Critique and Courage

I have some lost time I need to make up for, so my goal is to try to blog each of the last few days of June. We'll see.

I watched part of an interview the other day on one of those news shows. They were interviewing some fo the Christian leaders of the younger generations. One of them was Gabe Lyons (I believe) and he said something that I have been kind of dwelling on for the past few days.

He said that part of the current movement is that they don't see it as a critique of the old guard. They just want to be thought of as a new movement in Christianity and that it is for others to decide if it is a critique.

I honestly have a few issues with that. Clearly Lyons didn't want to come across as a jerk or overly critical, but I think for us to actually make progress we need to admit that much of what we do is a reaction to previous screw ups. I think we should be a critique to those that have gone before us, just as they should critique us in some ways! If we don't then we are all just affirming how awesome we are all the time and probably won't make too much progress.

Our goal is to be a better kind of church. We must recognize that old models (and maybe having a model at all) are wrong or at least seriously flawed and that we can do better. We have to do this, not out of spite or frustration, but out of a deep desire/need to give Jesus the kind of body he wants us to be. Jesus wasn't afraid to make people feel like crap sometimes because that is one way to spur change. We should emulate that. Of course there is a good way to do that, we can be gracious in our rebukes, but the rebukes must come nonetheless.

It takes courage to offend, especially if we care what the others think or if we care about them in general. But "trusted are the scars from a friend" or something on those lines. We have to shout to the church the ways we have gone wrong, or we are just giving it up for dead. And it is certainly close to life-support now...