Steve Simms's Blog, page 307
October 16, 2016
Bob Dylan: Is church missing the train?
Is church missing the train? Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature by thinking outside the box and challenging people to get on board. He wrote: “They talk about a life of brotherly love, show me someone who knows how to live it. There’s slow, slow train coming up around the bend.”
Christianity should be that train that goes beyond sermon-talk and actually shows us how to live “a life of brotherly love.” But we seem to have derailed, cause a train can’t run on one wheel rolling and Christianity can’t roll on one man talking in a church building.
Dylan sang: “My train is overdue, To your memory I’m clinging, I can’t escape from you.” Christ’s train, the members of His body functioning together in surrender and obedience to His Headship and control, is long overdue! I cling to the written memory of the body of Christ in 1 Corinthians 14:26: “When you come together, each of you has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation.” I can’t escape from that concept that the Greek New Testament calls ekklesia.
A gathering of Christ-followers with only one man doing all the talking is like a train with only one wheel rolling and all the rest frozen in place. To go forward to “a life of brotherly love” we need every wheel (every Christ-follower present in a worship meeting) to speak out in obedience to the Spirit.
“You also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” –1 Peter 2:5. “How does it feel . . . to be like a rolling stone?” Church as usual has most of us so stuck in our seats that we have no idea. Perhaps it’s time to let ordinary people show and tell what God has done when we gather in Jesus’ name.
If Dylan can win the Nobel Prize for Literature, then surely Christ-followers can go beyond church as usual and get on board with 1 Corinthians 14:26.
October 13, 2016
How do you know Jesus?
“But who do you say that I am?” –Jesus Christ (Mark 8:29)
Do you personally know, follow, and obey the living, resurrected Jesus?
Make America polite again
There’s nothing great about rudeness and bullying. It’s time to make America polite again!
October 8, 2016
No time for spectators in church –MLK
Martin Luther King, Jr. put it this way: “There are many people who have caught the dangerous disease of ‘spectatoritis.’ Such persons are only spectators or onlookers but not participants. Such persons watch the minister and choir indulge in prayer and praise. They come to see what is going on rather than to help create, give direction and enrichment to what is going on. The mood of the true worshiper is not passive, but active. He comes not just to get but to give, not to observe, but to participate; not just to see what is going on, but to contribute to what is going on.” —The Reconstruction of the Church –On What Pattern?
Why doesn’t the institutional church give Dones (people who are burned out on and leaving traditional church, yet still love Jesus) an alternative to leaving? There are plenty of places for people who like passive church meetings where everybody sits as spectators. However, churches have not provided worship opportunities for people who want open sharing and participation according to 1 Corinthians 14:26. Perhaps now is the time to open up to Spirit-led participation. Take the first step and visit The Salvation Army Berry Street Worship Center in Nashville, TN. (I was recently interviewed about how we meet at Berry Street @ http://unchurching.libsyn.com/008-can-institutions-unchurch….)
“People are leaving their churches because they feel excluded. Excluded from participating in the communication of the message.” –Thom Schultz
“When the ministry was left to the professionals, there was nothing else for the people to do other than come to church and listen. Soon Christianity became nothing but a spectator sport.” -Ray Stedman
October 7, 2016
Hangin’ with Mother Teresa
I’m inspired and challenged! I feel like I have been spending time with Mother Teresa.
If you have ever thought that you would have liked to meet and visit with Mother Teresa, now is your chance. You can read her private letters and personal stories from people who knew her well, in the book, A Call to Mercy–Hearts to Love, Hands to Serve.
This book is not only uplifting reading, it’s a great resource for ongoing encouragement in your life. Here are a few of the quotes:
“Love is for today; programs are for the future . . . So be concerned with what you can do today.”
“Keep giving Jesus . . . by your example, by your being in love with Jesus, by radiating His holiness and spreading His fragrance of love everywhere you go.”
“We cannot work for peace, nor give peace, if we do not have that peace in our own hearts.”
“In the silence of the heart, God speaks.”
“Let us not use guns and bombs to overcome the world but let us radiate the peace of God and extinguish all hatred and love of power in the world and in the hearts of all men.”
“By helping others you will be rewarded with peace and joy.”
“That unborn child has been carved in the Hand of God from conception and is called by God to love and to be loved not only now in this life, but forever.”
“By adopting a child couples receive Jesus, but by aborting a child, a couple refuses to receive Jesus. Please don’t kill the child.”
“It is true; some of you have done the wrong thing in killing the unborn child in your womb through abortion. But turn to God and say, ‘My God, I am very sorry for killing my unborn child. Please forgive me. I will never do it again.’ And God, being our loving Father, will forgive you. Never do it again–and believe me, God has forgiven you.”
“For me, the greatest development of a human life is to die in peace with God.”
“Give Jesus a free hand to do with you what He wants.”
“Let us make prayer a daily habit. Prayer not to murmur a few words and spend some time, but prayer with the heart and fervent wish, prayer that should come from within.”
Here’s the official “Author bio”: “Mother Teresa (1910–1997) was born in Skopje (present-day Macedonia) and joined the Sisters of Loreto in Dublin in 1928. She left the Loreto order in 1948 to begin the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta. Her service to the poorest of the poor became her life’s work. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 and was beatified in 2003. Editor of Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light, Father Brian Kolodiejchuk, MC, PhD, was associated with Mother Teresa for twenty years and is now director of the Mother Teresa Center, which has offices in California, Mexico, India, and Italy.”
I received this book from “Blogging for Books” for this review.
October 6, 2016
Mr. Potato Head all ears? Or the Body of Christ?
Are you familiar with Mr. Potato Head — a Playskool/Hasbro toy that originally came out in the 1950s? Mr. Potato Head was so popular that he was included as a character in the Toy Story movies. He has also been a regular in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade as a Mr. Potato Head balloon.
Originally Mr. Potato Head was a box of separate plastic parts with pushpins that could be stuck into a real potato. (However, because of getting so many complaints about rotting potatoes and due to new government safety regulations, in 1964 Hasbro started including a plastic potato body in the Mr. Potato Head set.) I had the original when I was a child. It was great fun to play with. I always liked getting out of the box with Mr. Potato Head and pinning the his parts in unusual places on the potato. I created some strange looking Mr. Potato Heads.
Perhaps church has done the same thing I did and produced some unusual concepts of the body of Christ. Can you imagine a Mr. Potato Head with rows of ears lined up all over his body facing one solitary mouth? That’s been the primary way that church has been structured since the first few centuries. We’ve lined up rows of passive listeners (ears) to sit and hear one man (1 mouth) talk. However, the Bible asks an interesting question about the entire body of Christ being reduced to ears: “If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be?” (1 Corinthians 12:17)
Perhaps we could to allow for the many various parts of the body of Christ to share in a church meeting instead of leaving everything under the control of one part acting as the mouth. 1 Corinthians 12:14 reads: “The body is not made up of one part but of many.”
There are so many gifted people in any gathering of Christ-followers and the Holy Spirit wants to use all of them. Perhaps it is time to let some of the many ears in our churches have the freedom to be the parts of the body God is calling them to be.
Perhaps we need to go beyond Mr. Potato Head and allow the living, resurrected Jesus to be the literal, controlling Head when His body meets together. Learn more about how to do that here. If you live in Nashville, come and see various parts of the body expressing their gifts as they are prompted by the Spirit at The Salvation Army Berry Street, 225 Berry St., Nashville 37207 on Sundays at 10:45 am.
October 5, 2016
Are there answers to eternal questions?
What does it mean to be right with God? To be saved? To be born again? To be on your way to Heaven? Church has made those questions religious and has answered them with “church membership,” “attending church,” “saying a one-time prayer,” and/or “having a one-time spiritual experience.”
However, what if salvation is an ongoing, personal, submissive, and obedient relationship with the living, resurrected Jesus Christ, instead of those things? Some thoughts recently came to me about what salvation is. I put them on two posters. If you follow your conscience, that inner light will lead you to the risen Jesus and to the powerful realities taught in the Bible. If you ignore your conscience, darkness will gradually lead you away from God.
October 4, 2016
First century therapy groups . . .
A First Century Therapy Group . . .
–The early Christ-followers formed therapy groups to help them heal from the dysfunction in their culture and in their personal lives. There is a description of how those therapy groups met to encourage, exhort, and comfort one another in 1 Corinthians 14:26.
–Our crazy world needs therapy to help us heal from anger, disrespect, violence, hate, vulgarity, greed, and other dysfunctional attitudes. Experience a Christ-led therapy group with us every Sunday morning at 10:45 at 225 Berry St., Nashville 37207.
How did twenty-first century Christ-followers get so far away from those first century therapy groups? We have been trained to put our attention on one man’s weekly message instead of focusing on hearing directly from God and on lovingly listening to one another.
–Words from a preacher (or conference speaker) enter the ear, pass through the brain, and are mostly forgotten. (Do you remember any details from the last sermon you heard?)
–Words directly from God rise up in the heart, healing and transforming it. (Do you remember the last time God spoke in your heart?)
–Words spoken from the heart of others, touch our hearts and release compassion, inspiration, love, and healing. (Do you remember the last time someone opened up and shared their heart with you?)
Religious talks are seldom exciting and invigorating. The living, resurrected Jesus Christ, working in and through His everyday people, always is! Check out my book about how the first century group therapy meetings worked.
October 3, 2016
2 pods about church without sermons
Here are two podcasts about how God will break out of the traditional church mold (if we let Him).
He stopped the sermon. Hear how a church in Nashville, Tennessee has been meeting for 8 1/2 years without a sermon.
Can institutions unchurch? Learn how a denominational church can meet like a support group with open sharing and testimonies.
October 2, 2016
When God flows like Niagara Falls (Seeing is believing.)
Since I was a child growing up in Arkansas, I’ve heard about Niagara Falls. However, everything that I have heard and all the pictures I have seen of Niagara Falls couldn’t convey the reality of the falls to me. When I finally went to see Niagara Falls this week, it was so much grander than I expected. I have seen numerous waterfalls, but all of them put together would be dwarfed by Niagara’s two massive falls.
That’s the way many people are about Jesus Christ. They have heard about Him. They have seen religious pictures. Yet, all the sermons and all the icons in the world cannot convey even a tiny fraction of the reality of the living, resurrected Jesus. To fully appreciate His power and grandeur, He (like Niagara Falls) must be experienced in person.
My visit to Niagara Falls was hands-on. I looked at it from many vantage points on both the Canadian and the American sides. I ate in a restaurant above it. I went in a tunnel behind the Canadian falls and felt the power up close. I rode a boat to the base of the falls and felt the mist and wind pushing my body around. Even wearing a poncho, I was drenched. When I got off the boat I had to literally wring out the sleeves on my jacket. What an experience!
That’s the kind of experience we need with Jesus. It’s not enough to just hear about Him in sermon after sermon until we are so board that we fall asleep. We need to experience Jesus like I experienced Niagara Falls. But how?
Take the time to listen to Him, then do what He tells you. Dive into the book about Him with an open heart. Talk to Him. Gather informally with people who let Jesus flow though them in love, in words, and in the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
When ordinary people are allowed to show and tell what God has done as they feel led by the Spirit, the power and presence of the living, resurrected Jesus flow like Niagara Falls. Experience this for yourself at The Salvation Army Berry Street in Nashville where instead of a one-man sermon, everyday people show and tell what God has done — Sundays @ 10:45 am., 225 Berry St., 37207. Learn more about it in the book, Beyond Church, available in Kindle & paperback available at this link.
