April 28, 2006
It's Not All About You...
The current mantra in the church is ‘It’s not all about you’. If you question one of the leaders about the direction the church is going, or ask them about more balance in the worship service, you’ll hear ‘It’s not all about you’. What a great conversation stopper! There’s nothing you can say in response, it’s like a train derailment. I find this catchy phrase has guilted older members of the congregation into saying, “I really don’t like all the loud music and the drums, but ‘It’s not all about me’. OK, OK I get it…it’s not all about me, but can anyone please tell me who it is about?
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Gail;
OK, dear, now you did it! This one doesn't just get my goat, it flat runs over my goat like a freight train. There is little that raises the hackles on the back of my neck more than this little gem of deceit.
Who did Jesus die for? Of course He died for you! He died for me, too. If you are so unimportant to the contemporary church leaders that, in their estimation, it is not at all about you, then what does that say about Jesus's ability to estimate values? He laid His life down for nothing if it is not about you - He foolishly chose to die for you, about whom it was not! But He did not die for you foolishly. This simple observation should open our eyes to three major errors in the "it's not about you" mantra:
1) The contemporary leader, whether knowingly or unknowingly, expressly denies the teaching of Jesus that the one who would be most must become least. He taught His disciples that to lead is to serve. And if the contemporary leader attempts to beg out on the grounds that He calls us to serve Him, not you, then that leader crashes headlong into Matthew 25:34-46. Jesus basically told us in this passage that if we want to do something for Him, then we must do that thing for His child. (That would be you.) If we want to be righteous for Him, we must treat you with righteousness; if we want to be kind to Him, we must treat you with kindness; if we want to please Him, we must please you. Jesus's beloved disciple, John, whom I always considered an expert on love, wrote his first letter about love, and it totally concurs with Jesus's points. And Paul, who personally spent time in the seventh heaven, came back from there writing in the Spirit not only that we should look to each others interests (Phili 2:4), but that we should even please each other (Rom 15:2)! You, of course, are "other" to me! Biblically, these contemporary leaders speak, "It's not about you," in direct opposition to the Word of God, because for me, God Himself made it all about you, and to the church leaders He made it even more about you because He gave them the higher responsibility of teaching the scriptural fact that it is about you to all of us! Whoops!!!
2) The contemporary leaders' implication that the worship service is directed entirely toward God alone, unencumbered by any needs or desires of yours, melts like a dirty snowball by a warm fire when exposed to the simple light of the Word. Paul made it easily apparent in I Cor 11:29 that attention to those around us is riquired when we gather as a body. Again he addressed the issue of corporate worship in I Cor 14, revealing by the Spirit, that corporate gathering is about more than individually "connecting up with God" in a crowd of a bunch of others doing the same: it is about edifying one another, building one another up, prophecying, teaching, instructiing, and doing corporate worship not only with order, but also with decency. He also intimated to the Ephesians that the hymns, psalms, and spiritual songs that we sing, we sing not only to God, but also to each other. We are major important to each other! That is why Hebrews calls us not to forsake gathering together. Therefore it is about you.
3) Jesus said that you can tell the tree by the fruit it bears. You can also tell this tree, "it is not about you", by the logisitcs that are the fruit which it bears. God loves us all, and He loves all of our expressions towards Him. He loves the songs twanged out in far eastern sounds, He loves the European sounds, the African sounds, the Inuit sounds, the Australian sounds, the Hispanic one-two-one-two must be delightful to Him! He loves the hymns and He loves the contemporary rock, because they are all expression of His children being made to Him in sounds that also move the child. He loves the meaning that the heart puts into the hand clapping and foot dancing of contemporary celebration, the meaning that the heart puts into the reverence of the calming organ in quite before the worship service, and the meaning the heart puts into the ritual of highly scripted liturgies, because the child is putting meaning there for Him to find. And He does find it. God Himself has not come down and written for us our songs to sing, nor crafted for us our communion tables, pews, podiums, or music stands. He has not dubbed it an auditorium or a sanctuary. Only we do that. Some of us the one, others of us the other, but still, it is only us. So when the contemporary leader speaks, "Don't come here with your desires, it is not about you," the only other desires left for it to be about is theirs. Paul calls that selfish ambition, vein conceit, and insisting upon your own ways.
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