As I look around our congregation, though there are lots of slices of the ethnic and socio-economic pie of Columbia, SC missing, I’m encouraged to find folks at all stages of faith maturity really “being fed.” No one can wiggle out from under the “come and die” summons, no matter how “wholly devoted” they think themselves to be.

I’m in total agreement: The Gospel of Christ is not something that loses its edge as a Christian becomes “more devoted.” When preached in all its fullness, it will rend the heart that has been with Christ for 60 years just as easily as that of the “seeker”.

I’m really disgusted by this. It seems like an attempt by these folks to try to stay ahead of the game…to pretend like they’re on the cutting edge of things. Like they have divined a great paradigm shift before anyone else possibly could have. “You can trust us…still…because we’re all self-critical and whatnot. We’ve done such a good job of finding what we do a bad job doing, and now we’re going to do a good job doing what we now know you want us to do a good job doing. So keep tithing! Your money is safe with us.”

I hear people say all the time, in defense both of megachurches AND in defense of, say, smaller Reformed churches, that God uses the generic vanilla churches to bring people in, and then, in an almost evolutionary fashion, they naturally select a church that “goes deeper”.

The REVEAL thing seems to be a ploy to keep brain drain from happening. Keep those “full devotees” curious, busy, invovled. Keep restless and curious Christians who are bored with the resources as presently allocated, aimed as they seem to be at baby Christians. from taking their tithe money and putting it in more traditioned and “deep” churches’ offering plates.

But I think that this whole picture is wrong. I think every sermon and every service ought to be able to feed any type of person. The same sermon ought to be able to convert and to sanctify. Rocket scientists and five year olds. Maybe that’s idealistic of me.

Our youngest assistant minister preached this AM on Jesus’ discourse about the cost of discipleship (hate your family, and all that), and quoted Bonhoeffer’s “come and die” speech. As I look around our congregation, though there are lots of slices of the ethnic and socio-economic pie of Columbia, SC missing, I’m encouraged to find folks at all stages of faith maturity really “being fed.” No one can wiggle out from under the “come and die” summons, no matter how “wholly devoted” they think themselves to be.

The really sad thing is the complete lack of confidence that disciples of Jesus can be made despite the fact that the call is a call to come and die. I really hate how I feel and who I am after a sermon like this morning. But it’s a completely different agonizing feeling than I got from watching these videos.