Mine's Bigger

In a land where bigger is better, social acceptance supposedly rests on the amount of cool stuff you have. Or at least that is what advertisers want you to think. "Buy this colone and chicks will flock to you!" "Don't be caught dead in anything other than our jeans!" "Nothing beats a Lexus!"

Adding to the need for acceptance, they also play to our need to lord ourselves. Driving by the local Wendy's yesterday, I noticed their sign read, "Customize your burger!" Another burger joint consistantly says, "Your way right away!". I remember the day when you went into McDonalds and you were shocked if the burger you ordered wasn't sitting behind the clerk in it's nice styrofoam box, waiting. It wasn't your way right away then. Oh how times have changed.

We have moved to dangerous places in how our culture/society sees stuff. We have changed how we see our personal space. We have become self absorbed people who live to get our ways in everything we do. We use our ipods to listen to our music. We use DVRs to have exactly what we want to watch when we want to watch it. We customize our food. We buy bigger and better because that is what we are supposed to do as Americans.

Unfortunately, that ideal has infiltrated the church. In the last 40 years we have created customized ministry for music, youth, children, singles, senior citizens. We customize our worship to fit people groups and help them feel like they are "getting something" out of the service. We created multiple service times to service as many as we could on their time. I could go on.

We as the body of Christ need to check ourselves and make sure we are kingdom shaped and not world shaped. We need to make sure we are living for others--outwardly or externally focused, rather than for ourselves, inwardly or internally focused. How we live, breath, act, spend money, etc. as individuals and as the church needs to be checked by those marks.