I received an email from a friend in Izmir, Turkey tonight, with an update about their church. It is a mixed fellowship included Russians (and other people from the former USSR) as well as Turks who have converted from Islam. The emails I have received from these friends have been very sad lately. Earlier this year an Armenian-Christian editor with a controversial resume was killed (Dink). Next, just after Easter I received an email from my friends about some Christian men who were killed in Malatya, and soon after that came the full report of their murders and funeral arrangements. They were "workers" in a publishing house that printed the Bible in Turkish. The young men who killed them had pretended to be students interested in Jesus so that they could gain the trust of the workers. And then they killed them. Isn't it in just this way that people have betrayed our Family even since Jesus was betrayed by one of his closest companions?
But the email i received from Sergei tonight told the testimonies of five people who were baptized in their church way up high in an office building, sitting in a tub of water, five new Christians were baptized. And I'm sure they weren't the only ones who have accepted Christ's justification recently. You see?
Fred Markert (possibly quoting an unknown author) said, "the fastest way to grow a church is to persecute it". Turkey is proof. China is proof. Mongolia is proof. Papua New Guinea is proof. Cuba is proof.
Four were lost to the world, but five were gained to the Kingdom.
Light gained 5. Darkness lost 9. We're still ahead.
19 Mayıs 2007
08 Mayıs 2007
menace
I was half asleep tonight as we were driving from Temple Terrace to Sulfur Springs for our house church meeting.
I kept staring at every church building we passed. Seeing these churches gave me that eery feeling that mosques give me. Somehow mosques have always felt welcoming. Aside from the minaret, they are rounded and curvaceous, with cavernous domes that seem to filter out all the stresses and allow worshipers within the mosque to get right to the matter - reverence. Even the minaret has merit... it shines in the darkness. But churches are angular ... almost menacing. Tonight the steeples (essentially parallel to minarets) seemed to be in an attack stance. Tonight, the sulfur lamps cast an eery shadow on the ground and I wondered... I wondered how I came to feel this way about churches.
But of course, I have never been a regular attender of a church body that met in a traditional edifice, aside from my 2 semesters in Gainesville - the Vineyard Church there owns a building that used to be a Methodist church. Other than that, it's been store-fronts, cinder-block warehouses, office spaces, school cafeterias, parks, the beach, and most recently, a historic black-box theatre. I can only draw from my own church experience.
Churches have so much symbolism attached to them that sometimes I have to overcome mini-attacks of social anxiety just to park in the parking lot, let alone climb the steps and be swallowed by the massive doors. Just the shape of a church (angled roof, steeple, steps, pillars - all these in varying shapes and sizes) brings up images of the Spanish inquisition in my mind. For some people it brings up the faces of Christians who have deeply hurt them. The image of a church conjures up all the pain, isolation, judgment and treachery that characterizes the so-called "body of Christ" to the point where gay people and the homeless are shoved out the front door and down the steps. (and yet people with real sin issues are applauded and paid to carry out war against the ones who are honestly seeking intimacy with God.
As I was discussing this with Rachael, she reminded me (and I agreed) that it is not the cross that is the menacing part. Surely it has been a tool of savagery, however in association with the Messiah, it has become an image of hope. It is a symbol of the love of God. We, as humans, continuously fail - we sin against God, we hurt other people - if you can't accept the fact we are all absolute failures, you will never truly understand the meaning of the cross.
What's the point of the cross? Humans are screwed up. But we don't have to be perfect to experience intimacy with God, because of what He did to sustain our relationship with Him. He gave us an endless source of second chances. Forgiveness through the cross of Christ.
I kept staring at every church building we passed. Seeing these churches gave me that eery feeling that mosques give me. Somehow mosques have always felt welcoming. Aside from the minaret, they are rounded and curvaceous, with cavernous domes that seem to filter out all the stresses and allow worshipers within the mosque to get right to the matter - reverence. Even the minaret has merit... it shines in the darkness. But churches are angular ... almost menacing. Tonight the steeples (essentially parallel to minarets) seemed to be in an attack stance. Tonight, the sulfur lamps cast an eery shadow on the ground and I wondered... I wondered how I came to feel this way about churches.
But of course, I have never been a regular attender of a church body that met in a traditional edifice, aside from my 2 semesters in Gainesville - the Vineyard Church there owns a building that used to be a Methodist church. Other than that, it's been store-fronts, cinder-block warehouses, office spaces, school cafeterias, parks, the beach, and most recently, a historic black-box theatre. I can only draw from my own church experience.
Churches have so much symbolism attached to them that sometimes I have to overcome mini-attacks of social anxiety just to park in the parking lot, let alone climb the steps and be swallowed by the massive doors. Just the shape of a church (angled roof, steeple, steps, pillars - all these in varying shapes and sizes) brings up images of the Spanish inquisition in my mind. For some people it brings up the faces of Christians who have deeply hurt them. The image of a church conjures up all the pain, isolation, judgment and treachery that characterizes the so-called "body of Christ" to the point where gay people and the homeless are shoved out the front door and down the steps. (and yet people with real sin issues are applauded and paid to carry out war against the ones who are honestly seeking intimacy with God.
As I was discussing this with Rachael, she reminded me (and I agreed) that it is not the cross that is the menacing part. Surely it has been a tool of savagery, however in association with the Messiah, it has become an image of hope. It is a symbol of the love of God. We, as humans, continuously fail - we sin against God, we hurt other people - if you can't accept the fact we are all absolute failures, you will never truly understand the meaning of the cross.
What's the point of the cross? Humans are screwed up. But we don't have to be perfect to experience intimacy with God, because of what He did to sustain our relationship with Him. He gave us an endless source of second chances. Forgiveness through the cross of Christ.
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