Resurrection, Inc.

-
 
Go to this guy's church on Easter and you could win A NEW CAR!         
This Easter  Bay Area Fellowship of Corpus Christi TX is giving away over a million dollars in cash and prizes to people who attend worship at one of their 8 worship services.  You can read a bit more about the story HERE.  Most or all of the merchandise (anything from skateboards to flat screen TV's) has been donated, including the cars.  Pastor Bil Cornelius (dude, spell your name like all the other Bill's in the dang world), claims that it's all a big illustration that teaches us about Resurrection and the most important giveaway of all... Eternal Life by believing in Jesus.

Rick Warren's Saddleback Church in California is holding their Easter services at Angel Stadium in Anaheim.  If you go on their website you will see that the "tickets" for one of the services are all gone, but there is still time to get in on the one that is only 85% full.  Their services can be watched live on the Internet or on your iPhone and will be broadcast on Sirrius and XM satellite radio and probably on TV and a thousand other places, too.  Apparently, Pastor Rick is going to share his big vision for Saddleback Church on Easter Sunday and the Jonas Brothers (I'm not making this up) are the special musical guest.  

If you come to my Church on Sunday morning there won't be any giveaways, and I don't have the juice to get even a distant cousin of the Jonas Brothers to come and play.   I also don't have the stones to try to make the vast rhetorical leap from new car giveaways to the event of the Resurrection and what it means not just for me, but for all of Creation.  I guess the reason why I will never be the pastor of a mega church is because I really don't want to trade my soul for a few more butts in the pew. 

Who am I kidding?  I will never be a pastor of a mega church because I'm PRESBYTERIAN.  We embrace change and growth about as easily as one might embrace a cactus.

I know I won't have people writing news articles about my church's Easter service, nor will there be any TV cameras there.  Nick Jonas will not be on the chancel of my Sanctuary singing his wholesome heart out whilst teenage girls squeal in holy delight. 

Instead, it will just be us... the broken, the messed up, the proud, the weary, the wanderers, the losers, the homeless, the unemployed, the hard-hearted, the sick, the tired, the least... the forgiven. 

And the Easter people that gather with me on Sunday will all have two things in common: 

None of us will win a car.

All of us desperately need to feel Resurrected.  

God, save us from your followers, and revive us once more.

If you want to read more about the way that Christ has been reduced to a commodity check out this book:

Comments

  1. Reg MillsApril 6, 2010 at 8:51 AM

    Leon,

    I loved your blog, Resurrection, Inc. I don't seem to find time to do my own blog, but I sure liked yours. Thanks!

    PS: I couldn't agree with you more or identify with your thoughts more, unless of course I was Presbyterian. :-)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thanks for leaving a comment! If you comment Anonymously, your comment will summarily be deleted.

Popular posts from this blog

Wuv... True Wuv...

-
Image
Go ahead. Ask me what my favorite "chick flick" is. The Princess Bride , that's what.  The pic at the top of this entry gave it away, I know. There are three reasons why it is my favorite "chick flick." 1. It's not a chick flick.  2. The only kissing is at the end of the movie... where it's supposed to be. 3. It has Andre the Giant in it. Any of these reasons could stand alone in their own right as pretty dang valid reasons why The Princess Bride is atop my list of romantic films.  But when the aforementioned reasons are lumped together, I don't see how anyone could argue against it. There is a scene in The Princess Bride that makes me giggle a whole lot...the wedding scene where Peter Cook, playing a priest with a speech impediment presides over Princess Buttercup's almost wedding to the evil Chris Sarandon (and I hear he's still pretty evil).   Here it is. Wuv...  true wuv...  gotta love that. I've been reading and re-re
Read more

Rapha & Yada - "Be Still & Know": Reimagined

-
Image
One of the most well-used verses in the Bible comes to us from Psalm 46:10, which reads like this:  He says, “Be still, and know that I am God;     I will be exalted among the nations,     I will be exalted in the earth.” That one line---"Be still, and know that I am God"---finds its way into greeting cards, wall art, church signs and the like.  And it sounds so nice, doesn't it?  But what does it actually mean ? What does it mean to be still  and know  that God is God?  Well, to dig deeper into that phrase to see what it's really saying, I'm going to have to bust out some Hebrew--so, don't hold it against me. The Hebrew word that's used here for the phrase "be still" is the word  rapha. And get this... It means "to hang limp, sink down, be feeble."  That's a heckuva lot different than what we usually take the phrase "be still" to mean, right? I don't know about you, but whenever I have heard that verse
Read more

The Lord Needs It: Lessons From A Donkey

-
Image
This Sunday is Palm Sunday---the beginning of Holy Week. It's also one of those Sundays when you can't ignore the church calendar and just preach whatever you want.  I am sure that some people do just that, but they probably aren't Presbyterian, and I am sure that the liturgical rhythm of the Church is not first and foremost in their mind. And they probably have had no trouble at all working on their sermon this week. I'm not one to blindly follow tradition, but there are some things that you just don't do---and you can't just ignore  the story of Jesus' Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.   But this leads to a bit of a quandary...  In the short time I have been doing this whole preaching thing I have gone through the Palm Sunday story a few times.  After a while you sort of wonder if your congregation has heard your Palm Sunday riff a few too many times. That sermon needs to get preached, though.  While we celebrate the cheers and pal
Read more