pastor Archives - Adam Kirk Smith

Two weeks ago I had a discussion with a local pastor. We got on the topic of whether or not a church’s appearance actually matters. His thoughts were that the church shouldn’t have to be up to date because people should want to come worship Jesus without the “bells and whistles”. I get where he was coming from, but I think that it’s pretty hard to get folks that don’t like church or sort of like it to actually come into the church building without at least some “stuff”.

I mean, when I drove up to the building I knew what kind of church it was going to be without even going in.
You know the kind.
Terrible sound system. Old orange cloth pews and ugly light fixtures. Funny smell and an organ.
I was spot on.
It was like I was back in the early 90’s again. I was looking for the choir robes but couldn’t find them.

Even though the people were really friendly, I just couldn’t get past what my eyes were seeing. Maybe that’s my shallowness. Maybe I’ve been in church so long that I don’t know what churches really need.

There’s only so much a “ok” sermon and decent music can do for folks. Or maybe this is just me…Or maybe this is just the American church.
Church is sometimes more about “What can it do for me?” than God and community.
People in other countries don’t need “stuff” to do church. Somehow we Americans keep needing junk and church staff keeps trying to feed the masses’ appetites.

So, here we are. In the land of churchplants, to “just got off the ground” churches to growing churches to mega churches.

Do you care what the building looks like that you do worship in or does it not matter?

I said I wasn’t going to write a post on this, but I’ve been seeing so many things going on lately, that I felt I needed to at least talk about it a bit. Usually I talk about the positive things that social media has to offer. But, lately I’ve been noticing that some of the negative things have almost been outweighing the positive. I think a lot of it has to do with readers misunderstanding what is being written, but still, it’s so annoying when you know what you mean, but nobody else does.

The first case I am talking about is when MercyMe’s front man, Bart Millard, wrote “XMas” instead of Christmas, which started a huge uproar from people who wanted to keep “Christ” in Christmas. Here’s that tweet for ya:

If Bart has 140 characters to use on twitter, everybody knows you shorten what you can. Also, I guess those folks didn’t know that “X” really means Christ. People just need to think before they respond. That’s a lesson for all of us. It was definitely a misunderstanding.

On to the next one.

Mark Driscoll has two reputations within the church. One is that he is very over the top and another says he is very biblical. I think he’s both with maybe some inconsistency thrown in there. But, when a leader is in the spotlight it is easy to point fingers at what some else is doing wrong when really all of us have something we need to deal with.

Well, after watching this Avatar video that was posted of Pastor Mark preaching on Avatar, I thought I was going to hell. Literally. I guess that’s where the “over the top” comes in.

So naturally, when Pastor Mark made a comment about enjoying Jay-Z’s music, people went ape-$%^#. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I love Jay-Z. J Hova has rhymes like no other. I do try to get the edited version and fill in words like “love you real good” or “poop”, but him and his band have serious talent. His bassist, Tony Russell and drummer, Tony Royster Jr. are among the best in the world, in my opinion. So after seeing his response to Avatar and then seeing that he enjoyed Jay-Z’s music confused everyone, including myself. Then Pastor Mark came out with some feedback in the form a post after everyone was calling him out.
Here’s an excerpt from that post:

Now, if he would have posted that in the first place maybe people probably would’ve gotten that, but again it’s that twitter rule of 140 characters or less. Some people are saying that the post was released just because of the way people reacted, but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. I think that’s what he thought all along about Jay-Z. I also think he means what he’s saying about Avatar in the post- that it’s a well done movie and it’s not a sin to see the movie, but it is if you adopt the hindu behaviors portrayed in the movie. I will say that with all the things he has said over the years about relevant topics including culture, The Shack, stay-at-home dads, and yoga and the way they are always perceived wrong, he might need to find a different way to communicate effectively, though. Matt Chandler even pokes fun at the way Mark communicates here. Not many people can do what Mark does and I’m guessing he’s reaching someone out there, so not much of us can say stuff. I mean, I’m guessing people have come to know the Lord through his ministry, just maybe a yelling God that I’m not used to, but maybe some people need that. That would definitely be some interesting data to see.

All this has me trying to think of life before social media, when we didn’t know what everyone was doing and everyone’s random thoughts. Whether we like it or not, social media has given each of us a voice. Either to put out a thought or idea or to lift up someone else’s idea or bash them for being wrong. The thing I know all of us kept thinking while seeing all of this going on is “What if this same effort that is being put into bashing people for their thoughts was out into building clean water wells or finding other ways to help other countries that are less fortunate and their people who really need it?”

Whether you agree with what Bart did with XMas or Pastor Mark’s views and how he communicates those, I’m pretty sure they both know Christ. Oh, and Rob Bell. That might receive more comments than Driscoll and Millard combined. 🙂
Haters gonna hate.
Some of you might disagree with my opinion on those, but writing XMas or yelling and playing things on the safer side is better than playing it on the less strict side, even if life will be a little less exciting.
The only thing with that is that could make people outside of the church think that Christians can’t have fun, which is totally not the case. Whatever.

What we need are people who keep leaders in their prayers.

Those are my thoughts and most of this is me writing while thinking out loud.

I know you have been misunderstood because everyone has. I remember the last time it happened to me. I was telling someone why it’s important for a church to be relevant and up to date. They thought people should go to church for Jesus and not worry about the material things in the church. That was quite a discussion that I will leave for another blog post…

So, what point were you trying to get across the last time you were misunderstood?