Friday, October 2, 2009

To Revive the Creative

Lately my creative spark has been hitting the kindling of my soul. I have become intimately reconnected with the joy of pushing a color into place on the canvas, and remembered that some of the things I wrote back in the times I couldn't remember much weren't all that bad. Some are even relevant ten years later.
The crazy part is that back then I wanted fame through it. Now I just want to share.

Check it out:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrw21j/sets/72157622455804338/show/

Thursday, October 1, 2009

Megachurch, really?

I was listening to a podcasted sermon today. It was from a very insightful pastor of a multisite church with a large congregation. I think that's a good way to describe it. Then again, there is that other word. I am sure you've heard it. It is nice and it rolls off the tongue, but it really means nothing because it doesn't actually describe its subject. The word: Megachurch.

I know I shouldn't harbor hatred, but I hate that word. It is ridiculous. From the greek root, there is a numerical disparity. I know that 1000 kilobytes is a megabyte, but I don't know of such a thing as a kilochurch. Could it be some type of high growth medium sized church? NO. The large churches attributed the prefix of mega, are large indeed. But I would like to posit that they are actually nowhere near as large as they seem. They certainly don't have membership of one million people - although by that definition, most of the major religious sects could claim the moniker. These "megachurches" also do not consist of an association of 1000 churches with 1000 members each.

Although these things would be great goals for a church, and miraculous if achieved, they just are not what is being accomplished. What is happening is that people are coming to know the Gospel, developing a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, becoming immersed in the mystery of the trinitarian nature of God, and being touched, taught, and restored by the Holy Spirit. How glorious this truly is!

Yet here lies my problem with the term. Megachurch, really? NOT UNTIL THE WHOLE WORLD HEARS!

Until the whole world hears. There are over six billion people on this careening rock, and the grouping together of less than 1/1000th of a percent of them under the same roof worshipping Jesus does not constitute in my opinion something Mega. In that light I am way more inclined to call it a microchurch - Just as each human is a microchurch. The goal is to make Jesus famous. Until all hear the Gospel, there is nothing mega about it. The point, to steal a little genius from Andy Stanley, is that "God loved, God Gave. We believe, we receive" (reference John 3:16 - you might have seen this at a sports venue or something like that)

There is much left to do in the world until His return. Each of us has the responsibility to be a growing microchurch, part of a growing microchurch that partners with other microchurches. Then, when the whole world has heard, and Jesus has returned to claim this world as His own, - and only then - we may experience Megachurch.