What exactly are country clubs? How do they compare to churches? Well, country clubs are filled with people just like me (same race, same socio-economic class, etc.); country club members pay dues, make business connections, and enjoy eating, swimming and playing golf. It’s not that I don’t like country clubs, I just don’t want my church to be one!
Rather than being a club, I want my church to be more like a gang. Gangs are exciting, even dangerous – their members are committed! Gangs have a difficult initiation process, a shared mission, and membership requires real commitment to one another. Gang members stick together through “thick and thin; they even die for one another. Sure, there are bad gangs, but there are good gangs, too – gangs that help and protect others.
Now I have to confess that I have been a gang member for most of my adult life. In my younger days, I belonged to two powerful gangs. Each of these gangs had a difficult initiation process which involved a long period of training, even hardship, but with a real sense of accomplishment in becoming a member. These gangs gave me a sense of duty, loyalty and honor. Was it the Crips or the Bloods in which I was a member? No, it was the Marines and the police!
Just about 20 years ago, I made a commitment to join what I thought was another exciting, dangerous, and world-changing gang – I decided to become a practicing Christian. And do you know what? It was too easy. It wasn’t like joining the other gangs in which I belonged. The church didn’t expect much of me. Joining a church was just like joining a country club. And the church I read about in the Bible was not the church I experienced as a returning Christian.
While Jesus showed us how to give up oneself and serve others in love, most of us seem to have forgotten about that. In the church, we talk a lot about being a disciple of Jesus when in fact most of us are “admirers” of Jesus.
Yet Christianity from the get-go has always been about action, not talk. I often wonder if we Christians worked on becoming committed, world-changing gang members, the world would be in a lot better shape than it is today. Being a disciple is trying to be more like the Master. We can admire Jesus, but it really doesn’t result in trying to become more like him. Disciples do. Disciples do what Jesus asked them to do in the 25th chapter of Matthew and showed us during his earthly ministry: feed the hungry, clothe and shelter the homeless, and visit the sick and those in prison.
We can find further examples of Christian discipleship in the 2nd chapter of Acts where Jesus’ followers taught, prayed, shared a common meal together, sold what they had and pooled their resources. The result? Soul by soul the world was being saved -- and day by day God added to their numbers.
Is our faith and commitment bold enough to join a gang like this? I wonder what would happen to our churches as we know them if we did? I wonder what would happen to us?
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