I have a new prayer for this summer's trip to the land of waffles, chocolate, beer, and Stromae. It has been rolling around inside of me for a bit, slowing coming together and become more clear as the Lord has had me pray over it.
The "Ah-ha!" moment came to me Sunday, after I spent Saturday evening at a Catholic prayer service and then hanging out with different Religious Orders - Franciscan Monks, Sisters of Life, and a couple of others. It was a lot of fun, praying with my friends and then going and learning about a church that I haven't been exposed to regularly in the past. How did I end up at a Catholic prayer service/fellowship time? Well, one of my friends is a faithful Catholic, but he comes and prays with some of my other friends during the 9am service. He invited us to attend the service with him. And since we all love the same Jesus, know that it is not our works that save us but rather the faith in Christ given to us by God, and all want to see His name made known, we overlook the areas of the theology that we don't agree on and try and restore some of the Catholic-Protestant good will (I'm looking at you, Ireland).
The Catholic church and the Protestant churches share an issue, an issue that is deeply ingrained in all humans. We seek to save ourselves by earning our way into God's good graces, attempting to bargain with God using the very things that He has created - our loyalty, our lives, our stuff, our emotions. We like to think that if we do all the right things, then we're good. God, in a sense, owes us. It looks different when carried out in practice, Protestants using the church attendance and business, the fact that they don't swear or smoke or cuss, and the fact that they haven't committed a "big sin" to claim a spot in heaven. While I am not as familiar with the Catholic church or its practices, I have had conversations with people who are practicing Catholics who say that their prayers, their offerings, and their following of the Sacraments are what save them. Both check-lists. Both taking away from the Gospel of Christ and, essentially saying that Christ's death on the cross was not enough. Both wrong.
Matt Chandler, in his sermon on Sunday over Galatians 4:8-20, said something that has stuck with me and rattled around in my brain for the past 24 hours: "Once a practice moves from sanctification (helping us mature as Christians) to justification (what saves us), you are serving demons, not Jesus Christ." This trick, the lie that takes a practice that is good and that moves us closer in our relationship to God, but transforms it into something that we think we HAVE to do in order to see heaven, is one of the devil's most clever ones he has devised. As someone living in the "belt buckle" of the Bible-belt south, I have seen how destructive this lie is. We tend to busy ourselves with lists and things and commitments, then wondering why we're exhausted, unfulfilled, and trying to figure out why God feels so far away. The reason is simple: we haven't been serving Him, we've been serving our own interests. It is incredibly difficult to reach people who know how to talk like Christians - what to say, when it say it, what to do, etc - because they already think they know Him. In a sense, it is easier to talk to someone who openly acknowledges the fact that he/she doesn't believe in God or doesn't believe the Gospel. At least there is a starting point.
Going to Belgium is similar to doing ministry in the south. According to joshuaproject.net, the country is 67% Christian, 28.8% non-religious, and 3.7% Islam. Of that Christian 67%, 87.7% of those people are Roman Catholic, meaning the Catholic church is a very strong presence in Belgium. The best schools tend to be Catholic; the healthcare is affiliated with the Catholic church; there are Catholic worker unions;Catholic churches are on every corner (much like churches in general in the south); and the largest and one of the best universities in the world is the Catholic University in Leuven, found in our home base for the summer. After two years of traveling to Belgium, making friends, and asking questions, I have learned that for most people, being Catholic is because that what society expects. You go to Mass on major holidays and the only other time you step into a church is for a wedding, baptism, or funeral. When I share the Gospel of Christ, people look at me like I have three heads and then tell me that they have never heard this before. Ever. People who have grown up going to Mass their entire lives. Sounds eerily familiar to conversations that I have with my athletes here in Texas.
I don't know the state of the Catholic church in Belgium, nor do I want to come off as if I am criticizing the church as a whole. But I do know that something is not right, just as it is not right here in the south. The church has been diminished to something you check off your list, its practices into tools to bargain with God. Having come to see this makes my life both easier and somewhat challenging. Easier because I'm comfortable with this type of ministry - trying to speak the Gospel into a culture that already claims to know Him. But also challenging because I don't know very much about Catholic practices. It is my hope to learn about the Catholic church and its practices so I can, with the Lord's power and direction, help restore the practices to what they should be - tools to help deepen a person's relationship with God, not be the thing that justifies a person. I know Catholics who love the Lord and have these tools in their proper place. It is my prayer that I can see and understand what makes the practices so special and how it deepens their faith. I don't want to reinvent the wheel, especially when there is a perfectly good one available to me. It just needs to be spiffed up before it can be used again.
You bring restoration, You bring restoration...
The "Ah-ha!" moment came to me Sunday, after I spent Saturday evening at a Catholic prayer service and then hanging out with different Religious Orders - Franciscan Monks, Sisters of Life, and a couple of others. It was a lot of fun, praying with my friends and then going and learning about a church that I haven't been exposed to regularly in the past. How did I end up at a Catholic prayer service/fellowship time? Well, one of my friends is a faithful Catholic, but he comes and prays with some of my other friends during the 9am service. He invited us to attend the service with him. And since we all love the same Jesus, know that it is not our works that save us but rather the faith in Christ given to us by God, and all want to see His name made known, we overlook the areas of the theology that we don't agree on and try and restore some of the Catholic-Protestant good will (I'm looking at you, Ireland).
The Catholic church and the Protestant churches share an issue, an issue that is deeply ingrained in all humans. We seek to save ourselves by earning our way into God's good graces, attempting to bargain with God using the very things that He has created - our loyalty, our lives, our stuff, our emotions. We like to think that if we do all the right things, then we're good. God, in a sense, owes us. It looks different when carried out in practice, Protestants using the church attendance and business, the fact that they don't swear or smoke or cuss, and the fact that they haven't committed a "big sin" to claim a spot in heaven. While I am not as familiar with the Catholic church or its practices, I have had conversations with people who are practicing Catholics who say that their prayers, their offerings, and their following of the Sacraments are what save them. Both check-lists. Both taking away from the Gospel of Christ and, essentially saying that Christ's death on the cross was not enough. Both wrong.
Matt Chandler, in his sermon on Sunday over Galatians 4:8-20, said something that has stuck with me and rattled around in my brain for the past 24 hours: "Once a practice moves from sanctification (helping us mature as Christians) to justification (what saves us), you are serving demons, not Jesus Christ." This trick, the lie that takes a practice that is good and that moves us closer in our relationship to God, but transforms it into something that we think we HAVE to do in order to see heaven, is one of the devil's most clever ones he has devised. As someone living in the "belt buckle" of the Bible-belt south, I have seen how destructive this lie is. We tend to busy ourselves with lists and things and commitments, then wondering why we're exhausted, unfulfilled, and trying to figure out why God feels so far away. The reason is simple: we haven't been serving Him, we've been serving our own interests. It is incredibly difficult to reach people who know how to talk like Christians - what to say, when it say it, what to do, etc - because they already think they know Him. In a sense, it is easier to talk to someone who openly acknowledges the fact that he/she doesn't believe in God or doesn't believe the Gospel. At least there is a starting point.
Going to Belgium is similar to doing ministry in the south. According to joshuaproject.net, the country is 67% Christian, 28.8% non-religious, and 3.7% Islam. Of that Christian 67%, 87.7% of those people are Roman Catholic, meaning the Catholic church is a very strong presence in Belgium. The best schools tend to be Catholic; the healthcare is affiliated with the Catholic church; there are Catholic worker unions;Catholic churches are on every corner (much like churches in general in the south); and the largest and one of the best universities in the world is the Catholic University in Leuven, found in our home base for the summer. After two years of traveling to Belgium, making friends, and asking questions, I have learned that for most people, being Catholic is because that what society expects. You go to Mass on major holidays and the only other time you step into a church is for a wedding, baptism, or funeral. When I share the Gospel of Christ, people look at me like I have three heads and then tell me that they have never heard this before. Ever. People who have grown up going to Mass their entire lives. Sounds eerily familiar to conversations that I have with my athletes here in Texas.
I don't know the state of the Catholic church in Belgium, nor do I want to come off as if I am criticizing the church as a whole. But I do know that something is not right, just as it is not right here in the south. The church has been diminished to something you check off your list, its practices into tools to bargain with God. Having come to see this makes my life both easier and somewhat challenging. Easier because I'm comfortable with this type of ministry - trying to speak the Gospel into a culture that already claims to know Him. But also challenging because I don't know very much about Catholic practices. It is my hope to learn about the Catholic church and its practices so I can, with the Lord's power and direction, help restore the practices to what they should be - tools to help deepen a person's relationship with God, not be the thing that justifies a person. I know Catholics who love the Lord and have these tools in their proper place. It is my prayer that I can see and understand what makes the practices so special and how it deepens their faith. I don't want to reinvent the wheel, especially when there is a perfectly good one available to me. It just needs to be spiffed up before it can be used again.
You bring restoration, You bring restoration...
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