For reasons like this...

It's for reasons like this that we should tell a ton of the people in our churches to put a cork in it.

Headline today: "Clerics Call for Christian Convert's Death Despite Western Outrage"

We need to put a cork in:

-Pastors taking heat all of the time for the stupidest things.

-Pastors having to have kid gloves when dealing with 'certain' families.

-Church members who bounce around like ping pong balls.

-Christians who are on the 'all you can eat' diet with no spiritual exercise.

-Pastors who bash other denominations from the pulpit (or stage).

-The modern/postmodern/whatsamodern? debate.

-Justification for sin.

-Ignorance of scripture.

-Lack of the understanding that it's not just your church/denomination/race that will be in heaven.

-Gossip disguised as 'discussion'.

-Attacks from Christians on blogs.

-Pretending that giving 1% of our church budget for missions is what it takes to really help 'those people over there'.

-Christians who have 1 track minds, blinders, and excess pride to boot.

-Hearing "Ohh, I don't read."

I'm sure I could go on and on... but I'm one of the people that needs to put a cork in things at times. It's so often that we get caught up in our little world. We forget that people who claim the Name of Christ (thereby becoming our brother or sister in the Lord) are being killed for the same proclamation that we so flippanlty make every day. It saddens me to think that here in the most wealthy of lands we have so many who use the name of Jesus as a platform to lift up themselves and show how smart or powerful or cool they are. To many, Jesus is nothing more than a business model. They could replace their 'relationship' with Jesus with the term 'widgets' (economics 101 term) and you wouldn't know the difference.

Friends, I'm not preaching to the choir. I'm just expressing what comes to mind for me when I see these type of headlines. The reality is for many of us we will forget about this in a week and go back to our corner offices only to use this guy as a sermon illustration. I hope it isn't so. I pray that the American church will rise up with a new awakening in the next 20 years. The power of the internet (and now proliferation of Pastors who understand the medium) will provide ways for us to bring down the walls that have kept our forefathers divided. I do see the day in our time when the "American Church" is less about our differences and more about Jesus.

I'm praying for God to spare this man but if he doesn't I pray his story helps spark a change in our American Church. It begins with me (and you).