"Perspective......................."

Sunday evening, in stopping at the rear of the sanctuary to check if mid-week Bible class was still on the schedule, I found myself invited by the assistant pastor to attend some sort of pledge signing, a follow-up to the male-oriented theme of the movie “Courageous”. Surely there’s no harm in having men publically commit themselves to maintaining a witness of the reality of their faith before their children and grandchildren, to being involved in those lives that look unto them for leadership, love, and approval. My answer, however, was “Thanks; but no thanks.” Within this very church, I have, in the last four decades, watched as Hal Lindsey’s “Late Great Planet Earth” in the late 70s had everyone excited about the rapture being right there on the horizon, shook my head as the Charismatic wind blew through in the last part of the 80s, drastically changing Pentecost and disrupting almost every other denomination out there, understood the interest in the “Left Behind” series during the 90s, but after a while wondered just how many books it took to tell it all, and then actually purchased a copy of Rick Warren’s “Purpose Driven Life” just to see what all the commotion was about. By the time “Fireproof” came along with its subsequent “Love Dare”, a forty-day formula for saving a marriage, I was burnt out, not with that which I had found in the beginning, but with all the ways we find to turn salvation into something other than “Christ in me”. Lanny Wolfe, way back there somewhere, once wrote a song, the lyrics in one place stating “I’m so tired of being stirred, but not being changed” and the tune often returns to me as again and again the mania repeats itself. Sitting with my pastor friend in Pensacola a few days ago, I spoke of how, at one point in his journey, he had thought himself done in so far as moving forward in ministry within the Body, me encouraging him of his calling. Now he again has his own congregation and it is this old man who has no concern for involving myself in any part of the ecclesiastical scene. I believe in it. I’ll sit in the balcony and worship with them. There is, I think, as big a work to be done within the sanctuary as there is anywhere else; and I’m glad for those whom God has ordained for the challenge. My leading, anymore, though, is to the streets, the rescue mission and the Detention Center, whatever door He opens unto me. I’ll fellowship; but see no reason to take membership otherwise……