Char-Gar
07-10-2022, 12:51 PM
A Short Treatise On The Main Thing
Our society and the world around us seems to be in chaos. We have enemies lurking abroad waiting to pounce. At home we have division, hate, animas and violence. There are shootings, stabbings and a fellow was also beaten to death with a traffic cone. Our leaders are corrupt and incompetent. Our nation is adrift without either sail or rudder.
What to do! What to do! Do we need more laws, more social workers, and more police, less police, another political ideology or what? What to do! What to do. We are being whipsawed back and forth by people telling us how to resolve the chaos around us. Who do we listen to? Where do we find our rudder and sail?
Pondering this, I am taken back in time to a couple of inflection points in my life. In 1972, while still in seminary, I worked as on staff at First United Methodist Church in Lexington Ky as Minister of Young Adult Ministries. Our senior pastor was about ten years older than I and a graduate of a “liberal seminary”. One day in a conversation with him about theory and approach to local church ministry, he told me he started as a social justice warrior, wanting the church to right the wrongs in our society.
After some years of abject failure, he asked himself why had he failed so badly. For the answer, he went back in his life, before seminary to his raising in a small church in rural Kentucky. He told me it was then he realized, he was trying to get unsaved people to act in saved ways. That just would not work. That personal epiphany shaped the rest of his ministry.
Fifteen years later, I was listening to the Episcopal Address to the New Mexico Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. I have listened to many such Episcopal addresses over the year and most were not noteworthy, but this one was. The Bishop told us that the “Main thing was to make certain that Main Thing was the Main Thing”. In other word, the church’s number one priority had to remain it’s number one priority. We should not wander in the weeds, but stay resolutely on the known path.
The Main Thing was bringing people into a personal relationship with Jesus, then nurturing and teaching them what that means and helping them to become not just believers but disciples. Disciples are folks that live their faith.
I could not and cannot change American or world society. But, I can make certain that the Main Thing, remains the Main Thing.
Edward Mote was born in London in the year 1797. He parents ran a Pub and he was left to raise himself on the streets. “So ignorant was I, that I didn’t even know there was a God.” He went on to write a hymn that is a Christian classic.
“On Christ the solid rock I stand. All other ground is sinking sand”
Our society and the world around us seems to be in chaos. We have enemies lurking abroad waiting to pounce. At home we have division, hate, animas and violence. There are shootings, stabbings and a fellow was also beaten to death with a traffic cone. Our leaders are corrupt and incompetent. Our nation is adrift without either sail or rudder.
What to do! What to do! Do we need more laws, more social workers, and more police, less police, another political ideology or what? What to do! What to do. We are being whipsawed back and forth by people telling us how to resolve the chaos around us. Who do we listen to? Where do we find our rudder and sail?
Pondering this, I am taken back in time to a couple of inflection points in my life. In 1972, while still in seminary, I worked as on staff at First United Methodist Church in Lexington Ky as Minister of Young Adult Ministries. Our senior pastor was about ten years older than I and a graduate of a “liberal seminary”. One day in a conversation with him about theory and approach to local church ministry, he told me he started as a social justice warrior, wanting the church to right the wrongs in our society.
After some years of abject failure, he asked himself why had he failed so badly. For the answer, he went back in his life, before seminary to his raising in a small church in rural Kentucky. He told me it was then he realized, he was trying to get unsaved people to act in saved ways. That just would not work. That personal epiphany shaped the rest of his ministry.
Fifteen years later, I was listening to the Episcopal Address to the New Mexico Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. I have listened to many such Episcopal addresses over the year and most were not noteworthy, but this one was. The Bishop told us that the “Main thing was to make certain that Main Thing was the Main Thing”. In other word, the church’s number one priority had to remain it’s number one priority. We should not wander in the weeds, but stay resolutely on the known path.
The Main Thing was bringing people into a personal relationship with Jesus, then nurturing and teaching them what that means and helping them to become not just believers but disciples. Disciples are folks that live their faith.
I could not and cannot change American or world society. But, I can make certain that the Main Thing, remains the Main Thing.
Edward Mote was born in London in the year 1797. He parents ran a Pub and he was left to raise himself on the streets. “So ignorant was I, that I didn’t even know there was a God.” He went on to write a hymn that is a Christian classic.
“On Christ the solid rock I stand. All other ground is sinking sand”