The Shallow Church
On 2/22/14, I dreamt I was in front of a church I used to attend. I was looking at the church from a distance. The church was huge in height and was wide in length, but it’s depth was very shallow, almost like one of those fake building displays they used to use in old Hollywood western movie sets with poles in the back to prop the 2 dimensional building display.
In our modern times, we are somehow supposed to be impressed with big mega churches and their ministries, and under the circumstances, I guess that is just the acceptable will of God for now, but his more perfect will is that we grow in community and in depth.
This shallow display is identifying a huge lack of community and depth, which is a reflection of the culture as well. People feel a great disconnect in commercial atmospheres that many Christians are blind to. Many Christians think God is so with them because of the size of their churches, but when you take a closer look, they are lacking depth in relationships and real community.
The economy is set up this way, to put everyone in debt, so they are laboring for money and houses and material things, when God never meant for us to be money making machines of the commercial world, where we're going so fast, that we have no time for one another. He created us to have life thru community and deeper relationships where people can feel truly connected, not just a member of the 501-C3.
God does not think so highly of the mega churches as many Christians presume. These mega church do not make home groups a priority. They make their massive gatherings a priority. Most Christians are also not in community lands, but are separated by suburbia and the debt enslavement of today’s economic burdens. It was always in God’s plan for us to live in community. Note, not communal, but community. For that, we would need to have common land and be tied to each other more than just the weekly meetings of churches high and wide, but not deep.
This is how God has identified these mega churches and the very nature of their building his kingdom, high and wide, but with little depth.
That will all change at his coming and everyone will be living in small communities when Jesus comes. This fluff of mega churches only employs a few, while the many are starving for real community, something mega churches can never provide, but home groups can. We are supposed to be in this together, but our world limits this to high and wide, 2 dimensional shallowness.
Thank God he is raising up small fellowships to change all of that, ones that can go deeper, where the people are not just a face in a crowd, but valued members with important roles in loving one another.
In Christ, Weather.
