Leadership

What the church should be doing

by Jimmy Monnin
01/05/09
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Nearly two months ago I wrote an essay on why I think "the church is not doing it's job". That question was posed to me by a regular reader, and I thought that a good question to ask, just an overly negative concept.

Yes, I freely admit that fact. It's because that's how I usually work, I start with the negatives (The criticisms of the fanatic wings of Christianity in this case) and I move that on into a discussion of how to fix those problems.

It's just my way.

General wisdom suggests that pointing to problems without highlighting solutions is rarely if ever productive. My desire is to influence change in both attitudes and our expressions but to do that I need to re-balance the issue. Ergo: The question "Why is the church not doing it's job" must lead to the question "What should the church be doing?" Otherwise there's no real point in asking the first question at all.

The young Jr minister, Kyle Williams once wrote:

"Change takes place in communities when people change their habits and impact the people around them. Ideologues who care only about abstract thoughts rarely change history, and when the political ideas of people exist only in a vacuum you find disconnected realities."

Consider these examples:

• We complain about vulgarity and adult content in movies and television, but spend money to see movies and patronize the companies that place the adds that contain such.
  
• We viciously call liberals socialists for encouraging the government to support the poor, but then we refuse to make the "choice" to help the poor ourselves.
  
• We blow off steam about irresponsibility of the other party's politicians while putting up candidates in our own parties, that are irresponsible themselves.
  
• We claim that homosexuality is damaging the "sanctity of marriage" while ignoring the damage done when we ignore our own marriages.

So what should the church be doing? I have a few ideas and I will be sharing those as we go. This time around, I only want to foreshadow the four solutions we will be covering, because I only have so much space for this specific essay.

• What the church can do to put an end to abortion, and why we have failed thus far.
  
• The truth about how to convert homosexuals and why the church is a dismal failure in that arena right now.
  
• The important role Christians must play in our economy, and how to get our country out of recession
  
• How to spread Christianity to the four corners of the world, and promote world peace.

The name "change agent" is not a compliment coming from everyone. After all if we have all the answers in the Bible then why tolerate a change agent? They forget that just because the translate a verse a particular way that does not mean that's what the Bible actually said.

Most people will freely admit they are not perfect when asked. Yet I ask: Isn't being intolerant of change the same as claiming you're perfect?

Worse still, intolerance shows your conceit with your actions which most agree that speak much louder than your words. Now No-change agents do make a valid point when the say not all change is good. The reversal is not all change is bad.

The Bible says that God is unchanging, yet it is clear that God allows for changes in our world and our situations. One need only point to the differences between Jewish and Christian religions to prove that fact.