GenX - Environmentalists - Anarchists READ THIS!!
by Doug Perry
First off, we're REALLY, REALLY sorry! We're praying daily that we can get the church to be what it was always supposed to be so you won't see us anymore as the hypocrites we are. Just as in the fairy tale about the Emperor's New Clothes, it's youth that is willing to speak truth and is unconstrained by convention and possessions. That's why Jesus blessed the little ones and encouraged us to have faith as a child. As it turns out, faith like a thoughtful, steady, mature, settled adult who has enmeshed themselves in sinful culture is disastrous for the church!!
We firmly believe that whatever this is to become will be depent on the GenX'ers and their energy, enthusiasm, computer savvy, and willingness to take a stand. We have always sent young people to fight our wars. So does God (Daniel, Joseph, David, John the Baptist, Jesus, and on and on through the ages).
Your generation has a very hard time going into a giant fancy building and listening to guys in suits and seeing big musical productions - where people leave unmoved and unchanged. You don't need that stuff to find God and you think it's frivolous and wasteful. And you're absolutely right. Instead of trying to strategically cater to you with a new "twist" on old church - we're advocating the complete renewal of the church to its roots. Which just happens to be exactly what you're calling for.
Your generation has been raised up by God to throw off the status quo and the old assumptions. It's not enough to do it this way because that's what we've always done. You need to go back to the basics, to the very heart and core of what the message of Jesus is all about. You have been raised to respect nature, to recycle and reuse, to embrace people of different colors and languages, to rage against "the machine." Those in the Big Church establishments think "the machine" is government and corporations, but it's not just that. It's not just Big Government, Big Tobacco, Big Oil, Big Pharmaceuticals - it's Big Church that stands condemned as well. (See the Undeniable Axioms - you'll get it instantly!)
I absolutely believe that Satan has built educational systems to get our children focused on all the wrong things, to worship the creation rather than the Creator (Romans 1:25). To worship Mother Earth instead of He who made the whole of creation. To worship the stars and constellations instead of He who hung them. To value human justice and equality, instead of looking to He who yearns for it more than any of us - and sent the Word (Jesus) to acheive it and the Holy Spirit to constantly urge us toward it.
But the joke is on Satan. Jesus is the ultimate expression of stewardship, recycling, care for the poor and disadvantaged, love for those different, respect for nature and the beauty of Creation. You've been perfectly prepared - by the Enemy - for what's coming! Your very souls resonate and vibrate at a different pitch from the current Church structures. Something big is on the horizon. A complete revolution in our relationship to God and the expression of Christianity. Many of you could feel it before we did. I pray that we who have influence and should have known better than to let it get this bad can change quickly enough that we don't lose all of you forever.
To the Anarchists among you - God bless you. You almost get it! Human structures and heirarchies and organizational charts are blasphemous to the very nature and spirit of God Almighty. God wants us in constant communion with His Spirit and under the sole direction of His will. No layers are needed if we're in harmony with God. It won't be the disordered chaos that you picture it to be - God's is the ultimate expression of process and order - He just doesn't need man-made organizational structures. The day is coming when Christ will reign on a glorified and perfected Earth for 1,000 years in exactly that way. No layers, no structures - just us and God. Please think carefully about the difference between the Created and the Creator. The beauty and complexity of nature is not the end, it's the glorious sign along the way that was created to point to a loving, beautiful, complex God. DON'T let yourself get sucked into any big, complex human structures - not the Church as it currently is and especially not a One-World government designed by sinful, imperfect man!
God sent His very own son Jesus - a young radical intent on calling the people back to their core and to restore their pure love for God (John 3:16-17) - even though speaking against the establishment was to carry the cost of the most horrible imaginable torture and death. He came to redeem us of our sinful nature and offer us an opportunity to plug into the One True Song.
Tell your friends! There are "grown-ups" that get it! God has a plan and YOU'RE at the front lines! Change is coming! Be a part of the solution!
We don't want your money. We don't want anybody's money. We want you to worship God. We want the "Big Church" to repent of its sinfulness and return to a love of God above all. The time of the worship of money is come to an end.
Praise God for using a helpless worm like me and offering His Son as a sacrifice to redeem my sinfulness so that He could adopt us and make us all joint heirs with Jesus. Change is coming! There are going to be some people really, REALLY unhappy about having to give up all their stuff.
It's going to be a fun ride!
Copyright Doug Perry 2004. Use freely - but without charge and without changes. Link to: www.fellowshipofthemartyrs.com