Email: "MINISTER’S MUSING Pastor Wade Ditty, Salem Church Lincoln, Iowa"
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Many of our churches have gone through the process of confirmation just within the last couple of months. Countless number of kids who go through confirmation, hardly ever come back to church after it’s over. We ask. Why? It could be for many reasons - mostly we blame the parents. If the parents don’t attend church on a regular basis, can we expect to see their teenagers in church? Some say it’s a sign of the time. Maybe they’re right. There are massive number of people in our society who profess to be Christian but never go to church. Too much of modern day Christianity has an individualistic tone to it. You hear things like, “Are you saved?” Have you accepted Jesus? The church doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is Jesus. These kinds of thoughts could lead someone to discover the divine presence in their lives, but too often it presents Jesus as an individual entity—-there for my individual needs. I turn to Jesus to uplift my spirit, you hear people say, to comfort me, to make me feel good, to give me strength. All that can be wonderful but does it ever turn away and focus on something other than me. Go into any Christian bookstore. Ninety percent of the books are based on making your life better. Can there be any better theme? Read one of these books and it may help you tremendously, but they ask the question, how can I be better, stronger, more at peace? Again never taking one’s eyes off one’s self. Christianity is less about building yourself up and more about building up the body of Christ—-the Holy Church. It seems to be a theme forgotten in much of modern day Christianity. Look at the humble beginnings of the Christian Church in the closing chapters of the Gospels and the Book of Acts. Did these men sit around reading the latest Christian self-help book? Did they beg and plead with God to make them feel good, to comfort them in their down times, to help them feel at peace? These people had one thing on their mind ..to build up the body of Christ to make the church the best it could be. No emphasis was on me, it was on us. They forget themselves, and remembered others. It worked. The first four hundred years the Holy Christian Church grew by leaps and bounds. It’s when the church got old enough, cranky enough, complaining enough, it’s growth rate slowed down significantly The Christian Church has lost members and influence beginning in the twentieth century. Shelves of books have been written on how to reverse this trend. One of the books suggested to have a church like a shopping mall with many different options. That’ll fit in perfect with in a consumer driven society. Another suggestion is to remember people’s felt needs. Focus on giving people what they want and they will flock to your church. To me that’s more of just getting people to center in on the one thing that’s easy: oneself. When people are looking for a church, they ask, “What can this church do for me?” Does it have what I need? Never is there any question like, will it help me to be a better person or will it help me to serve God and other people better? What can I get out of this? Not what can I give to this? The truth is all of us in the church are guilty of having this mentality in one way or another sometimes. Remember the words of JFK, “Think not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” Too much of the church is filled with whining, the church did this, or didn’t do that. Finding fault with the pastor, the choir director, the secretary, is too common in many churches. We need to take the words of JFK and bring them right into church. Think not what your church can do for you but what you can do for your church. Wade Ditty, pastor Salem Church of Lincoln

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