Church Time

Hopefully everyone here goes to church, I assume that all of you go at least go once a year?
For a lot of us, church is a building that we walk into every Sunday morning. Repeating the same routine, go to youth service or go to service with parents, buy a soda, sit there and wait until you go home. This is the idea of church in America, a place where we go and get it over with. I hope this isn't the attitude that you take with you into church, but if it is lets take a look at who the church is and what the church was created to be.

WHO:
The church is not a building. Jesus made many statements about the church. The one that angered many Jews most was His announcement that if the Temple was destroyed, He would build a new one in three days (See John 2:19-21). Though Jesus was referring to the Temple that exised in the architectural sense, He was really speaking of His body. Jesus said that after this temple was destroyed, He would raise it up in three days. He was referring to the real temple-the church-which He raised up in himself on the third day (see Ephesians 2:6).
Since Christ has risen, we Christians have become the temple of God. At His resurrection, Christ became a "life-giving spirit" (1 Corinthians 16:45). Therefore, He could take up residence in the believers, thus making them His temple, His house. It is for this reason that the New Testament always reserves the word church (ekklesia in the greek) for the people of God. It never uses this word to refer to a building of any sorts.

WHAT:
The church was made to represent Christ on earth. Having Christ in our lives, in our hearts, and in our actions is the church being the church. The church is not about seeing how big of a building you can have and slapping the name church on it. The mission of the church is the same mission of the Gospel, to spread the news of Jesus resurrection and redeeming love. The church is not a building, but a movement of believers that share the love that has been given to them by God through Christ death and resurrection.

Questions to think about and respond:
1) Do you see yourself as "the church"
2) How has the church being inside of you and not a building changed the way you live? Has it changed the way you live? Have you ever thought about this before?
3) How can we continue to "be the church"?

Don't get me wrong here, I am not saying we should do away with church buildings. The reason for these buildings is a gathering place of believers to worship their creator. But when it gets distorted, when things get out of whack and people start to see the church as a building is when there is a problem. The church is you and me, not a building, it is our responsibility to continue to share the gospel and grow the church.

Respond

Happening Now....

The times we are living in right now are very important. With the economy struggling, a new president starting his role as the leader of a nation, and people making important decisions about their future we are faced with decisions and choices that will greatly affect our lives and others.
Have you ever thought about the decisions you make now will affect you forever?
I know I never really thought about that until it was too late and I was dealing with the consequence of my decision.
Part of the reason are economy is doing so bad is that people made choices to live outside of what they really could afford. Buying houses and other expensive items and not being able to pay for them will lead to a struggle for the upcoming years. These choices are now affecting you and I whether you like it or not. With these important times ahead of us, and the feeling of being helpless I ask you two questions to respond to:
1) Have you ever thought about how the decision or choices that you make affect others? Whether it affects you or another, how has selfish or sinful decisions left a lasting affect? Is it a positive or negative affect?
2) How do we work with or respond to someone who has made a decision that brings a negative affect against us? Whether it be the government or a friend, how do respond to them or work with them?

*Mr. Reed

Interesting Statistics

Read this article first:
HARTFORD, Conn. - The Catholic population of the United States has shifted away from the Northeast and towards the Southwest, while secularity continues to grow in strength in all regions of the country, according to a new study conducted by the Program on Public Values at Trinity College. "The decline of Catholicism in the Northeast is nothing short of stunning," said Barry Kosmin, a principal investigator for the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS). "Thanks to immigration and natural increase among Latinos, California now has a higher proportion of Catholics than New England."
Conducted between February and November of last year, ARIS 2008 is the third in a landmark series of large, nationally representative surveys of U.S. adults in the 48 contiguous states conducted by Kosmin and Ariela Keysar. Employing the same research methodology as the 1990 and 2001 surveys, ARIS 2008 questioned 54,461 adults in either English or Spanish. With a margin of error of less than 0.5 percent, it provides the only complete portrait of how contemporary Americans identify themselves religiously, and how that self-identification has changed over the past generation.
In broad terms, ARIS 2008 found a consolidation and strengthening of shifts signaled in the 2001 survey. The percentage of Americans claiming no religion, which jumped from 8.2 in 1990 to 14.2 in 2001, has now increased to 15 percent. Given the estimated growth of the American adult population since the last census from 207 million to 228 million, that reflects an additional 4.7 million "Nones." Northern New England has now taken over from the Pacific Northwest as the least religious section of the country, with Vermont, at 34 percent "Nones," leading all other states by a full 9 points.
"Many people thought our 2001 finding was an anomaly," Keysar said. We now know it wasn't. The 'Nones' are the only group to have grown in every state of the Union."
The percentage of Christians in America, which declined in the 1990s from 86.2 percent to 76.7 percent, has now edged down to 76 percent. Ninety percent of the decline comes from the non-Catholic segment of the Christian population, largely from the mainline denominations, including Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians/Anglicans, and the United Church of Christ. These groups, whose proportion of the American population shrank from 18.7 percent in 1990 to 17.2 percent in 2001, all experienced sharp numerical declines this decade and now constitute just 12.9 percent.

Most of the growth in the Christian population occurred among those who would identify only as "Christian," "Evangelical/Born Again," or "non-denominational Christian." The last of these, associated with the growth of megachurches, has increased from less than 200,000 in 1990 to 2.5 million in 2001 to over 8 million today. These groups grew from 5 percent of the population in 1990 to 8.5 percent in 2001 to 11.8 percent in 2008. Significantly, 38.6 percent of mainline Protestants now also identify themselves as evangelical or born again.

"It looks like the two-party system of American Protestantism--mainline versus evangelical--is collapsing," said Mark Silk, director of the Public Values Program. "A generic form of evangelicalism is emerging as the normative form of non-Catholic Christianity in the United State s."

Other key findings:

• Baptists, who constitute the largest non-Catholic Christian tradition, have increased their numbers by two million since 2001, but continue to decline as a proportion of the population.

After Reading this article. What is your first initial reaction to this? How do we as Christians respond to the stats that were presented? Will this continue to affect the Church over the next 20 years? Why are people becoming "non-religious"?

Setting Accomplishable Goals

I asked my dad to write a blog post for us on Goals. Here is what he said:

You out there, being all you can be and living a life worthy of God's calling is an undaunting task. So let's keep our goals in a realistic and healthy perspective, not what some would preach as what we should or could do which means cut out "the crap" .
First of all, begin with simple goals and plan to build upon them, like you would walk up steps, a hill or a tree. The success of your first step will be essential to build your confidence. For example, on Mondays in January, I will write down my assignments I need to complete for this week.

Second, make your goal manageable, like beginning where you at now and build on top of what you are doing. Like with the above example, if you never write down your assignments or never have made a "to do" list, the above goal could be what you should do, not what you can do. So make it simplier like, This month I will ask ______ (someone who can help you) to help me write out an assignment list for one week.

Third, identify what could be a barrier (something that gets in your way) to you accomplishing your goal. Could being distracted by video games, a friend who likes to talk or forgetfulness? Then find out how you are going to overcome this barrier before it happens, because you know it will happen.

So write up a goal, based upon the above recommendations, being sure to answer how you are going to overcome any barriers.

Thanks for letting me be a part of your blog today! The older Mr Reed