What do you do?

I am preaching this week on Mothers Day on the passage in James 4 that says, "anyone then who knows the good he ought to do it and doesn't sins." Probably the last two years of my life there has not been a verse that has shaped and intrigued me more that that one. We are doing a series entitled "Life" and this is week 4 of that series. The crux of the message boils down to this....Are you a person of great potential or a person of great influence?

It is mother's day and this will be my 10th mother's day since I lost my mother to a battle with cancer. What makes me smile most about remembering her is the LIFE SHE LIVED, the influence she had. I don't remember her for what she didn't do, I remember for what she did.

I think the truth for the Church and Christianity in general in America is we have become defined by what we don't do instead of what we do. We don't drink(at least good Baptists don't), we don't have sex until marriage, we don't believe in homosexuality as a right lifestyle, we don't vote democrat(at least if your asking we don't), etc, etc, etc. But the tragedy is when we look at Jesus' life we him defining the Kingdom, the life of a believer by what the GAVE themselves to, not what they seperated themselves from.

Erwin Mcmanus or Easy E(that's what I call him, just kidding) writes in Seizing Your Divine Moment or now what we call Chasing Daylight(re-published).....In America we define holiness by what we seperate ourselves from instead of what we give ourselves too. He goes onto say, "The greatest tragedy in life is not the sins we commit, but the life we fail to live."

I think this shows up even in the emerging church or the future church or the postmodern church or whatever you want to call the new church that is surfacing in America. We are defined many times by what we don't do (programs, philosophy, strategies, etc)that our forefathers did.

- We don't do choirs
- We don't do ties
- We don't so Sunday School
- We don't do visitation
- We don't do deacons
- We don't do denominations
- We don't do politics
- We don't do three points and a poem
- We don't do invitations
- We don't do buildings(at least big honkin ones)
- We don't do VBS (or at least call it that)
- We don't do CP ( for all you SBC'ers)
- We don't do mega church

Whether we mean to or not we easily become defined by what we don't do. And if we only do the opposite or cooler versions of these things then it is all semantics anyway, right? I want my young (4 month old church) to be defined by what we do. I have become more aware as we have grown and taken shape how easy PRIDE slips in when I define who we are by what we don't do.

Maybe it's just me but I don't think it was ever Jesus' plan for his body to hang their hat on what they didn't do that their predecessors did....to define what they were!

Just a thought!