Passionate following

So, as have many of my fellow native New Orleaninas, I've been living on cloud 9 this year. The Saints' best season ever, yes I'm in day 10 of wearing black and gold and plan on carrying it right through next Sunday. I bought plane tickets months ago to be in New Orleans with the rest of the who dats should the Saints make it to the big dance. They did it, but to the who dat nation, we did it. We've traveled through seasons of adversity, devastation to our city, and kept on cheering and this love affair between our city, we the fans and our team. Sure the media is beginning to pick up on this a little bit now, but the diehard love for this team is not new because they're in the super bowl, its been a life long love for most of us. Wearing black & gold to a game was never an option, more like how much can you wear at one time. I think my sister and I would both list Saints 1st play-off game tickets as one of the best Christmas presents ever. So yes, we're part of a passionate following and we're thrilled to watch our boys fly off to Miami and will be among the thousands waiting to welcome them home. Our call sign "Who Dat?" even becoming subject of threatened law suit - and the fans rally and fight for our identity - true signs of a group of passionate followers.

As I think about passionate following, I also think of our call as Christians, to passionately follow Christ. That's what His call was to the disciples, drop everything and follow me. I believe God created us to need one another, to get energy from others that are passionately following Him and then that passion would attract other people. Isn't this what the church is supposed to be? A group of people bonded together by our passionate need to follow God?

I think about my life today, my co-workers will quickly tell you I'm a Saints fan, kind of hard not to if you see the signage in my office. Could they say the same of my following of Christ? I think they know I do church, but don't have the confidence that my allegiance to Christ is as apparent as to my football team. I'm not ashamed of my following of the team, but do contemplate how to match my outward passion for God without being obnoxious...

Back to the being called to be among people. As I've been a part of several churches over the last 15 years since leaving home and searching for a church home on my own, I can identify the times when I am connected with people who desire to know God more as the most fulfilling and challenging (in a good way) times of my faith journey. My current group is a great group of deeper thinkers. As I think about the corporate church with we worship, I find that I am not completely in agreement with some leadership choices, yet I'm tied to this small group of great people who really want to dig deeper and know what God is saying to us while sharing life with one anther. Our current path is to investigate what the Bible says about leaders in a church. We were most recently challenged to look at ourselves and see if we're doing the things that God calls leaders to do. Even if we're not currently serving as leaders its important for us to be doing the same things we expect of our leaders as far as spiritual disciplines and such are concerned. I've been reading the cost of discipleship off and on for the last year or so. So this discussion has prompted me to pick this back up. Yet another couple of calls to passionate following and really thinking about how my actions affect the spiritual journey of others.

After having been a part of a house church that had leaders that had been through seminary, but were also doing other things, I've given much thought over the last 8 years to the role of professional ministers, the need for complex church, is pure exegetical scripture reading enough or is there legitimate value in commentaries and books interpreting scriptures. As I've read Acts 2, it seems to describe people gathering and worshiping God while taking care of one another is church. Yet, when I tried to host a such church on top of work, school, etc I was exhausted. In the last year I've simply attended worship and been part of a small group. My service has been in the form of bringing snacks to group occasionally or helping to staff special events and I find myself not feeling fulfilled. So where's the balance between exhaustion and needing to serve more?

I was talking to a new friend yesterday who has been church hunting for years, he articulated the challenge in finding a church in a way I had never heard before yet it resounded with me. Its so hard to find the balance of the intellectual and emotional. Some denominations and mega churches seem to play on the emotional and in some cases take church to the point of being an exercise in entertainment, yet other denominations are all about the letter of the law and in some cases making up more rules because there weren't enough already in the Bible. Still other denominations make things very complicated. There's the range of pastors with little to no formal training to Bible College degrees to PhD Seminarians. In this discussion the thought of relying solely on personal interpretation of scripture to using books on the subject came up. In support of a blend, he suggested why wouldn't we read books on scripture to gain further understanding when we do the same for political documents like the Constitution? This made me think a little more on the subject - in deed if by talking about scripture helps us to ask questions, gain perspective, defend our beliefs, then why not use the books to do the same - introduce new ideas to contrast with that of our own - introduce a 3rd party to our conversations or give us another perspective to think about in our individual times. I immediately thought of the Brian McLaren "New Kind of Christian" trilogy I read early on in my simple church journey. I didn't completely agree with everything presented in the books, but boy did they spur some great conversations among our church. My current group is looking at 2 Blackaby studies for our times together over the next few months. I think they can offer the same, I just hope to keep in perspective that just because we read it in black and white, it doesn't mean we can't challenge the thoughts presented and talk through them just as we would if they were presented by another group member. For now I think that's my greatest challenge when using books written about scripture is the tendancy to take written words as truth rather than another opinion. I think the nice balance of intellectual and emotional for me would be a church with a pastor who breaks down scripture based on his study of the word and its application to life, a dynamic spirit-filled musicial worship experience, and a small group that digs down into the word, discusses it, and "takes care" of one another - yet not being focused on the programming or production of it all. Does it exist?

So, this has turned into quite the long post, so back to the concept of passionate following. I hope to renew my desire to read things related to God and scripture with the same fervor, I've read updates on the Saints. As a church, I hope we can come to a point of passionately defending our identity as Christians and defend our right to talk to God, share our love for Him with the same passion that we Who Dats are defending "Who Dat?"