Can you feed me?

Ok, this will be part rant, so be warned. I must tell you that I am tired of hearing the phrase "I'm just not getting fed," within/around the church. Now, often this is just a cop-out answer for not liking something about a church, but in many cases this is an honest complaint. Unfortunately, for many, it is evidence of a serious lack of understanding about what it means to follow Christ. I probably just made some people mad with that one! Here's the thing, though. At some point, you must begin to feed yourself, or at least seek your own food, and feed others for that matter. The church does not exist to cater to your individual needs, but instead for you to cater to the needs of others in the binding UNITY of Christ! This may seem strange, and definitely counter-intuitive, but think about this for a minute. You seek depth from pastors and teachers, but you don't seek it on your own. If you take on the mindset of feeding others, you go as deep as you have time for in preparation. It gives you a need to be faithful to God and His Word, so that you don't lead others astray - which happens more than you realize, even by well-intentioned teachers. So, my advice to all of you complaining that you are not being fed... start learning to feed yourself. If you need some tools, I'm here to help (keep reading).

After the first day, here, it was interesting to sit in these classes and talk at lunch with all these new friends in my cohort. What really caught me by surprise was the general sense of most of us of "Why have we never seen this kind of stuff before? Why don't they teach this in churches?" Honestly, I don't know the answer to these questions, but.... for all my Knoxville friends: we are all going to seminary, but you'll get yours at a highly reduced price (probably a little "dumbed down", too, but we don't have to talk about that). Notice, I didn't say free. Seriously, though, it's sad how much we just take for granted, because that's the only way we've ever heard it. Even more sad is that we are wrong about much of our application of scripture principles. Our view of scripture is highly self-centered, individualized, and too often the real message of God's Word is distorted. That needs to change!

expanding my sphere...

thereeser