CityView Magazine - Fayetteville, NC
Issue link: http://www.epageflip.net/i/17354
We have I By The Rev. Dan Alger settled faith have been traveling a good bit lately doing some teaching in other cities. While teaching to one group of folks, someone asked me to describe my perception of Christians in Fayetteville. The question made me pause. She was not asking about the churches, she was asking about the people themselves. How would I describe my overall perception of people who claim the title Christian in my city? I thought for awhile: I think we have settled. I don’t think this is true only here in our city, but she did not ask me about Christians everywhere, just here. I think we have settled for less than what our faith is supposed to be. How have we settled, you ask? We have settled for shallowness. We are okay with a Sunday-morning faith that brings us warm fuzzies but doesn’t go deep enough to really change things. We know structures like Sunday school, vacation Bible school, morning worship, Wednesday dinners, men’s breakfasts, etc. It just seems like in many cases it is habit, not passion. We are consumers wanting to get some God juice for the week, never thinking that our faith should actually cost us something or ask something from us. We are accustomed to surface conversation rather than deep community; pretty clothes covering inner struggles rather than real healing. The Bible says that we should be experiencing the height and depth and breadth of the love of Christ. In many of our lives it seems those dimensions equal up to about the size of an iPad. We’ve settled for morality. Don’t cuss, don’t drink (at least not with the blinds open), vote conservative, show up at church and Jesus will like you. I think you get bonus points if you are green and drive a hybrid. Sure, our faith informs our behavior. At the heart of who we are, however, is not morality but grace. We’re not supposed to be a prettied-up, self-sufficient people; we are supposed to be shattered by the depravity of our sin and SHOCKED by the love of a God who would forgive us in spite of ourselves. Christianity is not a list of rules; it is a life of transforming gratitude for the healing that comes from the cross of Christ. We’ve settled for the mundane. We are bored. I think that we have lost any sense of a profound expectation in God. Do we really believe God is active in our lives? Do we really believe he wants to do something in our city? The Bible says the first Christians were “filled with awe” at what God was doing. Where is our awe? Of course I’m painting with a broad brush and there are definite exceptions to what I am describing, but overall I think what I have said is true. Maybe we should examine who we are and what we are doing to see if perhaps God wants something greater for us. Something real. Something transformational. Something deep. Something ... unsettling.CV The Rev. Dan Alger is pastor of The Church of the Apostles. He may be reached at www.tcota.org or ecs@tcota.org. 16 | Oct/Nov • 2010