Fast Food Jesus

         Imagine your going out to eat after church on Sunday and you decide to try BurgerPrince instead of your usual pick of Cindy's. Now imagine going into the restaurant and ordering your food and the cashier handing you a spatula, apron, and a burger patty and pointing you towards the kitchen. That would probably be the last time you went to that restaurant. Why? Because we like to be served, we enjoy being waited on, it's human nature. That's why we don't mind paying extra for big screen TV's, country clubs, first class airplane seating, luxury cars, and lawn motors that mow your lawn for you(don't believe me, check out http://www.robotlawnmower.ca/). Let's be honest, we like to be served and treated like kings and queens. Whole marketing campaigns and business organizations are built on that one fact. We know what we want and we want it fast.

           It can be scary when you see this attitude transferred to the church. I can't tell you how many times I have heard someone complaining about the sermon, the music, the media clip, the technical difficulties, what he said, what she said, etc. But I can count on my fingers (probably only on one hand) how many times someone has come to me and asked how can they serve in church. Jesus made it very clear that following him was not going to be a trivial pursuit. In fact, Jesus said "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me."(Luke 9:23) Being a Christian was never promised to be easy. We're here to bring people to God and to serve each other. Problems within churches would decrease drastically if we would switch our mindset from how can I be served to how can I serve. You know God put us here to be sponges of sermons, teaching, and love. However, sponges were never meant to retain everything that they take in. We were never meant to keep this to ourselves. We are supposed to give it out. We love because Christ loves us. We forgive because Christ forgave us. We serve others because Christ came to us as a suffering servant. If we continue to have an attitude of how can I be served each Sunday, then we will continually leave unsatisfied. What is the church? It is a body of believers who display uncanny amounts of love due to their unity in Christ. Anything short of that is a distortion of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Don't be a fast food Christian. Get in the kitchen and serve.