Over the course of my life as a Christian (I entered into a relationship with God and became a Christian in the late 1970’s) I have been involved in a number of different churches and have had some measure of contact with many more.
One thing has become painfully clear to me in all that time.
The Church in North America is resistant to God’s expressed will for how He wants the Body to be as described within the pages of the New Testament.
The very traditions of church life that have in the past led to division and strife continue to be embraced and indeed promoted. Denominationalism abounds. Many church leaders act more like their respective churches are their personal fiefdom. As if the members of the Church belong to them and not to God. Many feel threatened at the slightest questioning of their practices or their person. Others resist the operation of the Holy Spirit within members of the Body and cry foul regarding any attempt to free the Body to be all that the Lord wants it to be.
While church leaders are primarily to blame for the state of the church in North America of no less tragedy is the way so many church goers “go” to church (instead of being the church wherever they happen to be) Sunday after Sunday while living for themselves the rest of the week. Only to repeat the same spiritual exercise the next Sunday and so on ad infinitum. Most know little of God in true relationship to Him and have little clue as to what denying self and taking up their cross to follow in the footsteps of Jesus means.
In short the Church in North America is a mess.
I make such a seemingly brash and presumptious statement not based on what the Church is like compared to our society at large but rather against the backdrop of what the Church was meant to be by God Himself as written in the Bible.
What astounds me is how readily church leaders discount or otherwise ignore whole swaths of verses in the bible dealing with things the Church ought to be doing without hardly a biblically plausible reason for doing so in sight.
The Church claims from every pulpit in the land that the Word (i.e. the Bible) is the ultimate authority on all things pertaining to life and godliness. I wish that it was truly so. Instead the ultimate authority, in practice, are the personal preferences of church leaders. Any questioning of their positions based on the Word has become in many churches little less than a questioning of God!
My intention with this web site is two fold.
One, I hope to lay out what the Lord’s will is with respect to how the Body ought to function here. We must know what the Lord’s will is in that regard before coming face to face with the need to do something personally about His will for the Body.
Secondly it is my hope and prayer that some of you reading this, might join me in working to see the Church rise up to once again shake our society and our world for the Kingdom of God. Rise up to be all she was meant to be by the Lord Himself.
Sadly such a modern day reformation will not occur within existing and visible church structures. We must embrace New Testament instructions left to us by God and let go of church traditions that interfere or make their application difficult if not impossible.
Most existing churches are not set up to embrace that kind of change. New wine is needed. But in line with Jesus’s words, new wine is best served up to hearts that are not content with the old and who are willing to embrace new ways of doing things.
It will not be easy. Following the Lord never is. There is a price to be paid. But on the other side of the cross we must bear to be a part of the solution and not a part of the problem there is a kind of Body life that a rare few have ever experienced. I have. And there is nothing greater in this life than an experience of the living Christ within His Body.
To be a part of a Body that is free to be all that He wants us to be as He leads us to be. I detail what happened with my experience of that within this site but for now…if anything I have said here has resonated with your inward being as being the truth…read on. Who knows. The Lord might well tug on your heart to join me in a grand experience of the living God within our midst once again.
Carlos
His Body 