Church is not a handbag

Mar 18, 2009

There is a phenomenon in our culture. I call it "church as handbag." 

 A Handbag is a luxury item that most women buy to hold all their junk while they go shopping. Now to be fair it is not strictly a luxury item. There is a legitimate need for a place to put your keys and your cell phone and other items. But honestly those things could fit into a zip-lock bag just as well as a designer leather purse. 

All across America, men and women are treating Jesus' church like a handbag. A luxury item that serves a need but can be changed out as the fashion changes. You hear them talk about shopping for church.

Some might even buy, i.e. join the church. But often this purchase is not a permanent choice. They see the church as a useful event and a friendly group of people that meet their needs and give them a sense of spiritual purpose and direction in life. Thankfully, the Gospel of Jesus creates something different altogether. The Gospel produces a community of people who are devoted to each other in brotherly love. Emmaus Road is called to be a community like this. A community of people who go through life committed to each other and committed to Jesus come hell or high water. We do not discard each other and go shopping for another community like a used handbag. We work together to mix Jesus into the various areas of each others lives no matter how messy this might be, or how slow the process.

<< Blog index 

Post Comment

Name *
Email *
Website
Anchor text
Are you Human?

Enter code shown above
*
Code is not case-sensitive

Comment

*

 

We welcome comments on this article, provided they have something to contribute. Please note that all links will be created using the nofollow attribute. This is a spam free zone. HTML is stripped from comments, but BBCode is allowed.