Christian Culture Burnout Weekly introduction

What I hope to do here is encourage those who are feeling a huge disconnect between the life of faith and the life . I have heard a million times that the Church is not a building or that we are the church wherever two or more are gathered together. True enough but it sucks when you feel like you don’t fit in anymore or decide you will never set foot in a church again. Most likely that decision doesn’t have anything to do with your faith in Christ. There are many reasons for leaving a church and continuing to follow Him outside of a “building”. However, I have not met many people who were thrilled and excited about it. Usually it involves a lot of emotional pain and loss, for that reason some may never go back.

My purpose with this CCBW blog is not to criticize the “Church”, churches or blame people. Why? One reason is it’s just too easy and look how much good that has done. Trashing churches and pastors is not cool even if some do suck. There are whole ministries dedicated to that already. The other reason is: The term the “Church” is extremely broad. When I hear someone say.. “The church does this or the church does that”. I don’t even know what that means anymore. The church down here is still an imperfect earthly institution that also contains within it true believers. I know someone will say,” Well the church is the Bride of Christ”. Fair enough. However, when he takes His bride she is already in Heaven to meet Him, which leads me to believe those people in that “church” are believers. Down here one never really knows who is who in church.

The Body of Christ is a term used to describe all believers in whom the Spirit of Christ dwells. I know it sounds stupid but I try to use the term the Body of Christ in place of the church. I think that is a very important distinction because down here the church contains the body of Christ, but the whole church is not of necessity the same thing as the body of Christ.         When people criticize and rag on the church and how it is failing I wonder what they were expecting. The only time Jesus speaks to the Churches directly is in the Book of Rev. where he doesn’t seem all that impressed. He also spoke of the Church as a huge tree that had big crows in it, and mentions false shepherds among other things. Paul also had many forebodings about the church which even in his day had already stumbled out of the gate. I don’t know this for sure but I believe the body of Christ is doing the work that God has called it to do inside and outside the church. I’m going to actually go out on a limb here and say I think God has things under control.  I think it needs to be said that by and large people in churches have done and do incredible things for Gods’ kingdom everyday. I don’t think we hear that enough. Likewise, outside the visible church people do amazing things everyday for God also. Many believers have fled the visible church but are very much still a part of His body.

To Avoid Confusion I will define a few descriptive terms:

* americhurch ~ A fictional church where the Bible is interpreted through the grid of American tradition, history and values.

* americhrist   ~ A fictional Jesus that is the object of faith and beliefs for americhurchs’ theological, moral and political mission.

* The Body of Christ ~ The universal sum of all believers in whom the spirit of Christ carries out His work and mission on the earth.

* The Church ~ The universal visible body of people who have made a profession of faith in Christ and come together in some form or fashion fairly regularly.

In future posts I will look at how these issues can lead to “disconnect” and “burnout”.

*The origin of pop Christian Sub-Culture Beliefs

*The language and terminology in the pop Christian Sub-Culture

*Cultural and historical influences on the pop Christian Sub-Culture

*Selective cultural biases in biblical interpretation

My interest on these subjects relate to specific cultural biases that are un biblical rather than non biblical. Many selective cultural biases that are taught as Gospel truths subtly contradict the teachings of Christ at worst or at best muddy up and confuse an issue to the point of in coherency.