Thursday, September 17, 2009
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Narcissism is alive and well
narcissism is alive and well in the church. Let me illustrate with a parable:
A dinner host invite someone over to their house for dinner, they talk and laugh and connect very well. Then the food is served. they have a salad appetizer, followed by a course of chicken, carrots, mashed potatoes, a roll, and 2% milk. they follow this up with cherry pie alamode for dessert. They laugh, talk, and connect some more.
The next time they are invited over, they refuse to come because the host served 2% milk, they instead like 1/2% milk.
They lose all of the fellowship and community that comes with the dinner experience because of a petty personal preference with milk.
The dinner host is God
The house is church
The dinner is the worship experience
appetizer = preparation for worship
dinner = worship experience: prayer, singing, message
dessert = fellowship after service is over
milk = worship music style
The purpose of the dinner experience is to get to know the host, the actual food is a vehicle for fellowship. When we make the dinner experience about the food, we lose sight of the purpose of the dinner experience and become irrelevant, unused, narcissistic Christians.
Paul wrote of this in Timothy, and includes an encouragement for the leaders who are over such people; and I like the message version best:
In a well-furnished kitchen there are not only crystal goblets and silver platters, but waste cans and compost buckets—some containers used to serve fine meals, others to take out the garbage. Become the kind of container God can use to present any and every kind of gift to his guests for their blessing.
Run away from infantile indulgence. Run after mature righteousness—faith, love, peace—joining those who are in honest and serious prayer before God. Refuse to get involved in inane discussions; they always end up in fights. God's servant must not be argumentative, but a gentle listener and a teacher who keeps cool, working firmly but patiently with those who refuse to obey. You never know how or when God might sober them up with a change of heart and a turning to the truth, enabling them to escape the Devil's trap, where they are caught and held captive, forced to run his errands.
A dinner host invite someone over to their house for dinner, they talk and laugh and connect very well. Then the food is served. they have a salad appetizer, followed by a course of chicken, carrots, mashed potatoes, a roll, and 2% milk. they follow this up with cherry pie alamode for dessert. They laugh, talk, and connect some more.
The next time they are invited over, they refuse to come because the host served 2% milk, they instead like 1/2% milk.
They lose all of the fellowship and community that comes with the dinner experience because of a petty personal preference with milk.
The dinner host is God
The house is church
The dinner is the worship experience
appetizer = preparation for worship
dinner = worship experience: prayer, singing, message
dessert = fellowship after service is over
milk = worship music style
The purpose of the dinner experience is to get to know the host, the actual food is a vehicle for fellowship. When we make the dinner experience about the food, we lose sight of the purpose of the dinner experience and become irrelevant, unused, narcissistic Christians.
Paul wrote of this in Timothy, and includes an encouragement for the leaders who are over such people; and I like the message version best:
In a well-furnished kitchen there are not only crystal goblets and silver platters, but waste cans and compost buckets—some containers used to serve fine meals, others to take out the garbage. Become the kind of container God can use to present any and every kind of gift to his guests for their blessing.
Run away from infantile indulgence. Run after mature righteousness—faith, love, peace—joining those who are in honest and serious prayer before God. Refuse to get involved in inane discussions; they always end up in fights. God's servant must not be argumentative, but a gentle listener and a teacher who keeps cool, working firmly but patiently with those who refuse to obey. You never know how or when God might sober them up with a change of heart and a turning to the truth, enabling them to escape the Devil's trap, where they are caught and held captive, forced to run his errands.
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