HOW MIGHT EACH OF US POUR OVER PEOPLE WHERE THEY WORK, LIVE, STUDY AND PLAY?
(Notes taken from our Lesson 8, Letters to the Church by Francis Chan (c) 2018 by David C Cook
This serves as a reminder that each of us is given a purpose for our presence within a community)
Francis Chan: I was having lunch in São Paulo with the pastor of a thriving congregation. I began encouraging him for the exciting things I saw happening, but he stopped me mid-compliment and said, “Yeah, but the church still feels too much like a zoo. So many churches feel like zoos. We take these powerful animals out of the jungle and put them on display in cages. Have you ever seen the movie Madagascar?” I immediately knew what he was talking about. The movie begins with a bunch of “wild” animals in a zoo. All the spectators are in awe of these powerful and exotic animals. Everyone’s favorite is the lion; the children go crazy, cheering every time he roars. Most of the animals love this setup. They’re extremely well cared for. Trainers wait on them hand and foot, bringing them everything they need and ensuring that their habitats, which are carefully designed to look like “the wild,” are safe and comfortable for the animals. But the zebra finds himself dreaming about the wild. He can’t shake the feeling that he wasn’t made to live in a zoo; he was made to roam free. His restlessness creates a situation where several of the animals escape the zoo and later find themselves stranded in the jungle of Madagascar. The movie is hilarious, mostly stemming from watching domesticated animals trying to survive in the wild. These animals were born to live free, born with the instincts and physical characteristics required to thrive. But their zoo environment had made them tame, useless in the wild. I wonder whether you’ve felt like the zebra. You’ve been a faithful member of your church, but you keep feeling like you were made for something more. Maybe you’ve even experienced what it’s like to live in the wild. It may have been on an overseas mission trip or while boldly reaching out in your own neighborhood. You’ve known the joy of seeing your instincts kick in and allow you to thrive. But now you’re stuck in the zoo, where everything is comfortable, everything is controlled. And you just want to get back to living in the wild.
Jim's note: *Ask yourself, Who would be the "zoo-keepers" in this analogy? Please refrain from saying my name out loud! ;-)
Chan: Another pastor of a smaller church (“only” forty thousand people) explained that the founding pastor had told the congregation not to stay in the church longer than five years. In his mind, after five years, there wouldn’t be anything else they could learn from him. Like a child turning eighteen, it would be time for them to start a new journey. But they were running into a problem: once the people got comfortable in the zoo, they refused to leave. In fact, they no longer believed they were able to live outside the zoo. I was talking to a pastor from the Philippines who has over thirty thousand people in his church. He told me he used to send missionaries to the United States for Bible training but he would never make that mistake again. He explained that once these would-be missionaries spent time in the US, they never came back! Once they tasted the comforts, they came up with all sorts of reasons they were called to take a nice salary from a church and raise their children in America.
The answer is not to build bigger and nicer cages. Nor is it to renovate the cages so they look more like the wild. It’s time to open the cages, remind the animals of their God-given instincts and capabilities, and release them into the wild.
Alan Hirsch has said, “In so many churches the mission of the church has actually become the maintenance of the institution itself.”
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“[I pray you would know] what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come.” Ephesians 1:19–21
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If the Holy Spirit enters a person at salvation, do you believe that you have already received a full version of the Holy Spirit? If so, do you already have gifts meant to build up the body?
Ask yourself these questions:
- Who outside our faith are you PRAYING for?
- Who outside our faith have you CARED for?
- What is God teaching you these recent days?
Let's review some of our recent events:
5th Sunday at ASU with the pups
Bible Study inside Fair Trade Cafe
Worship inside The Painters Lounge
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