Blogiversary on the Horizon

“A fam­ily with­out a com­mit­ment to the God of the Bible has no hope of stem­ming the tide of cul­tural onslaught. If we mix a lit­tle bib­li­cal truth, a lit­tle sec­u­lar psy­chol­ogy, a lit­tle romance novel ide­ol­ogy, and a lit­tle east­ern mys­ti­cism, we will get a deadly mix­ture of lies. Unfor­tu­nately, this is what many Chris­t­ian fam­i­lies do … If we are to expe­ri­ence multi­gen­er­al­tional faith­ful­ness we must come to a place where we throw off the shack­les of our cul­ture and live in the full­ness that is found only in Christ. We must be peo­ple who live the Word in our homes.”

~By Vod­die T. Baucham, Jr.~

On the Hori­zon was launched on Jan­u­ary 13, 2007, so I cel­e­brated my “blo­giver­sary” a cou­ple of days ago.

It was a good time to stop and con­sider my blog­ging adven­tures of the past year, as well as my goals for the next, and the quote selected by Lori this week pro­vided a excel­lent foun­da­tion for my deliberations.

My blo­giver­sary also marked another anniver­sary: One year has elapsed since my lib­er­a­tion from the shack­les of mem­ber­ship in the insti­tu­tional, patri­ar­chal church. It has been the best year of my spir­i­tual life.

So many things demand our atten­tion dur­ing the day: Work, our children’s edu­ca­tional, ath­letic and social pur­suits, tend­ing to our home envi­ron­ment, our hob­bies and inter­ests. Every­where we turn we are invited to focus on some­thing other than being grate­ful for our many bless­ings. We are dared to be faith­less and dis­obe­di­ent to the Word. And nowhere did I find that to be more true than inside the walls of orga­nized religion.

The church on earth is sup­posed to be a fam­ily, the mem­bers of which, i.e., believ­ers, come together each week to wor­ship. Iron­i­cally, after a life­time of church mem­ber­ship and activ­i­ties, I have expe­ri­enced the fullest, freest and more mean­ing­ful wor­ship expe­ri­ences of my life dur­ing the past twelve months that I have not set foot inside a church building.

The rea­sons are read­ily evi­dent in the quote.

Churches today are, in large num­bers, falling vic­tim to “cul­tural onslaught.” They are keenly aware that they are com­pet­ing for our atten­tion. So wor­ship lead­ers are delib­er­ately striv­ing to design a wor­ship ser­vice that will draw us away from our celebrity-obsessed, technology-dominated lives and into the church but, in the process, they are cre­at­ing an envi­ron­ment that is shock­ingly, in my opin­ion, akin to the world we are scrip­turally called to live apart from. Rather than offer­ing a solu­tion, churches are, in my esti­ma­tion, part of the prob­lem because they are adding to the cacoph­ony rather than offer­ing respite to those who seek true worship.

Too often in recent years what I heard from the pul­pit was “a lit­tle bib­li­cal truth, a lit­tle sec­u­lar psy­chol­ogy, a lit­tle romance novel ide­ol­ogy, and a lit­tle east­ern mys­ti­cism” mixed in with some pop cul­ture wis­dom. I wanted to learn to “live in the full­ness that is found only in Christ,” but left the wor­ship ser­vice feel­ing empty like a jilted bride who had been left at the altar.

Most impor­tantly, Christ calls us to “live the Word [not just] in our homes,” but every­where else, espe­cially in His church. But too often, I came home from a church activ­ity feel­ing that I had just expe­ri­enced an event that was focused on any­thing and every­thing but the Word. With increas­ingly fre­quency, I expe­ri­enced a church that strug­gled to sur­vive via mar­ket­ing to and imi­ta­tion of the world, as well as manip­u­la­tion of mem­bers’ and poten­tial mem­bers’ emo­tions, rather than intense prayer, study of the Word and dis­cern­ment of the Holy Spirit’s pur­pose for it. I expe­ri­ence an insti­tu­tional church that existed, of neces­sity, “in the world” but tee­ter­ing dan­ger­ously on the precipice of being totally “of the world.”

Finally, I could no longer resist the Holy Spirit’s urg­ings. I had to “throw off the shack­les” of orga­nized reli­gion in order to hear the Word clearly in my ongo­ing effort to “live in the full­ness that is found only in Christ.” Every day, I strive to “live the Word in [my] home,” as well as my busi­ness, endeav­or­ing to block out the sounds of the world and allow the dul­cet tones of the Holy Spirit’s voice to per­me­ate my con­scious­ness and direct my soul’s journey.

Tech­no­rati Tags: In “Other” Words

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