Excitement Was Never Enough

Today's churches are addicted to excitement. Schedules are chock full of events that are exciting, out of the ordinary, new and improved or easy to advertise. Exclamation points dot our home pages and worship sheet covers. The unspoken rationale is that American Christians in 2010 need frequent booster shots of adrenalin to keep their faith functioning.

I pondered that whole idea recently after a revealing study in John 6. In that text, Christ has just fed 5,000 men and their families, starting with only a small basket of loaves and fishes. By the time everyone has been fed, there are 12 giant agricultural baskets of bread left over! Only hours later, Jesus walks across a storm tossed Sea of Galilee about 3 AM, enables one of his disciples to walk on the water as well, and then joins them all in the boat!

You can't get much more exciting or invigorating than that. But less than 24 hours later, Christ sees a large number of his disciples turn their backs and walk away. By their own admission, the reason for their departure is "a hard teaching" which they have trouble accepting (John 6:60.)

Christ may be saddened to see them walk away, but the Scripture emphasizes that he is not surprised by this outcome. He had always known their hearts, and had realized from the beginning that they had not been enabled by God. Christ explains to those who remain that no one can come to him unless "it is granted to them by the Father." If the personality of Jesus Christ and the astonishing miracles of John 6 could not sustain Adrenalin Seekers in the First Century, what makes anyone think our high tech wizardry and video can sustain them in the 21st Century?

Jesus Christ still requires that his disciples embrace hard teachings. We are told to live simple lives in an extravagant culture; to talk about our faith in office places where people are easily offended; to reject certain popular lifestyles because they defy God's Word, despite the fact that the whole world has gone after them. Christ calls for moral purity in a society that celebrates personal abandon. Our friends and neighbors are prone to argue, "These are hard teachings! Who can keep them?"

Sometimes our current day outreach strategies seem to suggest that we can keep these secular people if we can just get them into a routine. Far from another routine, our postmodern neighbors need guidance getting into a relationship- particularly a relationship with Jesus Christ. When people finally get real with Jesus, getting a rush from religion becomes far less significant.

Is anybody else thinking what I'm thinking?