Image Problems

Before you read this blog you need to go check out this. You can read the story but that is not what we need to discuss. read the comments. Right now there are 3 pages of them.

Have you read them? Seriously. Don’t read on until you read the comments.

This is the view of people, Christians and Non-Christians, of “church.” The things that they say may be wrong or inaccurate. Or, they may be exactly right. But either way, it is how people view the church. Not just GracePoint. Not just United Methodism. But the Christian Church as a whole.

The one thought that comes to my head is we have screwed up, and not just a little, but we have screwed up in a huge way. It is becoming increasingly less attractive to become a Christian or to associate with the church. Who wants to be part of a group that is known for being judgmental, egocentric, and greedy? We know as Christians, we can be persecuted. But what if the “persecution” is fair? What if we have screwed this thing up so much that we are getting what is coming to us? What if the way to fix “church” is to watch the religion we have clung to die in order to see the real true “church” emerge?

So how is the “church” problem fixed? We can work on our image to make ourselves more attractive to people. We could distance ourselves from traditional church, show God’s radical love in a new way that relates to this generation. This could fix the church image problem pretty quickly I bet. It would draw in new people as well.

But I think there is another option. One that would take a long time, perhaps even generations. One more lasting than an image makeover. If I wanted a new image, I could go shopping for new clothes, get a new haircut, and stop hanging out with the people I have been hanging out with for many years. I might be more excited about who I am. But the problem is that my heart would be the same. I would be the same. Just in a different package. The church needs a lasting solution to her image problem. We need a dramatic transformation on the inside. And what is on the inside of the church to transform? Not what, but who? and that is us. How will you transform your heart to fix what we have screwed up? An introspective, but definitely NOT a rhetorical question.