I figured I might sneak a post in. Whats up boys...my name is Adam Pavkovich, I've played minor league ball for the Angels for the last 7 years. I've been quietly reading these posts and been apart of the email group for more than a year or two and love them. This is a great group and I hope to contribute more in the future. Here's a little something...nothing big.
I know I sometimes face moments when people around me can get under my skin, things they do bother me, things I think are annoying. Stuff like the way people act and the way people talk. Until I have some good quiet time and dig into the word a little bit, its then that I realize and remember all those times I prayed stuff like, "God, please help me to grow...please help me to develop Christ like character" well maybe God lined these annoying people up with me and actually answered my prayers. How? Well maybe I can grow to be more patient with them, learn to love them even if I'm not too fond of them, learn to repent of my attitude and judgments toward them even though we don't see eye to eye. For you it might be something else like the way a pastor did or didn't do something or the way a bible study might of been run that bothered you. Maybe some of these things are less about us trying to say "I don't like that" and more about us saying "Ok God, what are you doing here?" There is another part of this idea that comes from our culture.
Our culture has and is teaching us to be great consumers. Lets go over to Starbucks. I'm an amazing consumer at Starbucks, I know exactly what kind of drink I want and so do you (if you like Starbucks)...you know "your" drink, I know "my" drink. There a million different drink combinations offered. Why? Cause they try and cater to the consumer. We have been taught in our consumer driven capitalistic society that consumerism is the way of life, and we've been taught that "I am the consumer, I am KING". Too often what we've done is taken that consumer mentality and walked it right into church. We sit in our chair and think, "hmmmm, I don't really like that guy, he doesn't dress right", "this music was alittle weak", "I don't like this, I don't like that", "the lights are too dim or too bright", "this place is too big or too small". All of a sudden your evaluating church through the lens of consumerism. Instead, we need to walk into church with a different lens. Engage the body of Christ with a different lens than the one you walk into Best Buy with. In Best Buy we walk in and say, "Alright, I have the money...who is gonna serve me?", "who is gonna take care of my needs?", "who's gonna help me?" If we walk into church with that kind of mentality then at some point we are going to be disappointed. The church we go to isn't going to meet all our needs, they're not going to make you happy all the time, but if you look at the life of Jesus, he didn't either. He didn't really spend his time trying to meet the consumer needs of everyone, he spent his time meeting people's eternal needs. Sometimes meeting our eternal needs means discipline and rebuke, and sometimes it might mean him saying something crazy like, "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. 25 For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. Those are not consumer driven ideas, those are God driven ideas. The church is not a consumer driven place, don't treat it like one. Instead of, "how are you going to serve me, make me happy, meet my needs, tell me what I want to hear" maybe it should be, "God, what do you want to do with me, what part do I play in the body of Christ, how can I serve?"
I have always felt like most of my problems with the way I think have to do with the habits I developed, and the way I came up in this world before Jesus Christ became my Lord and Savior. Even now I still find myself being "of the world" a lot of the time. What other ways is our culture and society jacking up our way of thinking today? How can we better defend ourselves and our thought processes? Open for comments.......
Pavkovich
5 comments:
Thanks for sharing your heart Adam. I feel like the biggest area I have let the society, specifically sports shape my mind is in Performance based Christianity. In my given sport of basketball I look at most goals as a formula of success with putting in the work and preparing so I get to receive the goal or award in the end. Much of my time following Christ I have seen the reason of my walk as 'putting the work in' to get heaven aka my reward aka my goal. Over the past several months I have felt cut to the heart in realizing that I don't focus on just LOVING JESUS enough. I can do many actions- praying, reading, sharing, to be right to get to heaven But, am I doing things out of love???? Lately I have been starting some projects for the love of God and nothing else. I think this is an area I have to keep in check with for the rest of my life man.
Great post Adam and this is definitely an area of my life that I struggle with from time to time. I have had to make a real effort to humble myself when in a church or bible study that I feel is not being ran well. Just the other day in Texas, we had our baseball chapel service and I found myself having to check my mindset during the service. It was a 15 minute service and the chapel leader decided to use those 15 minutes to speak on The Tribulation, The 1000 year reign of Christ, and The New Earth. So immediately I'm sitting there thinking that this is a terrible idea bc there is no way you can do those topics any justice in 15 minutes with a group of men at all kinds of different places in their faith. Then while sitting there, I realized that, hey, maybe this message is just for me since I was currently reading a book on those very topics. Maybe the one person that the message was intended for needed to stop being critical and actually submit to God's plan here and listen. There always needs to be discernment in those situations but at the same time, we have to be careful to not use discernment as an excuse to be a church connoisseur.
As far as the way society is jacking up our thinking, I think the big bad wolf of today is postmodernism. The idea that there is no absolute truth and that truth is in the eye of the beholder. Well this statement refutes itself immediately since to claim that what is true is that there is no absolute truth means that this idea of no absolute truth cannot also be true (I could go down this road for a while but I won't). However, this idea of no absolute truth has led to a belief in the world today that the claims of Christianity are radical and dangerous and that there are many ways to Heaven. We can talk about postmodernism if you guys want but I'm just going to leave it at that for now. Great job Adam.
-TEvans
PS - The Truth War - MacArthur is a good book about postmodernism
Solid post bro...I think you are right on with your asessment. When we step into worship with the mindset you described its wrong because church suddenly becomes man centered rather than God centered.
You are absolutly right that it shouldn't be consumeristic. Why? Because the church shouldn't be selling the Gospel. We should be declaring God's holiness and glory by teaching his true nature and character...not "selling" Jesus to the masses.
The church isn't about us...its about God.
I would like to note that it's not wrong to descernfully listen to the sermon...we are commanded by scripture to test and see if things are true to prevent false teaching and heresy.
As long as what's being said is true and God centered...hear and listen worshipfully!!!
Good post!
Solid post, I am a creature of habit too and I find that when I make a habit of biblical things there is always a blessing at the end, usually in the form of understanding and wisdom. Nice work Pav.
Nice gut check Adam. We definitely need to stop looking to be served and do the serving ourselves! And to add to what Terry said about postmodernism; there is a Christian rapper by the name Lecrae who has a song titled Truth that talks about all truth being relative. Nice work Adam!
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