Simple Church Minute 8--church is not a business

8—church is not a business    

My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute.

            C. S. Lewis wrote “…love, in the Christian sense, does not mean an emotion.  It is a state, not of the feelings but of the will; that state of the will which we have naturally about ourselves, and must learn to have about other people.”

            As I desire to live to glorify Jesus, how do I do that?  Maybe this is a function of my age, but I am actually aware that, at this time in western society, executives of major public corporations within their company wish to enforce a worship of maximizing short term profitability, without regards to whether it hurts customers, vendors, employees, or the world at large.  That’s why businesses do advertising, not apologetics.  If they had to do any dialogue why they treat people as they do, it would be publicly embarrassing.       

            The church is not to look like the world.  Jesus isn’t a medicine to package and market.  He is God, come to earth, who died for those of us who believe and will believe on him.  One of the problems that we, in this culture have in living for Him is that, when most of those who do not believe hear the word “church”, the first thought in their minds are of aspects connected with the traditional church, which are at least unscriptural, at the worst demonic deception, and possibly both simultaneously.  Buildings and corporations, according to law and common use, are called churches, and some have human leaders who do not hold the historical faith in Jesus.  The Bible teaches that the church is people, a group of believers.  If I say Christian ethics, anyone, whether they believe the historic Christian faith or not, whether they agree or not, can know what that entails.  If I say business ethics, have I said a phrase George Carlin failed to get into his famous monologue on oxymorons?  We believers are responsible to not get the two confused, for God’s glory.

            In fairness, today’s blip I will label as my opinion, and not necessarily that of anyone else connected with house church.  To email me, send it to simplechurchminute@gmail.com. For more info on organic simple church*, go to http://www.simplechurch.com/ or locally at (local website).

On the recording, at this time, it says, “house churches.”  While that phrasing is OK, to say “organic church” is better.  I comment on that in blip 94.