Money's Where The Heart Is

Recently I was having a conversation with my friend Charlotte, who was a full-time missionary to Brazil, but now, after a short time in the States, is moving to Portugal to be a full-time missionary there. I don't know how it came up, but we started talking about tithing, and the traditional 10% that most churches teach is the "right" amount to give to the church, or to the Kingdom. Charlotte then started talking about how she hated the fact that tithing or giving has been limited to 10%, so that some Christians give the 10% and think that's enough; they're covered. She thought we should stop preaching about tithing all together, which I though was crazy because tithing is what pays my paycheck!

But after talking about it with her, I think she's right. Because the only place in the Bible where it talks about giving 10% is in the book of Numbers, which was laying out Jewish Law. And even there, it says you should give AT LEAST 10% of your income.

I think it's funny how we do try to give just 10% and then say we've done our part. I mean you look at Paul's life, he didn't even view his own body as his, so he didn't care if he was beaten, whipped, jailed, whatever, because he saw his body as belonging to God, so if it suffered for God's sake, then praise God! So why is it we limit our giving at all? Everything we have is God's. All our money. Our families. Everything. His love for us limitless, so why is our giving for Him limited?

Ya Know What Really Grinds My Gears?!

So I saw a post on Facebook this morning that I thought was really good from my buddy Mark Corcoran. This was it: "Ive seen a world where churchs are more like sports teams, each one only taking care of its own members, competing against the other churches, unwilling to help each other, unwilling to love each other, and everyone loses. That is not the church of the bible. The church is Christs body, it is the entire body of believers, it is meant for good works and love, and only Jesus is the head."

Now if you think about it, this is so true. So often we as churches turn the work of Christ into a competition. We spend time looking at what other churches are doing not to get ideas for how we can more affectively spread the Kingdom of God, but so we can compete with them to get people from other churches into our churches. It seems really silly to me that we're all supposed to be brothers and sisters, but we're fighting with our brothers and sisters over where they choose to worship. Shouldn't we just be rejoicing in the fact that they ARE our brothers and sisters? Maybe it's this inner-quarreling that James was talking about when he said in his book, chapter 4 "What causes quarrels and fights among you? Do they not come from inside?"

It's this kind of inner-fighting within the Body of Christ that makes it so hard for people outside the Body of Christ to believe that we really are a faith based on love. How can we say our whole belief-system hinges on love, but then show so much hate towards our own family?

Maybe we should spend less time in our churches figuring out how to steal members from other churches, and focus more on just reaching as many people as we can with love and service toward them. Might not be a great business plan for churches, but it's the only Plan for followers of Christ.

okay I'll get off my soapbox now and figure out how to get more kids in my youth group...

Rockstar Jesus!

So I recently got this email with a picture of Jesus rockin out on an electric guitar that said "Jesus Rocks!" on it. It reminded me of when I was looking for a college to go to and I got a pamphlet from a school with Jesus crowd-surfing on the cover (in the interest of full-disclosure, I DID end up going there...). But I mean it's all the same isn't, Buddy Jesus, Dancing Jesus on our dashboard, all this stuff about how "cool" we can make Jesus, when really at the end of the day, Jesus' whole ministry was about doing things that by the standard of his day, was not "cool".
I think we Christians try to focus on the wrong things. Trying to be "cool" or make Jesus into a "cool dude". In fact, at a show my band played one of the guys working there said "God is such an awesome dude, and he loves you!" I think what most people are looking for in this world isn't a "cool dude", we have have enough dudes in this world who think they're cool.
People are looking for something meaningful. The Savior of our World. The God of all human-kind who's love is limitless, never-ending, never ceasing (Romans 8). So I think we need to stop trying so hard to focus on how cool Jesus is, and just start telling people about how Great his love for us is. Because at the end of the day, people are looking for a Savior that's "cool", they're looking to be loved.
And, I'm pretty sure God is far more concerned with people hearing of and feeling his love then people thinking he's a "Cool Dude."
(Did that all sound entirely too old man-ish?)

hatin on haters

Ya know, it always makes me so mad when I hear someone who claims to be a Christian, saying Christians make them so mad, they don't want to be called a "Christian" anymore. I think it's just part of our society these days, or maybe my generation: we like to sit back and complain about the way things are, but we're too lazy/apathetic to do anything about it.
I was talking with a dude at one of our shows the other week who was upset because a rapper he had booked to play at a church was swearing in his music, and the Pastor of the church wanted him to be cut off. (is that really so much to ask? To ask that a dude that's droppin the f-bomb on a church alter to be cut off?)
The booker then goes into this rant about "this is what makes me not even want to be called a Christian anymore!"
The way I see it, Christian means: "Christ-follower". It's not a club name, it's not anything other than defining yourself as living for our Savior. I guess if you're not cool with being labeled a follower of Christ, or if you're ashamed of our Savior's name because of some black sheep in our Christian family, then I just have to wonder how committed you are to Christ in the first place?
This isn't meant to be judgmental even though it probably sounds like it. I just don't see how God could possibly be glorified by us being ashamed to bare his Son's name.