Good Honest Church
Jul 24th, 2008 by ljkim
There’s a lot of resistance these days to the idea of being a plain anything. Everything is geared for a particular demographic. Brands are everywhere; even ministries are often “targeted” toward specific people groups. Of course, because of our geographic location and the language, we are limited to a particular demographic too… but that’s not our goal. Our goal isn’t to market a church to a particular demographic, our goal is to be a good honest church.
What do we mean by good honest church? We want to be [a] honest with who we are and [b] who God is… So even though in my Christian life I’ve aligned myself with a Presbyterian denomination that has its ideological roots in rural England and Scotland – I am not either of those, and it would be wrong of me to try to pretend that I am. I can partially inhabit the mind of other people in my denomination, but having grown up a non-believer Asian American in New York I naturally have a very different perspective on things. Not only that, but every single person in the church has a different somewhat unique perspective on things. So we want to be honest about who we are. I don’t think the church needs pretenders or cultural conformity. But at the same time, our goal isn’t to just “be ourselves”; we want to be honest with ourselves *as we encounter God,* being honest about who He is as well! Real people, real God. That’s what plain old church is about – and really there’s nothing plain or old about it.
[edited a little for readability - sometimes I drink too much coffee]
[About the photo: Vanilla...the most underrated flavor ever. People think it's plain, but it's probably one of the richer and more complicated flavors in the ice cream shop.]
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