I’ve noticed an interesting, little phenomenon through the last year of consistent blogging:  people respond when I post my thoughts on the dysfunction, systematization, or abuses of the organized Church (and when I use words like “suck” in my blog titles).

That’s not difficult to unwind.

The Church is often deserving of criticism. And those of us longing to emerge from a predominantly cultural acceptance of Christ into a more vital, life-breathing relationship with Him, have had to take a long and honest look at what we’ve truly embraced.

We’ve had to point at it.  Name it.  Call it what it was. And often times distance ourselves from it.

It’s true.  The Church can be:

hypocritical

manipulative

money-hungry

behavior driven

backward

controlling

institutional

stale

abusive

self-serving

self-righteous

(fill in your favorite missing adjective)

And I don’t think pointing at the truth is unwarranted.

The Old Testament prophets violently confronted poor spiritual leadership.  Jesus Himself had more than passive insults to throw at the religious hierarchy of His day.

But it’s so easy to chuck stones at the institution. To critique the caricature.  To cynically slam the fundamentalist control-mongers.

(and let’s be honest, it’s a lot of fun, too)

It’s much scarier to take a hard look at ourselves.

Here’s the deal:  I am the church. And so are you if you claim to follow Jesus Christ.  So perhaps we should focus first on embracing our personal responsibility to the Kingdom rather than just gleefully pointing at the Emperor with his pants around his ankles.  Maybe we should repent of our own dysfunction, hypocrisy, and control issues. Remove the “plank” from our eye so we can see clearly to help The Church at large.

Let’s continue to wrestle. To challenge.  To embrace the tension.  To call the spades what they are.  (I plan on it).

Let’s just always be willing to start with the me before we take on the we.

You can get away with a lot in the minor leagues. A little slow off the line? No problem. So is everyone else. Can’t dribble with your left hand? No worries. Neither can your defender. Occasionally caught napping in the dugout? So what? There aren’t any TV cameras at a minor league ballgame.

But in the pros? Yeah. The bar? Higher. The pressure? Immeasurable. The competition? Scary. Your weaknesses?

Obvious.

Visible.

Exposed.

(like one of those dreams where you’re out in public in your undies…yeah, you have them, too).

One of the best pieces of advice I got before my buddy Nathan and I launched City Community Church was “deal with your crap.” All the issues and brokenness you were able to keep hidden from others (and even yourself) will come screaming to the surface when you jump to the big leagues. Boy was that good advice.

Saul, the first king of Israel, had some crap he never dealt with. Some see these verses as a sign of humility. To me, they scream of unfaced insecurity. An early sign of the disastrous future that was in store.

“But I’m ONLY a Benjamite, from the SMALLEST of Israel’s tribes, and from the MOST INSIGNIFICANT clan in the tribe at that. WHY ARE YOU TALKING TO ME like this? (1 Samuel 9:21 MSG)

Classic self-protection. A sign of rot at the core. And this crap that was never dealt with would torment King Saul, ravage his closest relationships, destroy his kingdom, and ultimately end his life.

Tragic.

Avoidable.

Courage. Honesty. Vulnerability. Relationship. True community. All these things could have helped King Saul expose his raging insecurities. And repentance and accountability could have healed them.

Yet many seem to think they can just jump to the next level, head to the pros, and skip over shoveling the crap. The next level doesn’t fix you, it exposes you.

Marriages, business partnerships, even church pulpits (honestly, especially church pulpits) are full of people hiding from their stuff. Ignoring their brokenness. Running from their pain. And leaving a holocaust in their wake.

The next level will always expose. It’s inevitable.

But dealing with your crap is hard. It costs. Sometimes more than we think we can pay. But the bill for hiding our junk will come due. And it may have eternal consequences (and not just for you).

Repentance is liberating. Grace is free. Admitting we’re broken is the expensive part.

Is it time to deal with your crap?

Shame comes in all shapes and sizes:

A big zit on your nose.

A past full of brokenness and abuse.

A rip in the seam of your pants.

A failed marriage.

Silly or serious, we’ve all felt it. The exposure of a vulnerability or apparent shortcoming that drives us to run away. To cover up. To hide. And unfortunately, The Church (my church, even me personally) can foster environments of shame, even when we’re not intentionally trying to.

It makes sense. The Church, a place of grace, hope, and unconditional love, is also an environment full of expectations. Standards of behavior naturally emerge in any culture, but engaging in Church culture comes with a built-in assumption of moral superiority. We profess faith in God and innately feel our lives should reflect that (even if we don’t).

And while some shame is understandably innate, some is undeniably overt. We’d be lying to ourselves if we didn’t admit there are many in the Church who willingly use shame as a means to control. To maintain power over people. To protect their personal preferences. To manipulate others towards their desired outcomes.

Innate or overt, when we fall short (which we always do), shame moves in. Becomes a constant companion. And shame is a horrific house guest.

God deals in conviction, not shame. Shame is based in condemnation, in pointing out deficiencies with the intent of rejecting, judging, or looking down on another. And Jesus didn’t come into the word to do that:

For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. (John 3:17 NLT)

Yet in so many church environments shame is still a primary motivator, filling our sanctuaries with guilty people. Hiding people. Manipulated people. Self-righteous people. Frightened people. Fake people. Or in more and more cases, empty seats.

So how do we know when God is convicting or when shame is condemning? Here’s some thoughts:

Shame is an ego-protection mechanism that focuses on how we appear to others.
Conviction is an inward re-alignment with who God is and has called us to be.

Shame conforms us to man-made expectations.
Conviction leads us to repentance.

Shame causes us to create false perceptions of reality.
Conviction leads us to openly face who we really are.

Shame manipulates and imprisons.
Conviction heals and frees.

Shame misuses aspects of truth to manage and control.
Conviction reconnects us to absolute truth.

Shame formulates outward behavioral modification.
Conviction births true inward transformation.

Shame pushes us towards self-protection.
Conviction pushes us towards Christ.

Shame asks us to do the work.
Conviction drives us towards the One who already did it all.

Which one is driving you? What is being fostered in your environments? What do you think?

I’ve been a Christian all my life. I grew up in church, and I’ve invited Jesus Christ “into my heart” more times than I can count.  Church services.  Youth group.  Summer camp.  The location rotated, but those famous words passed my lips with fearful regularity.  You know what I’m talking about:  The Magic Prayer.

“Jesus, I know that I’m a sinner and I ask you to come into my heart and be my Savior. Amen.”

Or some variation on that theme.

Some preachers led it with more flare.  Stretched it out.  Added extra inflection and accents on strange syllables.  Adopted that strange “preacher-accent” to make it sound more official.  But you get the gist.  It was the doorway to salvation. The ultimate moment.

And it’s a good prayer.

A good decision.

A monumental occasion.

This was the event that was celebrated, built towards, tabulated. The experience that was supposed to change everything.

Until it didn’t.

Because for many, when that episode was over, so was the change (well, OK…if you were lucky the goose bumps may have lasted a few days).  It was just a moment.  It never translated into momentum.

That’s because I don’t think we truly understand repentance. Yep.  Something so fundamental to faith, to a genuine relationship with the Creator of the Universe, and I think it may have been hijacked by our own desire to celebrate an occasion, to point to a tangible.

Repentance is not a one-time event.  It’s a violent, daily confrontation with my brokenness and the ongoing application of the only remedy that really works: submission to Jesus Christ.

Yet we see all kinds of believers (even pastors and spiritual leaders) that may learn to conform to Christian cultural expectations, but under the surface continue living in the cesspool of their own un-faced lies and personal demons. Their focus is on a past event that put them in “the club,”  that was supposed to fix everything, rather than active motion towards new life in Christ.

“Bring forth fruit that is consistent with repentance [let your lives prove your change of heart]“
(Matthew 3:8 AMP)

“Then he said to the crowd, ‘If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross daily, and follow me.’” (Luke 9:23 NLT)

Repentance is an active daily posture, an ongoing change of heart, not a magical grouping of words we repeated. The good news?  It’s not about more effort (you can’t fix yourself), it’s about more submission.  It’s about having the guts to face your brokenness, to admit your sinfulness, and surrender your selfishness.

Today.

Everyday.

Whether you’ve been a believer for 30 minutes or 30 years.

Are you still struggling to conquer the demons that “good Christians” aren’t supposed to be facing?  Embrace repentance as a way of life.

Salvation isn’t just a past event, it’s a ongoing journey.  It may have started in a very special moment, but has that moment become an active, daily posture of repentance?

I’m not sure who this last series of posts are really for – one of you out there actually taking the time to read them, or me the guy writing.  Perhaps this is just part of my own personal therapy.  But until this topic gets out of my system, we’ll continue to unpack it in this forum.  Love to hear your thoughts and personal stories.

I’ve been following Christ for a long time.  In fact, in my 35 years of life on this earth, I don’t remember one day I would have said I was “away from God.”  And for the past decade I’ve pursued Him passionately:  reading, listening, learning, praying, discussing, growing.  Some would even consider me a “professional Christian” (after all, that’s what pastors are, right?  We get paid to follow Jesus).

But after all these years, I’m noticing an interesting phenomena.  Knowledge is not my friend (or at least it initially seems that way on the surface).  The more I learn, the more I dig, the more I uncover about God, the more overwhelmed I become at the complete disaster that I am.  Knowledge has simply illuminated my failure, my innate inability to be Godly.

But if you’re like me, your gut reaction to this revelation may be as follows:

The more you learn, the more you realize the distance between where you are and where you should be.  That realization instinctively leads to immense effort to close the gap.  But the harder you try, the more you fail, and the more you fail, the more frustrated, fearful, or depressed you become.  And honestly, that’s where a lot of us live our lives each and every day (even many of us who have known Christ or been in and around the truth of the Gospel our entire lives fall victim).

So here’s where I am personally (and perhaps I should be embarrassed to say this as a life-long Christian, and a full-time pastor at that).  I’m going back to the basics.  Don’t let knowledge and revelation lead you towards effort, let it drive you to repentance.

Effort is your broken, sinful, human attempt to close the un-closable gap.  Repentance is your submission to the only true Gap Closer.  Effort leads to consistent frustration and failure.  Repentance allows the supernatural life of Christ to ignite inside of you.  Effort leads to  religion.  Repentance leads to Jesus.