The Ministry of Death OR the Ministry of Life - Greg Albrecht

He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter, but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. Now if the ministry that brought death, which was engraved in letters on stone, came with glory, so that the Israelites could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of its glory, fading though it was, will not the ministry of the Spirit be even more glorious? 

—2 Corinthians 3:6-8

Waking Up in Church to Religious Striving

He looked at me and said, "It happened while I was in church. It was the end of the service, everyone was standing, and so was I. I was doing the same religious thing that everybody else was doing, the same religious thing I had done for over 25 years. My family was there. My mother was there. It was the same place we always went. We did the things they told us we should. The sermons usually either scolded us or berated us. 

"That week the sermon had been another 'you're not good enough' sermon. After the sermon, during the final prayer, the thought hit me, 'You know. This is ludicrous. I am never going to be good enough. I've been trying to do all this stuff for 25 years. I have been trying to get better. I've been trying to do more and more and more, but something is just not working.' 

"I realized that I had sat there in church hundreds of times, filled with guilt and shame as a result of the sermon, and every time I resolved that I would do better. Each time I determined to do a bunch of stuff that I really believed would make God happier. For all those years I really thought I could influence how God thought about me. All those years I thought it was all about me and what I did or did not do."

CLICK HERE if this feels familiar!

Grace at Church - Greg Albrecht

Keynote Passage:

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: “God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get. 

But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. —Luke 18:9-14 

Today we’re going to talk about church. The core ingredient of being the church is being in Christ. If we are in Christ, and he is in us, we are the church. Notice I said—we are “the” church, which is entirely different from being members of or part of “a” church. The church is the universal body of Christ. It is not comprised of or defined by any specific incorporated legal entity. All of what the universal church is—its entirety, its unity, its beauty and its totality—is not visible. The body of Christ is everyone in whom Jesus lives, everyone who trusts in him, everyone, regardless of their affiliation with a legally incorporated church, or lack thereof.

All of the rest of what we so often think of when the word “church” comes to mind—buildings, special architectural features, “holy” rituals, ornaments and all of the activities, programs, services, small groups, Bible studies, discipleship programs, missions , picnics and softball games—all of it either can help or harm us. But, such physical properties are not essential, foundational, core elements that determine whether we are the church.

Your attendance, or lack thereof, with a group of people, in a particular building, at a particular time, at a specific address, on a piece of real estate, performing specific religious rituals has little, if anything, to do with whether you are in Christ. Such behaviors and practices may help or hinder your relationship with Jesus, but they do not assure it.

The title of this article is "Grace at Church" and the passage upon which our discussion is based is Luke 18:9-14—well known as the “The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector.”

Sinead O'Connor: "Take me to church, but not the ones that hurt ..." by Brad Jersak

"Take me to church
but not the ones that hurt
'Cause that ain't the truth"
Sinead O'Connor

Just because someone has been hurt badly or offended greatly in the context of a 'church' (whatever that means) and has stormed away in anger and wailed and railed about ... does not mean they have renounced love or forgiveness or the need for a safe place to belong. It does not mean they've shut out their own conscience or have no regrets about harm they've done. It does not mean they've let go of their own beautiful song ... songs of love and joy and lament and healing.  

Within Sinead O'Connor's beautiful repertoire, you'll hear it all -- from prophetic protest to blasphemous barrage, often in critique of the church she can't quite stop obsessing about and pining for. So when she sings, 'Take me to church,' we know she's got no interest in 'the one that hurts' ... and of course, she means, 'hurts children' and 'hurts women' and hurts 'the poor' and so on. That kind of 'church' (no matter how it dresses up or down) isn't the truth, doesn't represent the truth, doesn't know the Truth. But it also strikes me that if she could find a safe place to belong that echoes her own experience and let's her tell the story without judgment, you can bet that place would be 'the one that hurts' ... that is, such a 'church' would be a harbor for the hurting and give them space to continue processing their hurts without faking it. 

A Jesus Kind of Church -- by Greg Albrecht

No Country for Old Men

"The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." —Luke 4: 18-19

Out in the endless, desolate desert of west Texas, a hunter looking for antelope stumbles on a crime scene. Abandoned cars and trucks are pock marked with bullet holes, and a half dozen or so dead bodies are scattered around.

In that odd and somewhat glib euphemism used by the media, it's apparently a drug deal "gone wrong" (if indeed there was ever a "right" drug deal!). Examining this massacre, as flies hover around the bodies, the hunter finds a suitcase of money which provides the motive for all of the violence that follows in the 2007 movie, No Country for Old Men. The movie follows the trail of the money, in a telling and apt metaphor of the violence that often accompanies greed and lust in contemporary American life.

Tommy Lee Jones plays a Texas sheriff about ready to retire. He spends most of the movie trying, without much success, to stop the bloodshed the money causes. No Country for Old Men considers America's bloodlust for the fast and easy fix, the get-rich-quick schemes that enamor and trap so many.

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