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Not everyone in church is a Christian.
This one’s big, and I’m going to bring it to a personal level with two stories next week. But today, I want to talk about some broad indicators that lead me to the assumption that, unlike what we preach, we do not practice.
I read a tweet last week by @mikefili that said “There are 100,000 orphans in the US. There are 350,000 churches. You do the math.”
It got me to thinking about the numbers…
Let’s do the math here- 450,000 churches in North America alone. Over 30 million a week attend a church service somewhere. Offerings are less than 2.5% per person. In fact, if every person in America went on UNEMPLOYMENT and then actually tithed, giving would go up fourfold!
Christians give Christians a bad name. They should have a show called ‘Christians Do The Darndest Things.’
Just found out that two local leaders (less than 10 minutes from my house) just got suspended from their ministry jobs after the SEC started investigation their involvement in a $14.1 million Ponzi scheme.
I read this week about a Baptist church in the south that believes God’s calling for their church is to travel to gay events all over the world and protest- to somehow show the love of Jesus by telling them they’re going straight to hell.
SOMEONE’S MISSING THE POINT!
If we all got it, poverty would be in rapid decline.
If we all got it, trafficking wouldn’t be happening at unprecedented levels.
If we all got it, gay people would be getting saved in huge numbers.
If we all got it, there would be ZERO un-adopted or un-fostered kids in our towns.
If we all got it, we’d use our wealth for kingdom investment, not greedy gain.
If we all got it, people in our cities would be getting saved in unmanageable numbers.
So let’s get it.
IT, being a ROCKIN’ relationship with Jesus, of course. 
Jay
September 3rd, 2009 at 3:12 pm
First of all, that sign in the picture bothers me sooooo much! Everything about it from the corny cross, to the hypocrisy of “all are welcome…no gays please”, and the don’t get me started on the quote. If you don’t believe in Jesus and hate Christians, please, please, please, don’t associate Jesus with churches like this, its just not truth. I think your onto something Jay when you say “unlike what we preach, we do not practice.” I think Christians wouldn’t have such a bad rap if they were doing what Jesus did: loving people, tending to their basic needs (food, health), building friendships with the lowest people in society (at that time it was prostitutes & tax collectors), and above all else, he was telling people about himself, JESUS! If we could walk the talk, I think the word “Christian” wouldn’t force people to break something every time they heard the word.
September 3rd, 2009 at 9:31 pm
Jay,
I think the example of the Maineses is why the Idea of Kingdom Millionaire is such a slippery slope. (without proper accountability) (and granted it seems as though they were genuinely duped into investing) It allows people to then focus more on the fund raising, than the purpose for the funds. It is natural for someone to think “if i had x, I could do this and this and this…” and honestly i slip into that all the time. But when Christians become fund-raisers, not kingdom builders we are presenting that money is the answer to the problem. Over the past year or so, I have seen this become a huge struggle in my little ministry, the focus on funds changed the focus to try to meet relational/spiritual needs with physical solutions.
The motivation is awesome, but when the benifit starts to make the means justifiable, then it becomes easy to ignore the red flags. While the “good” is the focus, we become shrewd like doves, and innocent like snakes. And having shot many doves off of a barn roof, they are stupid, you can pick one off and the rest don’t move… which is how I believe Christians have become. We watch others fall into the trap of “if I only…” and then shake our heads and think “how foolish of them… cause if i only had x, I really would…” and PING there we go!
September 8th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
Lol..excellent dove story!
And I SO agree Jimmy! Been thinking about that over the last two weeks- if money is the answer, then we’ve made cash to be our Savior…so dangerous. I guess I just assume that a person who has the goal or dream to become a Kingdom Millionaire is first to do the hard work of finding valuable kingdom investments. Otherwise it’s worthless.
September 8th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
Good word James… oh, and ps…I made that church sign online~! But we’ve all seen some pretty nasty ones
September 23rd, 2009 at 3:06 pm
Great post.