making red dragons real

A few weeks back Brooke and I attended a weekend class called, "Strategies for Urban Church Planting."  During one of the sections the speaker was discussing the fact there is a huge gap between how Christians tend to perceive themselves and how the world at large perceives them.  Unfortunately the cartoon above is often the way that Christians are viewed.  Even more unfortunate than that is the fact that there are many Christians and Christian groups who have proven this stereotype true.  

According to the Bible the Church is God's chosen vehicle for delivering the good news of Christ, too often we deliver it as bad news.  The Church is to be a body of love, unity, mercy, and grace, an institution working for the restoration and renewal of the world.  It is to be a group of people who are radically committed to forgiveness knowing that they have been radically forgiven by God.  The speaker went on to say that the average postmodern young adult sees this idea of the church as being as plausible as red dragons.  What he meant was that describing the Christian church in this way seems to be as realistic to many people as a report that giant red dragons are destroying downtown St. Louis would be.  The more distressing thing is that beyond destroying the reputation of the Church, Christians are guilty of destroying the reputation of God himself.  When we fail to demonstrate the grace, mercy, and love of God we make the existence of an all-powerful yet gracious, merciful, and loving God seem as plausible as the existence of red dragons.

It would be easy to point my finger at other people and blame them for the image of Christianity that has been portrayed to the world.  Unfortunately I'm as much a part of the problem as the next person.  My own hypocrisy, negativity, and lovelessness dishonors Jesus as much as anyone's.  All I can do is repent and ask him by his grace to give me the strength to be a better living picture of his love to those around me.  It is my hope as we go into the heart of Auckland that the church we plant there will reflect a true picture of Jesus to a skeptical watching world.  It is my hope that this work will be a small step towards correcting the stereotype above.  My prayer is that the not-yet-existent church plant in central Auckland would demonstrate the actual existence of the true God to a city that has largely written him off as a mythical creature.