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On this day 70 years ago Ernest Melvin Morrison (“Mel” to his family, “Ernie” to his mom) jumped out of a plane and parachuted into France, it was D-Day. 

I am proud to know my family was a part of this momentous fight. 

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We’ve all heard someone say… “I love Jesus, I just don’t love the Church”

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

John 13

This is, of course, impossible. If you don’t love the church, you don’t love Jesus, you’re not one of his disciples.

Do you attend church for yourself alone?

20 Now among those who went up to worship at the feast were some Greeks. 21 So these came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and asked him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” 22 Philip went and told Andrew; Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. 

John 12

Philip and Andrew made the introduction, they made the connection between some “outsiders” and Jesus. We need to be doing this too. Are you constantly looking for someone to bring to church, to hear about Jesus, to join your faith family in bringing glory to God? We need to be, all the time, everywhere… hand out cards, tell people what you like about your church, implore them to come, don’t give up, don’t quit… bring bring bring! 

Jesus was real. He expressed his emotions and was with people. If the people of our churches lack this quality, we’re not being the church. We have to be real, we have to be deep (expressing our inner most core)…

Jesus wept.

John 11:34

I think this is a good window into Jesus’ heart, and we should be the same way.

Millennials want three basic things in a church (at least according to Thom Rainer in this post), and I think they all come when we “get real” just as Jesus did:

• Depth – they want to be challenged to be theologically rich, and I believe this comes when we go directly to the Bible and what it actually says in stead of following the traditions of how it’s always been taught. I think the two most fertile areas in the Bible for this are in Genesis and Revelation.
• Authenticity – they want to be real. They want us to say what we believe and to mean what we say. This too, I believe, can best be illustrated in areas such as Creation and “Eschatology. “How did we get here?” and “Where are we going?” are the bookends of life, if we can’t be honest about these things, how can we be trusted with other matters?
• Quality – they want us to try. No cookie-cutter sermons, not copy-n-paste outlines, we can’t just sing the songs in the way we always have and we can’t just copy someone else whole-hog. We have to try and we have to start small. If you only have one person who can play an instrument well, then you should only have one person playing on Sunday morning. If it takes the pastor 10 hours to prepare a decent message, then he needs 15. What do your facilities look like? are they falling apart? Are they clean? This is so hard, but so important.