JR. Forasteros - April 1, 2018

Who Broke Our Calendar?

Monday Messiah

Do you ever feel like your calendar is broken? Like you wish you had the power to add hours, days or even weeks to your schedule? When did our lives get so out of control? And who is running our calendars? On this Easter Sunday, we celebrate the God who took control of time by raising Jesus from the dead. How does his resurrection free us to take control of our lives, to live in the freedom Jesus gives us?

From Series: "Monday Messiah"

We like to claim that Jesus' resurrection changed the world. But how? How does it matter that Jesus was raised from the dead not on Sunday, when we worship, but on Monday, when we dive back into our ordinary lives? In this series, we explore the "I Am" statements Jesus makes in John's Gospel to see how the new life Jesus offers us is as immediate and relevant as ever, right where we live, work and play.

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Let’s talk about how you manipulate people with religion! (I know… it just got weird. Bear with me!)

My first vocational ministry job was as a youth pastor. There was a local summer camp the church attended every year, so my first year on staff at that Church, I took my teens to the summer camp. As a youth minister at summer camp, you spend a lot of time hanging out behind the scenes, so it wasn’t terribly surprising that I overheard a conversation that made me a little sick to my stomach.

It was probably halfway through the week, and one of the adult volunteers was talking with the worship leader for the week. Apparently, he didn’t think the week was going very well because he said,

“This week hasn’t been very spiritual so far. I think tonight we should do an altar call, to really punch it up.”

If you never attended an Evangelical summer camp and aren’t familiar with the ‘altar call’ phenomenon there, let me explain it to you:

You play some music, usually at the end of a long worship service. Often the message has been particularly emotional. The pastor will invite people to come forward to make decisions – for salvation, calls to ministry, life changes, etc.

I want to be careful not to denigrate all altar call experiences. Having a particular moment to mark an important faith decision is invaluable – I received my own call to ministry in an altar call experience, and I know many wonderful people who can point to an altar experience as when they said Yes to Jesus’ invitation to faith.

But altar calls can also be incredibly manipulative, as that summer camp experience demonstrates.

I’ve also met plenty of pastors and leaders who use the high emotion of the altar call moment to manipulate people into making decisions they’re not ready for or haven’t considered fully.

In fact, the altar call experience is a pretty good microcosm of the problems with religion in general: there’s something good, beautiful and true about religion that welcomes the outsider, lifts up the downtrodden, gives voice to the silenced.

There’s a reason Karl Marx described religion as the ‘opiate of the masses’ – too often religion becomes a tool of oppression, supporting those in power and silencing those who dare oppose them.

Let’s talk about religious leaders and how we can learn to spot the rotten ones. About what seeking that beautiful religion looks like. Because we’ll see that Jesus is actually much closer to us than we ever imagined, inviting us to follow him into new life right where we are.

Join us Sunday as we learn to distinguish the voice of Jesus from religious frauds.

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