The Big Lie

One of the more difficult things for the pulpit pounders and the pew sitters to do is to understand the difference between the church, as a spiritual community centered on Jesus, and the church as an institution which constantly requires its pound of loyalty.  For those who are trained and ordained, there often comes that moment of realizing that everything is about keeping the institution afloat with more money, bigger memberships, and  larger buildings, but by that time, too much has been invested to admit the basic misdirection and so the lie has bought another evangelist.  And through trickle down theology and flawed leadership,  the new lie gains more adherents who embrace the misdirected truth that the church and the institution are one in the same.    

It takes awhile of living with the truth that is finally revealed in the mirror each morning to enter into the kind of repentance which is likely to actually mean real change.  The real change needed is not in the church, but in the one who is a part of the many of make up the church as we know it in the world.  When the lie is finally exposed, there is an accompanying awareness that "who I am is not who I was"  and a desire for what can never be given, a do-over.  

The real church is not a myth which belongs to the Biblical past.  It is the red stained cross created church fanned into life by the hot breath of the Holy Spirit.  It requires none of the condiments of the institutional church, but only simple Word centered preaching, worship and praise that is not tethered to whimsical trends or stuffy rituals, and a life of being instead of one busy doing.  This Jesus centered spiritual community has always been present in the invisible realm of the Kingdom and waits only for those who see to enable it to be the church incarnate alive and moving in the world.  And so, it waits for you and me.