Friday, July 22, 2011

Spiritual Aerobics for the 21st Century Chapter IV

Spiritual Aerobics IV

Rev. Rod Reinhart

The price of success comes high these days... especially for the Church. Some of America's most successful modern churches have been forced to submit to the the exclusionary bigotry of modern culture just to survive. In the fourth chapter of Spiritual Aerobics for the 21st Century, I show how God's universal message of salvation and redemption is often subverted and forgotten in today's culture of "religious success at any price."

In this chapter, I ask if Christian Faith has become just another life-style choice in today's popular culture. I ask if conservative evangelicalism has become captive of the culture or a transformer of the culture. Please let me know what you think.





SPIRITUAL AEROBICS FOR THE TWENTY FIRST CENTURY IV

MODERN MINISTRY AND SANCTIFIED SUICIDE

In simpler times, for kids, Church was outrageous
In Sunday School, the competition was contagious
Perfect attendance pins covered all your sins
With prizes to win when you brought your friends in
No gossip. No Gum. Can't fight and can't curse
Just memorize the Bible, each chapter and verse
Kids could be kids without much precision
Make revival confessions and learn catechism
The church was our life-boat, our own Noah's Ark
It carried all of us safe through the storm and the dark

But the old Ark today, seems antique, out of place
Church competition is cut-throat . . . a custom yacht race
Instead of sailing everyone saved to the Lord
Those who don't fit get thrown overboard
Some churches are Ivy League, Big Ten Divisions
If we don't make the team, it's our life's cataclysm
We strive for the image of overwhelming perfection
We want numbers and power, and eternal election
Our pastor embodies the prestige we have won
He's Captain Crunch, Captain Bly and Attila the Hun
With religious aerobics, we go after the feel
Of muscles to be martyred for, spiritual Buns of steel

Listen to the language of new time religion
Mergers . . . buy-outs . .. take-overs . . . forced retirement
Mega-churches . . . TV ministries . . . religious entertainment
Highly paid pastors with highly paid staffs
Government contracts where nobody laughs
Spiritual power over power lunches
Church business ties to big business lies
Our corporate sponsor’s flag boldly unfurled
Spiritual seduction by the Prince and Powers of this World

Will the twenty-first century Church redeem the culture
Or get caught in the culture?

It's troubled times for troubled teens
When myth-makers and image magicians take over the Church

To survive the new millennium, each church must build an empire
In this raging race for membership and power
You need that "special look"
To build that huge congregation
You pay consultants to help
You project that "power image"
You create a lie you can market on TV

Don't we all dream to be that "Golden Cathedral"
Where spiritual, financial and political power unite
To help us become “Today's great religious success story?”
We can't deny it . . . We all want it
They teach it in seminaries everywhere

But is “the Church’s One Foundation” really
American Corporate Culture?
Do our dreams of success lead us to idolatry?
Do we visualize the "graven image" we want to become
Then sacrifice our children
To make that image come to be?

The Church today is squeezed in the vice:
The Paradox of Paradise
If gargantuan growth is our goal
We can't let certain people in
We must live out the image of perfection
So we are all dancing on the head of a pin

When some people fall off
Pastors and boards politely cough
And take more pledge cards in

Jesus called us to cast the net wide
To take every one inside
To go to the highways and byways
Bring in the lame and the halt
Not just Suzy Creamcheese
Not only John Galt

But Americans are buying exclusivity today
Custom made churches like designer genes
Private schools and country clubs
Private neighborhoods locked up with gates
We want churches to protect us from the people we hate

And too many churches
With barely a shiver
Buy into that vision
They really deliver

But the fly in the ointment
The fly in the soup
Is the teen-age church member
Who is out of the loop

Suppose you're the Mega-Church pastor
And one of your teenagers tells you a secret
A secret so painful they trust no one but you
What it is doesn't matter
They're pregnant or gay
They dropped out of school
They didn't make the team
They're beaten, molested, HIV tested
We all know the secrets
But you're the one trusted

After you think
After you pray
What do you do?
What do you say?

Do you say it's O.K.
Do you open God's arms of forgiveness and love
Do you accept them and help them
Do you say you'll stand by them
And share in their pain
Do you carry them up the mountain and back down again?

But suppose you won't help them?
You've got budgets to raise and an image to maintain
You have secrets of your own and so much to gain
Your youth must be perfect: straight, chaste, and clean
They could be Miss America . . . sell Calvin Kline jeans
Success brings in converts
You know the scene


So you condemn the kid as a miserable sinner
Fallen from God . . . he can't be a winner
On Sunday, you preach it
You blister the rafters
One of you is a failure
A vicious disaster

You use Scriptures to prove the kid can't be forgiven
You don't offer Christ's love
You close the doors of Heaven
Suspicions won't end . . . they lose all their friends
Condemned and alone what do they decide?
If repentance won't work
Why not suicide?

Can this happen today?
It happens all the time
As parents and pastors know all too well
Sometimes, it's easier to bury our children than to love them
And the graveyards are filled with young people
Whose pastor took the easy way out

There'll be a nice funeral
You'll tell your side
Such a wonderful Christian
Who knows why they died

But you're very careful
With the story you tell
Not one soul will know
You condemned this child to Hell

Everyone will believe
You're as good as St. Paul
A man of great faith
You live by God's call

But it is a sin to say
"Thy will be done"
Then spend all your time
Looking out for Number One



But truth is the truth
And Heaven is not free
And Pastor, we wonder where
You'll spend eternity

You may love to tell the story
It may be your theme in Glory
But what will God do
When you lace that old, old story
With self-serving . . . soul-destroying
Anxiety and fear
and kill the people you are called to love here?

Christ, our Compassionate Companion
calls us to heal the suffering of others
To put a face on God's Love
To bring the power of God
To the point of their pain
To transform Scripture into love
To bring Heaven's banquet to earth
To bring freedom to souls bound in sin

But how often is the forgiveness we offer
Just another mask for self-hatred
How often is our love simply fear under an assumed name

We live the paradox of paradise today
Jesus calls us to Love God through loving others
But the rage for power has blinded us to God's love
Non-believers say Christians serve God through hurting others

In a culture of scarcity, animosity, and violence
The air waves and collection plates overflow
As talk show hosts and TV preachers blast vile messages
Against any convenient victim they think will make them a buck

How can they do it?
How can they so viciously condemn
The powerless, the unpopular and the poor
Do they believe God has tunnel vision?
Do they believe God sees only what they want Him to see?
How can they cruelly violate God's call to love the poor
And expect God to do nothing?

The question is simple
Does God care what we do?
If we believe God will punish the drug dealer
The murderer, the adulterer, and the Mafia Don
For their crimes
How much more will God punish
The Pastor who pushes his teenagers to suicide
The preacher who condones murder
The Christians who bashes of women and gays
The church that destroys schools and the environment

There is no Grandfather clause for sin
Martin Luther and the Popes
And generations of preachers
Burned witches
Supported slavery
Tortured heretics and hated Jews
Are we different today, or have we just found new victims?
When religion rests on political realities
And big business moralities
And money justifies our fear...
Then God still sees us.

We want diamonds in our eyes
But all we have is
Nubian rubies glued
To Cuban Steuben glasses

None of this is new
All of this is true
Sometimes, it's more profitable to bury our problems
Than to solve them

Christ, our Compassionate Companion
Calls us to a life of sacrifice and love
To share his work of redemption
But we want new redeemers to suffer for us today
We want God to raise us an army of Dry Bones
But we forget our bones are dry too

We merchandise Heaven like Amway Products
While we're really selling Hell to willing customers



We say we want to be Salt and Light
We want to be the City on the Hill
But is our Gospel only pretense or proclamation?

We pretend to be the Paragons of Paradise
While we parachute from Paradise
To drown ourselves in the popular culture
Of pleasure, politics and greed

And beneath our striving and struggle lies the fear
That our Christian Life has become mere life-style
And we wonder if we are just a measurable demographic
A new statistic for advertisers and television shows
We wonder if we are no longer the light of the world
But consumers of the world

And we wonder if Christians are just another
"Alternate Life-Style"
A new minority with our own desire for
Power, privilege and a place at the table
We wonder if we are just a shifting, social tectonic plate
Another pressure group with record companies
TV stations and secular institutions
Fighting to control the culture
With enemies everywhere

We wonder if the harder we hold on
To the ancient traditions of our faith
The faster we buy into the conditions of the modern world
We forget that God looks at the sins of the wallet
As well as the sins of the flesh

We know all too well we are living in an age
When there's money to be made
People to be betrayed
Old hatreds to be replayed
And people willing to pay

We talk about being faithful to God
But we lay up for ourselves treasures on earth
While we render unto Caesar
And we render unto Caesar
And we render unto Caesar
Until Caesar's got everything we've got

We run around the world in raging pain
Seeking powerless targets and unpopular scape-goats
Because in the midst of our proclamations and processions
We wonder if we've lost our most precious possession:
The power of the Gospel
The reality of the Church
The healing love of God

And we wonder if we have purposely
Misused, mistranslated or misunderstood the Scriptures
And hurt others for our own profit and power

And we wonder if we have kept the right promises
As we repent for the sins of the past
While we work to get away with the sins of the future

And we wonder if our victims are not whispering
About us in God's ear right now

And we wonder if Christ's blood is enough for our salvation
If we have committed the unpardonable sin
Of sacrificing our faith to the culture of hatred and violence
We wonder if we have slammed the gates of heaven on the poor
And proudly driven from God the ones we are called to love

We wonder what kind of Christians we have become
And we wonder if God still loves us
In spite of all our victims
And we just don't know


The sins of the spirit are hard to detect
And easy to sell
We wonder how many we have bought
And who has gotten rich on the slow erosion of our soul
Even Eve bought the apple at the cost of her soul
And the snake carried the coin away in its teeth
And we wonder who has carried our coin away


As Christians today
We must be careful what we do and why we do it
We must remember God called us to minister to this world
By loving Him . . . loving ourselves . . . and loving others
God has called us to heal this world of suffering and pain
We all carry a burden of fear and grief
God calls us to bear one another's burdens
So why do we so seldom obey?


We must remember that our spiritual wholeness comes
When we bring our will, our actions and our desires
Fully into union with God's will for us

We must remember God calls the Church to speak out against
The culture of violence, bigotry and hatred
Not to represent, reinforce, justify, or reinvigorate it

World Culture today culture is about scarcity, exclusion and competition
But Christian Faith is not competition
Spiritual wholeness comes when we realize
Christianity is not a Super Bowl Religion
There is no World Series for Church growth
There is no Stanley Cup for Spiritual growth
There is no NBA Title for saving souls or serving the poor

Redemption . . . Salvation . . . Communion . . . and Regeneration
Are all God's free and gracious gifts for everyone
God offers them to us through the death and resurrection
Of Jesus Christ our Lord
God loves us because God loves us
None of us earns God's love

How many Christians try to earn God's love
Through excluding their enemies from salvation
How many "hate sermons" masquerade as Gospel today?
No one now walks on water and
God hates cruelty done in His name

The Revelation of God's rage aimed at very few Churches
But the whole Church needs to hear


Spiritual Cancer comes upon us when we desire and will
Only our own power and pleasure at the
Expense and suffering of others

Spiritual destruction comes upon us when our hearts
Are so hardened by our cruelty, hypocrisy and lies that we die
Believing we are safe in the arms of Jesus
But awake in the flame

When there's a man going 'round taking names
Which list will your name be on?


Let us return to the day
'When perfect attendance pins led to perfect love
Not some false image of perfection we lie or die for

Let us return to the day
We could preach the Christian life
Without a 500 voice choir, a major publishing house
Or a national TV network

Let us return to the day
Children could confess their secrets to the pastor
Without fearing for their lives
Let us return to the day when the Church tried
to love their children, not to bury them

Let us return to the day
When forgiveness and redemption meant acceptance and freedom
Not impossible religious blueprints or a shroud of chains

Let us return to the day
When pastors marched for peace
Marched for freedom and preached about equality
And didn't try to build empires
Exclusionary ministries
Or personality cults

Let us return to the day
When we sought to transform the culture
Through the love of God
Not to enslave ourselves to the culture's pre-made patterns
Of private school prejudice, political orthodoxy,
Hollywood religion, or talk-show spirituality

Let us return to the day
When we could go to church, live the Gospel
And call ourselves Christians
Without everyone
Checking their wallets, filtering out our words
Or pegging us with extremist political labels

Let us return to the day
When Communion with God
Led us to deeply engage the suffering of the world
When the Communion of Saints came marching in with us
When we could go forth into the world together
Rejoicing as equals in the power of the Spirit
When the great Ark of God carried us all
Safely Home
Safely Home
Safely Home


Rev. Rod Reinhart
Plymouth, MI 1995

Chicago, IL 2011









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