"Send in the Clowns......."

Brian McLaren, in “A General Orthodoxy”, defines missiology as study within theology, the latter being a discipline within Christianity, one wherein the church is on a mission reflecting its message, its identity, and its meaning. If those last three items equate to the reality of Christ “in” me, then surely it can also be said that all too often we fall short of our mission, our humanity surfacing enough to obscure the picture we proclaim. I say that, not in some accusation of hypocrisy, but merely expressing the situation as it is. People remain people, regardless of a born-again experience, the real factor in this a matter of that which Jesus spoke to the woman at the well: they that worship God must do so “in spirit and in truth”. It’s okay for us to exist in the image that He created just as long as we are willing to “pick up that cross” and make an honest effort to become a vessel through which He might make known His marvelous grace unto others. In my opinion, it is not so much our flawed condition that builds a wall between us and the Almighty as it is a hard-headed refusal to face Him with the facts. While “neither death, life, angels, principalities, nor powers” (and the list goes on) can separate us from His love, yet we, ourselves, possess free will to reject that which is freely given; and such be the case whether “we” be individual or corporate. Grace continues to amaze me, in both scenarios. It is, though, just a journey, a story unfolding, one where, in the end, we all kneel before Him to examine our performance; and, in that day, the real prize remains what it always was: Did we really know Him or merely a theology we, ourselves, pieced together out of the Book?....