Every week I receive emails from people who are leaving behind traditional churches and launching out into simple forms of church gatherings and a desire to live kingdom-lives 24/7. Something is drawing us out of our traditional church backgrounds into unchartered waters. Something is compelling us to leave the familiar for the unknown.
Skeptics might suggest that people are leaving traditional structures because of hurts that have not been resolved. While I do see many people hurt by hierarchical church systems, and while this may be a good reason to seek something different, I don't sense that most people I speak to are nursing old wounds and refusing to receive God's healing.
So, what's motivating this uprising?
The more "spiritual" answer is that it's the Spirit of God Who is moving people out of old wineskins into the new. While I'm sure this is true, the Spirit works through our human hearts and emotions to move us. He causes us to become dissatisfied, to see new possibilities, to be no longer content with where we have been. So, in a sense, when I ask the question "What's motivating us?" I'm asking to understand more thoroughly just what the Holy Spirit is doing in the hearts of so many.
"What is motivating us?"
I'm interested in responses to this.
Initially, I became grossly frustrated with a system of church that devastated me personally as I experienced a significant, personal burnout and as I became painfully disappointed with the lack of transformation in the lives of people. I saw the dysfunction of the CEO-type pastor, the control and personal agendas that are inherent in a power-centered structure, and the pain caused by an organization that valued some above others. I saw the lack of real relationship and therefore honest love within a group of people who truly wanted both but were too busy keeping the system going to experience either. I wondered how any of this church-activity-stuff fit into what Scripture described as "church." But this frustration was only the initiation. It produced the longing that got me moving.
I suspect that these types of frustrations and/or painful realizations are the starting point for many people searching for something more. But I'm also wondering if we need to transcend these initial negative motivations into something more constructive?
I am hoping that I have other motivations that are now stirring me to keep moving toward organic Christian living. I want to live in spiritual reality 24/7. I want to be the church-- the living, breathing, organic movement of God's people who are living in the leading and power of the Spirit. I want raw reality-of-God living, not a mediated experience in which I follow rote activities in order to feel good about having done some spiritual "duty-thing."
I want to hang out with a community of people who are charged up about this type of kingdom living and who also know me, stand with me, support me... and for whom I feel challenged to lay down my life in order to do the same for them. I want to see the Body of Christ, wherever it gathers, loving one another, healing one another, pouring into one another until "the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love."
I want to see God's people unleashed. Is that too big of a dream or what? As idealistic as it may sound, this motivates me. I want to see His glory cover the earth through His people who are lovers of God, lovers of each other, and living compassionate, power-enhanced lives. These are people who go through the same problems and strains as anyone else, but they do it openly, vulnerably, and their dependence on God and His grace poured out in their lives shines through them. They are weak, but Oh he is strong! They engage their spiritual gifts and their compassion in everyday life. Through thick and thin, they live for Him, give for Him, and ultimately truly, really desire only the One Thing--more of Him.
I am motivated by the desire to see "the church" get out of the way so that the church can become what it really is: the living, breathing presence of Christ in a world that so desperately needs Him. I want to see a little more of Jesus expressed through His collective Body so that we reflect, in a greater way, His glory, His wonder, His love, His grace, His purity, and His transcendent beauty. I long to see just a bit more of Him shining through!
What's motivating you?
