I will say on this on a blog. This will then automatically connect to my Twitter and Facebook accounts. So, what I’m about to say goes against how I am going to communicate it. That’s the hypocrisy of this exercise.

This is about hype. It’s about how in the western Church we are all about what is “epic” or the “next big thing” or “cutting edge,” or some term that will bring about some emotion that gets us excited somehow… for about 38 seconds… hopefully.

That’s not the Kingdom. Toss out your understanding of “epic.” The Kingdom of God IS epic… just not your epic. It is so powerful it makes any idea of epic you may have look like a jaunt down a putt-putt golf course. It’s just that it’s not in the big words and the huge emotions and pulsating music that somehow has to be used to drive us to a frenzy that gets us to do something “extraordinary” for 38 seconds. And then we have to start the adrenaline machine again.

The Kingdom is powerful AND longlasting. It can’t possibly be sustained by doing pulsating music and low lights and fog machines and giant video screens all the time.

It is in the mundane. The unseen. The things we KNOW to do… and just don’t DO them as we should because, quite frankly, the mundane doesn’t have anyone looking at it. And we need someone looking. Someone observing. Someone affirming. Someone “cheering” us on, or at least pressing that infernal “like” button on Facebook.

But the power, that extraordinary power of the Kingdom, is not in the hype. It is in the unseen.

The prayer. The giving. The fasting. The place of spiritual formation.

Bonhoeffer put it this way, in referring to the Sermon on the Mount and Jesus warning his disciples about showing off their righteousness:

The call to be extraordinary is the great, inevitable danger of discipleship. Therefore, beware of this extraordinariness, of the way that discipleship becomes visible. Jesus calls a halt to our thoughtless, unbroken, simple joy in what is visible. He gives a sting to the extraordinary. Jesus calls us to reflection.

I should just write this post and disconnect it from an automatic update to my Facebook and Twitter. Hopefully, it might still garner some attention. But the temptation to have people READ this post is great. I’m still into hype far more than I like. The withdrawal may kill me. 😉