Brevity Must Be A Gift, Thank God For My Editor!
- John Bost
- May 29, 2024
- 3 min read
Yesterday's blog got a little out of hand, as my 76 year old mind processed through millennia of Christendom.
Wrapping my head around a 50 year marathon with scripture, while desperately desiring to communicate lessons learned, along side a life experience across multiple sectors, while in parallel, serving deep in the belly of institutional religion can be quite the task!
And yes for me, generating run-on sentences like the one above, embedded within multiple paragraphs, competing for the limited attention span of an online audience.
Thank God that in between this blog and my upcoming book, there is a gifted editor!
With successes not had by many in my blue collar, pentecostal, post depression heritage, let's just say that my life offers a lot for my last years to process and hopefully transfer.
Each morning, with my mind open to new revelation, I read with full acceptance of the scriptures' inspiration, and a sense of calling to live into that wisdom.
Yet, I now know that the best of humans have cultural filters through which they interpret said revelations from God, to include the Apostles.
When I read verses like Ephesians 3:9-10, which instruct us "to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: to the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God..." I hear that as one tall order!
Especially when followed by contemporary articles such as the link below from USA Today. Here the writer speaks of "nonverts", those once affiliated with church, as well as "cradle nones" the offspring of those never affiliated with any religious persuasion. The numbers of both are ever growing!
This gives me both pause, and a hopeful understanding behind the "why" of my journey, especially in this politically divisive moment in America.
I tend to agree with this writer as she advocates for participation in some formal gathering, when church as we know it misses the mark (my words, not hers).
If for no other reason than for the sake of unity as a community, be that group a local Chamber of Commerce or some other body with a focus on serving others.
When I think back over years of engagement in community service within both public and private schools, several chambers, a long time Rotarian as well as local mayor, all that done along side leadership within multiple denominations, there comes a sense of hope that even though formalized religion seems now in some rare but real transformational moment, the desire for true community remains equally high among individuals.
I equate this moment as similar with the wisdom that birthed the Early Church, yet within about three hundred years, an institutional mentality soon seized upon it, creating an unsustainable, competing church campus complex, thought necessary for disseminating the Good News, as described in Ephesians. Perhaps in a worse case scenario, controlling the thought contained within that movement!
It now seems that the Body of Christ has a choice to make, we can either declare such abandonment of our church campuses as "Last Days" behavior, or we can seek out the wisdom of God and find a better way to serve out our calling.
Institutional change is never easy, but as history tells us, it is necessary and for religious institutions, about every 500 years.
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