Are you still in Christian kindergarten? Seriously? At your age?
My wife enjoyed teaching Sunday School for the kiddies, until the new pastor arrived and ended the program. “Not enough children attending,” he said. That approach did seem at odds with Jesus’ teaching about the shepherd leaving the flock to go and look for the one lost sheep, however. We left.
Around that time I realized that much of what most of us do at church as adults is really a lot like kindergarten. We don’t think of it that way, and since we see mostly other adults attending, we assume that the church is for adults.
But is it? Is it really? Or is it just kindergarten, or at best early elementary school, for adults? How many churches (back when there was weekly attendance) did more than scratch the surface of Christianity? How many of us were taught that what we call the supernatural is God’s normal existence and the way that He works in the natural world?
“I will build my Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” Do not most churches have a mentality that says the world outside the church is evil, but God is inside the church? Do not most churches believe that by replicating themselves they will over time build God’s church in the world?
Church growth is mankind’s way of building the church. It’s wrong on two counts: 1) Jesus didn’t say that we would build His church. He said that He would build his church. 2) It is the gates of hell that are locked and barred against the church that Jesus is building. (Hell doesn’t seem much worried much about the churches that we are building.) The devil is not much worried about Christian kindergarten churches, which are anyway now closed because singing hymns in church is dangerous to those who hate God.
Why do you think that the realms of our culture that the enemy now holds are locked and bolted against any Christian influence? Schools, colleges, government, big business, big media, big tech, Hollywood … Oh, don’t you bring those Christian ideas in here! Separation of church and state is in the Constitution! (No, it’s not. It’s in a campaign letter from Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptists, who were worried that the next president would set up a state-run church, like the Church of England.)
What might the world look like if we had “eyes to see” what Jesus was doing today, to build His Church?
- He might appoint a Cyrus-type leader to break down the existing governmental structure, both here and in other nations He was working in around the world.
- He might use the nation with the most powerful military in the world to secure peace agreements in trouble spots that have plagued the world for generations.
- He might be separating Sheep nations from Goat nations, based upon how each had treated “My brethren,” the Jewish people.
- He might be preparing for the harvest, which suggests the largest Christian awakening in the history of the world.
- He might be building His Church, the Ecclesia, outside of the formal church system that we see around us, and moving those He has chosen into the very areas that the enemy has owned for such a long time.
He might be doing all this supernaturally, which is invisible to most of the world, and unfortunately most of the world’s churches. He would do it supernaturally, because that is who He is and how he works. He might even be preparing to administer His own government, supernaturally, upon the earth.
If this is the case, the old “what would Jesus do?” question would better be asked, “What would Jesus have us do,” as part of the Church that He is building?
Understanding that question, however, requires Christian education beyond the kindergartner level our churches are so fond of teaching. When Jesus’ disciples asked if he was now going to “restore again the kingdom to Israel,” Jesus responded:
“It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power. But ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth” (Acts 1:6, 7-8 KJV).
Is that the church you are familiar with? Or are you still in Christian kindergarten, waiting for the governor to give you permission to return and sing a hymn again?
What if Left Behind got it wrong? Reconnaissance is the end, reenvisioned.
