The nonsensical ponderings of Eric Frisch...

As I mentioned in my last post, the last couple days have been spent whittling away at the hefty stack of magazines that has accumulated next to bed over the last few months.  Yesterday I found myself in the most recent issue of "Worship Leader Magazine" reading and article written by Bebo Norman.  The article deals with worship and how it connects to reaching out to those less fortunate (the theme of the whole magazine issue).  I want to share just a bit of it:

"The strange but all-too-real truth is that our Westernized version of following Jesus often turns our focus inward to ourselves.  It starts from an honest and good place: we want so desperately to be like Christ, so we continually work to cultivate our faith - to shape ourselves into the image of Christ.  We spend our energy in books of theology and 12-step self-help methodology to correct what is wrong and order what is right within ourselves.  I sometimes actually define my days spiritually simply by what I didn't do wrong... I'm afraid that one day we will discover that we've lived half of our lives cultivating a perfectly fine-tuned machine of faith, and, in the end, we have no clue what to actually do with it.  Now certainly, the pursuit of righteousness is a good thing.  We are all called to it.  But if you look at the core cause of Christ - in Jesus' words, what it means to truly serve Jesus - we find something far more outward focused than inward.  Serve the widow.  Serve the orphan. The downtrodden.  The outcast.  The 'least of these.'"

How often do we let ourselves fall into the trap of this kind of thinking?  This idea that, because I am a Christian, I must spend most (if not all) of my time trying to become a better Christian.  The problem with that kind of thinking is that we completely miss the point!  Jesus didn't come solely to give us an example.  He came to take away our sins.  Should we still work on trying to be better people?  Yes, absolutely.  But the truth is, Jesus has taken away those rougher spots on the inner parts of our lives and given us a higher calling: we are to go out.  We are to share that amazing, life-changing power with those who haven't had a chance to experience it, and we are to do it with love.

One of the things Bebo talks about in this article is his work with Compassion International.  The band I play in (The Brandon Abbott Trio) is also sponsored by Compassion and it's led to some interesting conversations.  Compassion sends us sponsorship packets for kids which we then promote at our shows.  There is nothing more heartbreaking than picking those packets back up at the end of the night... knowing that we have the only packet for that child.  We make some seemingly callous jokes about "putting the kids back in the box," but the truth is, it's about the only way we can rationalize what's really happening: people are walking right by their chance to help, to be Jesus' love to a child.

The more I think about the church and our mission, or rather our commission from Jesus, the more I become convinced that the primary role for the modern church in our society is just to love people.  Wherever there is a need, wherever someone is in need of love, whether it be on a personal, local, national or even global level.  We are called to be in those places, in the midst of those situations... showing Christ's love to a broken, shattered world.  That's our call.

I hope that 2008 will be a year where the church, especially here in America, will see a shift in focus.  Let's stop looking inward and turn our gaze outward, to the people who aren't yet experiencing the incredible love that we know so well.