Building Empires

 Elitist corporatism over intimate family.


Programs over transformations. 


Budgets over people.   


Codependency over freedom.  


The western church has lost its way.  Having adopted a decidedly Americanized style of either stoic pageantry or contemporary pizzaz at the expense of substance, it more closely resembles a board meeting, or alternatively, a rock concert (depending on your particular denominational flavor) than an organic, vibrant community of faith.  The Gospel mission of spreading the Good News of Christ’s total victory over misery, death, and every false sense of separation has been abandoned for a seemingly more lucrative counterfeit that makes one dependent on the institution and its administrations to access the fullness of God.  It’s no longer about the Kingdom…but building personal empires.  Large, complex, self-important, and mostly ineffective, empires.  


Transforming people’s lives as they discover who they really are (and Whose they really are), while still given a measure of lip-service, has taken a back seat to building funds, membership drives, endless evangelism campaigns, and not an insignificant number of events that draw the eyes of local political and cultural ‘movers and shakers’.  


Saints, we were called to a Kingdom, not an empire.  Whereas an empire is built by using brute force to conquer and dominate for the benefit of the one atop the power pyramid, the Kingdom expands through love, peace, joy, and service to others.  Empires emphasize self-aggrandizement.  But the Kingdom centers on the diminishment of self in favor of an ever-increasing awareness of Christ.  


So what then are we to do?  


As the title of this series lays out plainly, the ekklesia is indeed changing!  A much-needed course correction is now dawning which will realign the focus back towards Christ’s inclusive Kingdom and away from empiric elitism.  How famous you made your own name won’t matter, but rather the extent to which the life of the indwelling Christ could be seen emanating from you.  People will not walk away from you believing they’ve just been in the presence of a great man, but rather a man carrying a Great Presence.  


Empires are about what you’ve done for God.


The Kingdom is about what He has done for everyone. 




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