as leaders beside the ministers and work side by side with them. We would not meekly ask to be included, nor would we arrogantly demand to have our say. Rather we would, as leaders approved by the congregation last fall, assume the place we should have from the start. It was time that the church had a cohesive leadership team. …
As we left there was a feeling expressed that this could be the beginning of a new era in our fellowship, a turning point if you will. Perhaps it will amount to nothing, most, if not all, of that depends on our follow through.

Our meeting was a fruitful one and the then two ministers (our campus minister has since resigned) and the four Deacons commented to work together. We met together and talked every two weeks. We began to get with he members to hear their concerns and we began to forge unity. The longer we consistently got together, the more cohesive the group became. Our differences melted away.
Late last year, I was feeling that we were heading into new territory as a cohesive group. As the weeks and months went by, it felt to me that we were on our way to making the great changes in our church that were needed. There was a general feeling that it was time for us to accomplish more than talk. It was time to produce real change. It was about this time that our minister made an announcement:

On Thursday our main minister or evangelist, spoke up against the idea of team leadership as we’ve been practicing it. …
[H]e thought that perhaps we had gone beyond what we should have. … He referred back to the appointment of the deacons, about a year ago, saying we were appointed to specific areas of ministry (children, poor, campus and administration) not to a broad leadership role. He thought we had gotten away from our focus on specific areas of serving and had taken on a larger role than we were given. He said that he did not see a team approach to leadership in the scriptures, that it was the evangelist who led the church until such time as there were elders in place. We have no elders, so it was his role to lead, not the group’s. His thought was that this was a better plan because, as our group has demonstrated, group leadership can lead to paralysis, lack of focus and stagnation.
Well, to say I was surprised would be an understatement. I did not see this coming. A plethora of emotions were running through my mind. He went to great lengths to reassure us that he was not trying to take over or grab power. He has grown to appreciate our meetings greatly and plans to rely on us for support and advice. He would be a fool, he said, to ignore our council, and other mature men in the church, in leading the church. He emphatically expressed his desire to involve us in the decision making process. …
In the events of last Thursday I see hope and I am afraid. I do not know what will come of it, but I did not know what would come of our meetings when they began 6 short months ago. They have brought us together and built a foundation of trust that can be built upon. In that I see hope. What was once a fractured, dis-unified leadership now has a foundation of unity. I hope that my fears are unfounded, the unhealthy result of an aversion cultivated by the past pattern. I’ve seen many years of hierarchy leadership with one man at the top and only 6 months of a team based system. It scares me to put one man in charge again. But now I know this man and I know his heart. I also think I know God’s heart a little better and I have a little more conviction and courage to speak up, and because of our new relationship I have the confidence that I will be listened to as well. As I said six months ago, time will tell what this means.

To make a long story short (imagine me doing that), in the past few weeks, we’re back to where we begun. The Deacons and the minister have met twice in two weeks and we’ve set a course to meet on a regular basis (twice a month). It’s a turn of events that hold much promise for the congregation. We’ve been languishing in a malaise for too long.
I don’t think there’s any reason to go into the details of why this is taking place now. Suffice to say that the Holy Spirit has clearly been working on all of our hearts, and each person has been listening. The environment was now ripe for change and cooperation, I think we all recognized it and acted on it. Where there was once distance, there is now cooperation. It isn’t taking us long to get right back where we were, which is pleasantly surprising to me. I thought it would take longer.
We’ve only had two meetings, but we’re already making some exciting plans that I hope to share with you in coming weeks. God is working in our hearts, and hopefully we can pay attention to His Spirit and 2006 will be the year of renewal we’ve been waiting for. It is an exciting time, one that is once again full of hope and promise.

Dan from Cerulean Sanctum posted a while back on curses. He was talking about the literal kind and his post has an incredible personal encounter with someone who was living with one. I’m not sure where I stand on the existence of such things, but his story was moving and thought provoking.
Even more thought provoking were some of his comments on the very real curses others place on us or we even place on ourselves. Our experiences and interactions with people can leave an imprint on us that can be hard to shake. He wries about how someone once shared that Dan’s life had had a profound negative impact on this person. Not only was that man impacted, but his sharing it with Dan stayed with Dan for years to come. He writes:

I think it was just today that I came to grips with his pronouncement. In some of my darkest times, what he said to me that night haunted me, and only now do I recognize it for the curse that it was. Only now do I feel like the black power of that comment has been rendered inert in the light of Christ.
How many of us are laboring under a curse someone glibly tossed out a decade or more ago? What words carelessly spoken–or even spoken with intent–have pinned us to the ground or left us flailing?

That last paragraph reached out and grabbed me. I think that to a large degree lots of folks are laboring under such a curse. I think that plagues far too many former and current ICOC members as well. I know that I’ve found many things I believed fervently are false, yet I cannot seem to unplug myself from that mindset entirely. It sticks with me, shaping my thinking and my worldview. It is a kind of curse, an undercurrent running through my subconscious subtly and not so subtly influencing my thoughts.

• Though I understand now that my worth as a disciple does not hinge on my evangelism, I still feel some guilt if I’m not constantly focused on sharing my faith.
• Though I know that having daily, morning quiet times or Bible study is not necessary for salvation, I’m still afraid to admit that I don’t practice that discipline (though I do get into the Bible in other ways).
• Though I know that I don’t need to give a certain percentage of my income to be accepted as generous, I wonder if I’m giving enough.
• Though I now understand that my church is not the church, I still feel myself looking at others as outsiders.

Though I am growing through these things and others, I don’t think I’ve put enough emphasis on the spiritual forces at work here. I’ve not prayed earnestly enough, acknowledging that I need a power bigger than me to release me from this line of thinking. Not only that, but I need Him to help me find balance in these areas. In my mental gymnastics to wrestle through to the truth, I can spring from a hyper focus on evangelism to an aversion to it, from a firm belief in a morning Bible reading ritual to being flippant about not getting in the Bible at all, from legislated giving to casual, inconsistent and thoughtless giving.
Church relationship aren’t the only ones that can do this. How we are raised, our work environments, friends and family can all influence us in ways we are not entirely aware of – for the good and the bad. I can look back at my childhood and see so many blessings – how my parents taught me to love God, respect the Bible and love Jesus, how they taught me to love my country and respect authority. I can also look back and see curses that have hung with me, like a temper that gets the best of me now and then. Thankfully for me, the blessings far outnumber the curses. Some are not so lucky and they spend a lifetime battling against the curses of their past.
No matter where the curses come from, Dan brings to light for me a powerful concept that it’s not just up to us to read our Bibles and sort this stuff out intellectually, we need God’s intervention on our very souls. Only he can reach in and separate us from those things that have their grip on us, like a curse, and free us from them.