Don’t be Nice…

Anyone who tells you that going to church is about being nice is missing something. Not that I don’t like nice people (I really, really like nice people), however, being nice is not being Christian. It’s a step on the road to Christianity, but its really a baby-step.
Moral Therepeutic Deism or the idea that church is all about being nice is actually the watered-down, easy to swallow, what church has become thing. For more info on MTD (i.e. the niceness of church) check out Kenda Dean’s “Almost Christian” book or read her post about it. Kenda says MTD” is pasteurized Christianity—pasteurized to the point that the nutrients have been cooked right out of it.  I wonder how a church like Kingston has avoided boiling down Jesus, since it’s surely not the result of any intentional plan?  Is the congregation’s unpolished profile, that tends to discourage processed professionalism?  Or is it the leadership of student pastors who have not yet been jaded by mileage, and come with their idealism in full bloom?  Is it the uncluttered nearness of God embodied by the sheer proxemics of tiny sanctuary and a preacher who looks you in the eye?  Or is it practices that invite people to talk about being Christian in terms that aren’t borrowed from our moralistic, therapeutic culture? If you asked them, people at Kingston wouldn’t tell you that being a Christian means being nice or feeling comfortable.  They would tell you it means feeding more sheep.”

http://kendadean.com/746/advanced-mtd-an-appreciative-response-to-john-meunier/

Being Christian is life-changing. Being Christian is understanding there is a better way to be. People who become Christian do so because they feel a hole in their life, they understand that they have a sharp need to belong to something, and that God not only fills that hole but makes us belong to something bigger and better than ourselves.

We join the church because at church our efforts are increased. When you are part of a Christian community 1 plus 1 can equal 3 or 33 or sometimes even 333. Small things that you do is moreso! All of Ephesians 4 is about being a part of God’s work, it includes being nice, but that is not the message, the message is that the niceness is rooted in and the beginnings of showing God’s Love–and that what will be Accomplished will be so much more than Nice

“And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, ¹⁸ may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, ¹⁹ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge —that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

²⁰ Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, ²¹ to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.–Eph 4:17b-21

Author: katyandtheword

Pastor Katy has enjoyed ministry at New Covenant since 2010, where the church has solidified its community focus. She now works at Capital CFO plus as the Non Profit Director. All opinions expressed on this blog are her own and do not reflect those of Capital CFO plus. Prior to that she studied both Theology and Christian Formation at Princeton Theological Seminary. She also served as an Assistant Chaplain at Trenton Psychiatric Hospital and as the Christian Educational Coordinator at Bethany Presbyterian at Bloomfield, NJ. She is an writer and is published in Enfleshed, Sermonsuite, Presbyterian's today and Outlook. She writes prayers, liturgy, poems and public theology and is pursuing her doctorate in ministry in Creative Write and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. She enjoys working within and connecting to the community, is known to laugh a lot during service, and tells as many stories as possible. Pastor Katy loves reading Science Fiction and Fantasy, theater, arts and crafts, music, playing with children and sunshine, and continues to try to be as (w)holistically Christian as possible. "Publisher after publisher turned down A Wrinkle in Time," L'Engle wrote, "because it deals overtly with the problem of evil, and it was too difficult for children, and was it a children's or an adult's book, anyhow?" The next year it won the prestigious John Newbery Medal. Tolkien states in the foreword to The Lord of the Rings that he disliked allegories and that the story was not one.[66] Instead he preferred what he termed "applicability", the freedom of the reader to interpret the work in the light of his or her own life and times. View all posts by katyandtheword