The Center of the Toilet Bowl

It is a wondrous thing to know your purpose in life. And by "your" I mean "mine". Boy, I certainly hope that you know your purpose; but if you don't, keep looking. I keep hearing from these Leadership books that you must have a goal to get anywhere. Going even deeper the goal must get you up in the morning. It has to get you excited. AS one OT Prophet said, "you word is like fore in my bones". This is what happens when you find your God-given purpose.
However exciting this is, do not think that it works like magic. It is not like you find your purpose and then it is easily accomplished. No. Anything work doing will not happen easily. I have found this statement to stand all too true. For those who know me, you know that I have sort of stumbled upon my purpose. The medium that has revealed said purpose is spelled m-o-c-o-b-u. It is an acronym for Moberly Community Builders.
I say "stumbled" because this was not really my Idea. My good friend Zach came up with the Ideas to promote Community where there was none. Through many hours of talking and discussing the philosophy of what we were doing, a light switch flipped in my head. This light was no run-of-the-mill-kitchen-light though. Have you ever been in a gym with those huge cone looking lights? Have you ever been the one to turn them on? If you have ever turned on one of those lights and didn't know what you were doing you might have tried to flip the switch several more times in a vain attempt to get the juice flowing. What happened was that the lights needed time to warm up.
So I walked around and lived life to its extent all the while having this switch flipped in my head, unbeknownst to me. Suddenly one day I was walking and like a baseball bat to the face I was hit with the illumination of this idea. It must have been funny to those watching me seemingly out of nowhere smack my head into an invisible pole and fall flat on my back. That is at the very least what I felt like. (No i didn't actually fall down). It took days before this buzz shed its light on a host of Ideas all centered around a word that lit up brighter that the rest: Community.
As far as I can tell Community infiltrates every aspect of life. The concept itself is not really difficult to understand. My definition is basically "a group of people who meet together to strengthen connections with each other and to accomplish specific goals". As you may imagine this spiders its way into everything. The meaning is so broad it can be applied to something as informal as two people getting a cup of coffee to an activist group holding a barbeque to share ideas and fire each other up.
Mr. Worstell said something in my class on Cross Cultural Communications a few weeks ago about how cultures are changing. He said that it is up to the new generation of missionaries to come up with the methods of winning people to Jesus Christ. He asked what are we going to do? How are we going to build the church? Or at least something to that effect. This question really stuck with me. lol. But seriously, my mind started swirling with the notion of community building and putting that into a missions setting. What would that look like. I look at Acts 2:42-47 to find my answer. And I realize that we have been "doing church" (gosh I loathe that phrase) all wrong.
Why has church been deemed boring? Why do I not want to go on Sunday? You can come up with all manner of self depricating things to make you feel bad so that you will at least feel it to be a Christian duty. Or you can speak vehemently about sacrifice and bring up Jesus dying so that you feel your sacrifice of being so bored your eyeballs are going to melt out of your head is really a small price to pay. Realistically here is what Acts 2:42-47 should say today. " They met once a week for just under an hour in a building that was constructed specially for them. Everybody shared the debt for the building at about 6,000 dollars a family. Everybody filed in just as the show started. A few more devoted and righteous were there several minutes to an hour earlier and had good seats in the front. They mumbled together a chorus that was well put together but sung a little off key. Everyone kept feeling a sense of dread as the preacher droned on and on and added numerous point to what was supposed to be a three point sermon. They dashed out and got into their vehicles as soon as piously possible and only saw eachother again at the supermarket or a sporting event until the next week."
I don't mean to be negative or put down people's hard work. Because I think a lot of good is done in traditional churches. This in no way can be a blanket statement either about all churches. There are many roads but all lead to Christ. But I think that even the new churches or the "house church" movement have a fault. They focus on what needs to be ACCOMPLISHED in the SERVICE not what interactions can be made, what people can be helped, what bonds can be formed etc.
Keep in mind that I don't have all of the answers and I really need a lot of input. Like I said earlier that I am just forming these thoughts in my mind about this. Let me know what you think.
God Bless