Blogiversary on the Horizon

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“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.