Green Beret Christians

Genius.

Excerpts:

For the average serious evangelical, a church is not really a church unless it is filled with Green Berets for Jesus. We hold to the notion that the true church is the home of the spirit-filled elite and the apostolic meat-eaters. And if not, look out. Ministers will be brought into such ordinary congregations to exhort the people to be like a missionary society or a para-church organization. How can they prove their commitment? They must give more than a tithe. They must daily get up at 5am and pray for an hour. They must evangelize every unbeliever at the office before the next service where they will be expected to give their testimonies of success. They must dress like Ozzie and Harriet, talk like Charlton Heston doing Moses and eat like St. Francis of Assisi.

Renewal movements are exciting, fresh and intense. But this is not the normal Christian life. So, when my particular church ceases being “on the cutting edge” of whatever it is God-is-doing-in-the-earth, I take off, looking for the next “wave” the next movement, the next spiritual rush. I want to ride the waves, not build the church.

I believe that a vast majority of serious evangelicals are addicted to the psychological highs that come with each new renewal movement: the new churches it produces, the new paradigm, the new practices, etc. There is absolutely no commitment to the church as the church because it is the church. No. We see our local church as a movement that has ceased moving us--so, it is time to move on.

Can we see the damage caused by our pride and ignorance? Meat-eaters shunning milk-drinkers; the spiritual elite leaving the “carnal” church to start their own “First Church of the Green Berets”--churches where one’s spirituality (to place the best possible light on it) is judged by the standard of one particular calling and gifting rather than his saltiness in day-to-day living.

Read the whole thing here.