I love the Gospels. They are clear and easy to understand. In them, Jesus set a great example for how and what we should do and left us with instructions in case we weren’t clear.
I believe that Christians (followers of Jesus) should look at the Gospels and absolutely go out of our way to do what Jesus did…just with some 2011 contextualization.
In fact, in John 14:12 Jesus says, “Anyone who believes in me will do the same things I am doing and go on to do even greater things because I am going to Heaven to be with the Father.”
I take that verse and the spirit of the Gospels to mean that we Christians should do what Jesus did and eventually go on to do what he did in two greater ways – bigger (more numbers) or deeper (more spiritual/long-lasting). Ultimately, though, Jesus should be the primary model that we base our lives and even the fundamental nature of our churches on.
Here is where the disagreement happens…
The structure, actions, budget, time, and energy of most churches are not based on the Gospels or the example of Jesus, but are based on other churches that are based on other churches that are based on other churches, etc., etc. My biggest beef is that I am constantly hearing from people that read the Gospels and then visit our churches that they don’t quite see the correlation between the two.
Through 2,000 years of church history, some major pieces of what it means to be a Christian have been completely lost in translation. Very few Christians live a life anything like the life Jesus lived and very few churches are actually even asking people to do such a thing. In fact, here, in order, is what most churches convey, either deliberately or sub-consciously, are the 3 most important commitments people can make.
1. Sunday morning attendance
2. Financial Giving
3. Volunteering on Sunday morning
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Hear my heart on this. I’m not saying those 3 things are bad. They aren’t. In fact, they can be good. I’m just saying that you can ABSOLUTELY NAIL church attendance, financial giving, and serving as a Sunday morning greeter and still look nothing like Jesus. And ultimately, what we get, are tens of millions (maybe hundreds of millions) of people that sincerely love God in their hearts, but don’t live out the adventurous Christianity Jesus intended for “anyone who believes”.
I think churches should put all of their eggs in the Jesus basket. We should go out of our way to fund, staff, and guide systems that motivate people to live like Jesus lived.
However, it is clear to me, from my conversations with many pastors, that the more popularly held belief is that God is not calling us to continually go back to the Gospels and find ways to live like Jesus, but that God called men like Peter and Paul to build a church that furthered the plans of Jesus and that churches modeled themselves on the early church, and the next churches modeled themselves off of those churches, that produced churches that produced churches…that produced your church.
And, in the end, many people believe, what we have is an evolved, 2,000 year old institution that advances the mission of God.
I just disagree. I think we should continually find ways to go back to the Gospels and simply do what Jesus did. If we don’t – we end up doing what another pastor did because another pastor did it because another pastor did it – because 1,000 pastors did it, etc. and the true essence of the Gospel just ends up lost.