Kelly Clarkson and Jesus

So I'm currently in the market for a new church. Over the past 4 years my views of spirituality and Christianity and of God have changed drastically, but I really haven't taken action to find a new church that can help cultivate that.

So I figure its time.

I really enjoyed the church I went to this past Sunday. It was called Congregational Church of Austin and here reads their mission statement...
"If you are looking for a small, friendly church where everyone will quickly know your name...where you'll be loved and accepted regardless of your age, class, race, ethnicity or sexual orientation...where you'll be challenged to reflect on your beliefs, acknowledge your doubts, ask your questions and grow in your faith...where God's desire for compassion, healing, reconciliation, and justice is preached...where you're given the opportunity to put your faith into action through effective outreach ministries...then we hope to get to know you as a new friend. No matter who you are or where you are in your journey, you are welcome here."

I loved it! During their announcements, the sermon, the hymns, everything was very much about justice. Right up my alley. Not to mention the pastor talked about Kelly Clarkson for about 20 minutes. Right now I'm planning on looking around to some others, but this one really made me think about my church back home and the church worldwide.

My church back home upsets me more and more everyday. The more I talk to people who go there about the problems and politics that arise, the more upset I get. I think it has to do with the fairytale faith that I had there before college being repainted for me. I can see that I was extremely naiive to the fact that there were people who didn't like each other, people who hated our pastor, people who ignored "non-white" visitors.

I honestly thought it was Disneyworld in my younger years. While most of my friends were going out to have fun, I would be at church everyday of the week trying to find something that I could do. I was sheltered from the politics and from the divides. Now I am extremely aware of what is going on and I don't even live there. And quite frankly it pisses me off to see how dead not only my church but the church worldwide truly is.

What I see as being the major problem with the community of faith in general is that there is a lack of action. And I honestly don't see how anyone can hear the gospel of Jesus and think that its just a pew-sitting frame of mind. Jesus didn't just stay in Bethlehem, he was a travelin man! The scripture this past Sunday at the church I visited was from Luke 11... "He said to another man, "Follow me." But the man replied, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father. Jesus said to him, "Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God."

Jesus proclaims, "Follow me." Follow him to the children, follow him to the hungry, to the sick, to the broken-hearted, to the hard-hearted, to the poor, to the oppressed, to the places that no one wants to go! If we just sit in the pew, bow our heads, say Amen at the right time and get up and go about our day as if we have not heard a thing, we are not where Christ is.

It is rare that I can find a church that is like the one I went to on Sunday. One that knows that being a "political church" doesn't mean having rifts between its members, but it means being a church who is not afraid to take a stand for the justice and freedom of others. You can't be a Christian and not be political is my philosophy. Jesus was extremely political. He constantly was a presence for the people, and was constantly taking a stand for the oppressed and marginalized.

Now I'm not saying that a church or even a person needs to take political sides (Democrat, Republican, Libertarian) based on what they think Jesus would do, because I don't see Jesus doing that in the gospels. What I do mean is that the church cannot turn its head from the world anymore, it can no longer be a place where we go on Sunday morning to escape the realness of what is going on in our day and forget about the faces, the bodies, the lives that we see and hear about.

Christ is calling the church into the world! He is calling the body of believers to be present among the oppressed and the marginalized. He is calling pastors to address hard and real issues. He is calling us to make a stand and to speak on the behalf of those who are unable to do so.

How powerful would this truly be if the church would just take the call of Christ seriously?