Raquelle's Blog :)

When I’m sitting in group I get so antsy. It’s not a bouncing my leg-type antsy like Steve next to me. It’s not a ferociously scribbly type of anxiety like Rebecca who’s filling up her journal page on the other side of me faster than I could type. And I’m not even antsy to zone out. I’m actively anxiously thinking about everything I would rather be doing right now than sitting here. I’d rather do a THOUSAND things than stay here learning or even praying if it’s going to be anything like it’s been every week that I’ve gone.

”Ask them what they want the Lord to do for them“ We are instructed to ask the people in our group what we want God to do. For us. That’s just crazy. We tell each other how we’d like the God of the universe to do our bidding. To make job interviews to work out. To make us happy. To win us the house or to get the promotion. That’s just stupidly crazy.

I’m so sick and tired of the eisegesis. I’m sick of the echo chambers. Church is like being stuck in a very highly functioning, very prosperous sick ward. There’s reviving, there’s saving and even learning and teaching for the doctors in training but there’s no transformation. There’s all the high-functioning administration of a well oiled machine, a profitable business of nurses and doctors. Yet on the outside of the hospital, people are dying everywhere. The ambulances are out of order to reach the hurting far away. The body is not mobilized to make change. There’s all the helping of well-learned caretakers. But there’s no transformation. No miracles. No impact on the community.

This passage by Paul is what I’ve been contemplating a lot lately.

1 Corinthians 12:26–31a: “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administrating, and various kinds of tongues”.

I’m convinced of this: there’s a purposefulness to the order. And what the heck are doing if we are taking the potential of 20, 50, 500 able bodied people to further the kingdom and chasing that potential into a black hole. And herding them there to sit for hours. Someone disputing me might say, “Oh but they’re learning! And praying! And preaching!” and I say, “and commanding God.” And the definition of an apostle is a messenger, someone who is sent. What sending have we done lately?

The one thing I’ve become more and more aware of as I’ve sat over seven years in church gatherings is that God is the most omnipotent gentleman to ever exist. I just know that he looks at us, our little ant bodies running around on the earth, and chooses not to pour his spirit out sometimes because we tell him indirectly that we’ve got it all under control.

We might not directly say to God, “Hey back off,” but the elimination of quiet as our worship leaders rush to follow one song with another, the money spent on production for worship, the tracks, the equipment, the meticulously crafted timeline, so that church doesn’t exceed x amount of minutes, the prewritten essay that’s read out as a sermon, the three G’s 1. Give 2. Grace 3. Go, the smoke, the strobes, it’s all an elaborate “Get lost” to God. How can we acknowledge the power of the spirit and be so hardened to the idea of practicing receiving its potentially life-transforming powers? Are we scared of what it would expose in us?

Would Holy Spirit shed light on our selfish habits and the way we put God in a box and how we idolize performance and production and would it expose our selfishness. Would the people who can’t even give God a full 2 hours of their week, the people who duck out of church after communion, would they feel called out. And would the people that engineer the new drinks for the coffee shop to turn a profit in the church lobby – would those people feel called out for making the temple into a market. And would that be too uncomfortable for them? Of course. We’re so focused on the grooves we’ve worn into the road with our wagon wheels, we’re so intent on following the rest of the caravan, on staying on the path, that we don’t realize we’re all tugging our wagons through this lush paradise and if we could just look up we would forget about the wagons and take a step off the path and meet elephants and colors and forests.

I want to JUMP up and down for Jesus, I want to PRAISE God, I want to feel like a little child that Jesus calls to Himself. I want to intercede for people and pray for my city and build relationships of mentorship and friendship. I’m not ready for a group that mirrors the main gathering full of stuffy older adults and stuffy old air, left untouched by the wind of who’s origins and destinations we do not know. (Nick at night) I’d rather spend 2 hours of my weekend practicing what the bible says – serving in a soup kitchen or clothing closet, praying in a house, worshiping my heart out, than waste it listening to someone talk so diligently about all the good we should be doing or being.