Carl Medearis said something in a recent sermon at Mountainview that grabbed my attention. I'll paraphrase: Sometimes the ornaments obscure the Christmas tree. The ornaments may be pretty, sentimental, or traditional but they are not the tree. Applying this to church (and perhaps Christianity in general), the tree is Jesus. Yet we often allow our traditions (the ornaments) to obscure the tree. Even today's innovations may inadvertently draw attention away from the tree they are supposed to accent. Ornaments have meaning, even value. They represent family and memories and love. But they are not the tree. If all the ornaments were taken away, would we be satisfied with just the tree?
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Inscribed on a plaque at the Yokefellow Institute in Richmond, Indiana, is this quotation by Elton Trueblood: "Jesus Christ can be accepted; he can be rejected; he cannot reasonably be ignored." "Reasonably ignored." I found that to be an interesting phrase. If something is reasonable, it has enough merit to warrant further exploration, if not belief. To be unreasonable is to be beyond the boundaries of credibility. Is Jesus "reasonably ignored" today? Or is it more likely that he is "unreasonably ignored" because what many people think they know about Jesus is actually beyond the boundaries of credibility? Reminds me of Phillip Yancey's book, "The Jesus I Never Knew." The Jesus we think we know may not actually be the real Jesus. Thoughts?
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One of the points Patrick Lencioni made during his Leadership Summit talk was this: Many churches suffer from terminal niceness. In other words, we allow problems to continue because we don't want to cause ripples. A critical spirit is allowed to bleed onto innocent bystanders because we don't want to hurt anyone feelings. Jesus calls us to be kind; did he also say nice?
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This past Thursday and Friday was spent at a simulcast of the Willow Creek Leadership Summit. It was another challenging summit ... personally and pastorally. We (Mountainview) took nearly forty staff and volunteers -- and had the privilege of bringing pastors from two of our sister churches. For the event itself, I unleashed the power of Evernote for note-taking and found it very helpful. But I wasn't as nerdy as my friend who used his iPad. Over the next few days and week I'll share thoughts and reflections from the summit. So, stay tuned. Posted from WordPress for Android
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