"Make Me Shine"

Source: www.thegospelcoalition.org

I've seen a lot of frenzy about the church recently; people criticizing the church for various reasons and I've been thinking, Can I blame them?

We are the ones buying private jets like they're pure water. We are the ones wearing flashy suits and hopping in and out of hummers (sometimes waiting for us at the end of a lush red carpet). We are the ones telling church members to eat grass. We are the ones doing, endorsing and condoning things Jesus never asked us to.

But what I want to talk about isn't the outlandish stuff (where churches have become pseudo-cults with a congregation entranced by a centre figure they have come to basically worship rather than God). What I want to talk about is the day-to-day routines of everyday seemingly "normal" Christians.

What the church has become today is a place where everyone is waiting to shine. My father calls it the Make Me Shine Mentality -- which he usually attributes to football players who would rather head into a wall of defenders than pass the ball to their teammates. But we can use that term here too. The church has become a place of personalities, where everyone is trying to push their own agenda -- not because they want to lift Jesus high, but because they want their own names lifted high.

So we have everyone starting off their own little "ministries" -- for the singles, for the newly married, for those married over ten years, for friends in the same profession, for singers, for instrumentalists, for young mums with babies, for young mums with babies and businesses and on and on... While there's nothing wrong with starting ministries for every class of people available on the surface of the earth, I've become confused when the founders of these ministries are more interested in pushing themselves rather than God or the gospel.

And it's easy to see. All you have to do is take a walk through Instagram; there's always one event happening this weekend, one conference, one concert. And the flier to this said event has the face of the organizer or minister or speaker smack-bang in the middle. It baffles me. Then after the event, we have the hashtags flying about the rest of the week, a selfie-fest of how amazing this event was and, once again, the organizer, minister, speaker is in the middle of it all, looking dapper, of course.

Are we pushing Jesus or ourselves here? The one that always floors me is where someone posts a picture of their very good-looking face and writes an epistle in the caption about the goodness of the Lord to them, complete with scripture. I've always thought, if you really want to talk about Jesus and his waking you up this morning, why not put up a picture of the sunrise instead of your face?

The church today has become filled with "leaders" who are self-seeking and self-serving, instead of God-seeking and humanity-serving. Everyone wants to blow. Leaders today want to be served before they serve in return, they want to be first instead of last, they want to be big and seen and celebrated instead of meek and humble. It is sad. And, of course, they use scripture to back it up -- God has made me the head and not the tail, I was put on earth to dominate and conquer, are some of the jingles you hear when you bring up this love of self flying around.

Paul wrote in the book of First Thessalonians about his conduct when he was with the church in Thessaloniki:

"We did not seek glory from men, either from you or from others, when we might have made demands as apostles of Christ... We were pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God, but also our own lives, because you had become dear to us. For you remember, brethren, our labour and toil; for labouring night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you, we preached to you the gospel of God."

I Thessalonians chapter 2, verses 6, 8 and 9

Paul speaks about not seeking glory from men during ministry; he speaks about giving his life for ministry, he talks about toiling and labouring (serving) so that he did not become a burden on anybody. I don't have the time here to talk about the "honorarium" and "conditions" some ministers of God today have become accustomed to asking of churches who invite them, but let's finish with what Paul said; that he toiled and laboured and gave his life; i.e.: he was not self-seeking or self-serving. Did Paul not also believe that he was the head and not the tail? Of course he did, but he put his head down to serve the Thessalonians.

So what are we doing today where we make ministry about our personal agendas rather than about God?