An increase from 7% to over 39% for your church.

The Revenue Tax Act of 1913 set a progressive tax rate of between 1 and 7 percent on all U.S. incomes.  The maximum tax rate applied to those who had an income of $500,000 was 7% of income; currently the top tax rate for that same income is 39.6%.

My point at the moment is not to argue for or against a progressive tax rate, but to point out that taxes are not apt to stay the same, and do have tendency to go up.   I doubt seriously that if in 1913 the advocates of The Revenue Tax Act had proposed a tax rate of over 1/3, the bill would have received much support.  Today, as we look at the possibility of taxes being levied against churches, I doubt there will be much support for an especially aggressive tax.  Part of what made The Revenue Tax Act of 1913 viable was that the upper rates applied to so few people.  In 1913, the average annual income was $800.  There was not going to be a popular resistance to a high tax rate of 7% for those who made $500,000.  We might see the same thing happen when it comes to taxing churches.  Proposed taxes on a very limited number of ministries, that are in popular in one way or another.  Without a ground swell of opposition the proverbial camel might get its nose in the tent.  

Three areas where we might see taxes proposed against churches are:

1) Tele-evangelist excesses

It has been a generation since the PTL scandal, but it has become part of the American consciousness.  While the facts of the PTL scandal are often obscured it has become useful fodder for those who wish to disparage the church.  In 2007, Senator Church Grassley of Iowa held hearings concerning the propriety of six ministries regarding whether their leadership was provided inappropriate benefits from the ministry.  These ministries, by and large, teach a prosperity Gospel.  While the results of the hearings were far from a blanket condemnation of these ministries, there has developed a perspective, rightly or wrongly, that the ministries are little more than moneymaking machines for their leadership.  In popular opinion many people feel that the tax exemptions given to churches and the benefits given to their leadership are unfair.  We might see that large ministries that draw large amounts of money might be a tempting target for those who want to begin taxing churches.

2) Lucrative mega churches

Most mega churches have very nice facilities.  Some sprawling campuses are jokingly called Six-Flags over Jesus.  These facilities are also often on very desirable real estate.  As such, they enjoy great visibility for guests and for those who might envy that property.   Large churches have large offerings; in some cases, a single Sunday offering might be larger than the entire annual budget for a small congregation.  Most folks who attend church in America do not attend a mega church.  We might find the proposal of a progressive tax on churches in which churches with larger offerings would be required to pay a higher tax.  This would be rationalized by arguing that larger churches require greater infrastructure and civil services such as fire and police protection.  Mega churches might be a place where advocates of taxing churches would ask that churches pay their “fair share.”

3) Gay marriage

Any legislative action to tax churches would become a great campaign topic for the next election.  Most elected officials would be very cautious about advocating taxing churches.  Any senator or congressman from the Bible belt would almost guarantee his next election defeat by voting for a tax on churches, but the untouchable court is another matter altogether. 

Here is an exchange between Justice Alito and Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr., arguing for the same-sex couples on behalf of the Obama administration.

Justice Alito: Well, in the Bob Jones case, the Court held that a college was not entitled to tax exempt status if it opposed interracial marriage or interracial dating.  So would the same apply to a 10 university or a college if it opposed same­-sex marriage?

General Verrilli:  You know, ­­I don’t think I can answer that question without knowing more specifics, but it’s certainly going to be an issue. I don’t deny that. I don’t deny that, Justice Alito.  It is –it is going to be an issue (emphasis added).

Gay marriage is not the only place where the court could revoke the tax-exempt status of the church, but, it is at the moment, a hot button.  If your church refuses to comply with federal determined standards, your church will find itself without the benefits of specific tax breaks.  Currently, there is a lot of latitude for churches, but that can change.

Next week, we are going to discuss what your church can do to strengthen its position whether church taxation occurs or not. 

The press to tax the church has begun.

What would your government do for 83 billion dollars?

  

In the movie Princess Bride, the Sicilian boss named Vizzini has an often repeated one-word line “Inconceivable”.  He keeps seeing things that he believes are beyond the realm of possibility.  He has a difficult time wrapping his mind around what is happening; it seems “Inconceivable”. 

When we talk about the church being taxed many of us, like Vizzini, are apt to say, “Inconceivable.”  Twenty years ago we might have considered it “Inconceivable”:

That the Empire State building would light up green to celebrate the end of the Muslim fast of Ramadan.

That the Supreme Court would legalize gay marriage in all 50 states.

That an Islamic gunman would kill four Marines in Chattanooga.

That a squirrel was "detained" when a woman called police to complain it was stalking her.

The likelihood of taxation of churches may not be a sure thing, but it has moved from the “inconceivable” to the “possible”.  I believe there are three key, interrelated, reasons why it is conceivable that churches will some day be taxed.

3) The ravenous appetite of government

Bonhoeffer states covetousness has an insatiable desire for more.  That is true, not just of individuals, but of governments as well.  The nature of government is to always grow larger and expand and that expansion requires money.  This is a bi-partisan appetite and currently the US debt is 104% of GDP and the US is acquiring interest at an astounding rate of $16,692 per second.   It is enlightening to visit a debt clock and watch the rate of spending by our government.  http://www.usadebtclock.com/ 

Stranger things than churches have at times been or are currently being taxed, including windows in Great Britain (not the software), playing cards (.10 cents per deck in Alabama), cow flatulence ($110 per cow per year for Danish farmers), the performance of visiting professional athletes (the Jordon tax enacted in California after the Bulls defeated the Lakers in the NBA finals), Russian bread tax, British wig powder tax, and a tax in Sweden for naming your baby a name not already in use.  In Canada, makers of children’s breakfast cereal are granted a tax exempt status if their cereals contain free toys. However, this exemption is limited to toys that are not “beer, liquor, or wine.”

Taxing churches seems a little less far fetched than some of these taxes, especially if it could produce meaningful income for the government.

2) Growing secularization

While it is hard to dispute that America was founded with and in a Christian worldview, it is also hard to dispute that the predominate worldview of most American’s is secular.  As a deist, Jefferson was far from orthodox in his faith; nevertheless, he valued highly the moral and ethical teachings of scripture, and appreciated the role of church in culture. 

Today, most people don’t care if the church shapes the ethics and the mores of our nation.  With declining commitment to Christianity in general and the local church in particular, the electorate could easily be convinced to support a tax on churches.   Most people do not have a deeply vested interest in keeping their church tax exempt because most folks do not identify as having a church home.  If the people of America were asked, “If taxing churches would reduce your personal property tax by ‘$X’, would you support taxing churches?”  My guess is that there would be a surprising support for this tax.

1) Loss of community vitality

Once upon a time the church provided almost all the social services now provided by the state.  Beyond the moral, ethical, and religious teaching of the church it was also the social safety net.  It was the source for feeding the hungry, caring for the indigent, providing health for the sick and dying.  In fact, the first international famine relief program in history didn’t happen at the government level, but in the church.  

Over the years the church has relinquished much of its ministry to the government.  The church is seen as, occasionally, providing supplemental aid to the real help of welfare, public housing and food stamps provided by the government.   What if every church in America had the selfless passion and energy that Mother Theresa expressed in India?  If the church were that engaged and involved in meeting the needs of the community then revoking her tax exemption would be ‘inconceivable’. 

The church has, in many cases, used the resources freed up by not doing community ministry to simply feather its own nest.  One advocate of taxing the church wrote:  “You just get a nicer building or a grander Christmas pageant. There's nothing wrong with that. When I was young I always enjoyed the Grace Church Christmas pageant. But this is just a kind of private entertainment (comparable to spending money on snacks for your book club—and indeed what are Bible study groups but the original book clubs?) that doesn't need an implicit subsidy.”

While it is far too early to say that taxing churches is inevitable, it is also far from inconceivable.  The church has allowed itself to be marginalized and seen as little more than a social club or private community.  In view of this it is not hard to see by some believe the time to tax the church has come.

Next week:  Where will the move to tax the churches come from?

The press to tax the church has begun

What would your government do for 83 billion dollars?

Ryan T. Cragan is a professor of sociology of religion at the University of Tampa.  Working with two-research assistants he set out to discover how much money governments are leaving on the table by not taxing churches.  Cragan is no disinterested academic; his findings were reported in Free Inquiry, a publication of the Council for Secular Humanism.   I believe that his methodology is flawed and his predictions are askew, that being said, he concluded that if churches were taxed it would produce $83,000,000,000 for governmental use.  Which brings to mind our question of the day, “What would your government do for 83 billion dollars?”

Would the government tax churches for that kind of money?  I will leave that answer up to you.

The call to tax churches has already begun.  Matt Yglesias is a Harvard graduate and a prolific writer on things philosophical and political.  He is one of a growing number of people who believe that it is time to end tax exemptions for churches.  Yglesias argues for the ending of tax exemptions because if churches were not tax exempt they would be free to express their opinions regarding the personalities in elections.  He also argues that a church’s larger and enhanced facilities will not make it more effective in soul winning.  We may disagree with Yglesias’s conclusions, but we need to be aware that he represents a growing movement to end the tax-exempt status for religious organizations in America.

I will not attempt to debunk the validity of the arguments for ending tax-exempt status.  I believe the debate over religious tax exemptions is coming fast.  This is not alarmism. Alarmism predicts a dire future and proposes a course of action, which will be effective only if that dire future comes about, but otherwise might be harmful.  Prudence is to see a possible dire future and then follow a course of action, which will be helpful whether the dire future occurs or not.   

Examples: Alarmism: The US economy will collapse so buy (from me) hard assets of gold and silver, stock pile food and ammo and hide in the mountains of Utah.
Prudence:  The US economy may collapse so payoff your debts, diversify your holdings, and build strong network of friends that can mutually help each other in difficult times.   

I will not ask you to contribute to my blog to get the ‘message out’ nor send you pleas desperate for help for a political candidate that will fight to maintain tax exemptions for churches.  What I will attempt to do is:

a.     Share the possible places where a church’s tax exempt status could be effected.

b.     Discuss why this move is even thinkable.

c.      Look at the places from which this action might be possible.

d.     Discuss how actions can be taken that will be beneficial whether tax-exempt status is lost or not.

I believe the move for the revocation of tax exempt status has already begun in small ways.  Some years ago I had a conversation with a lawyer that was representing a church in a suit against the county government.  The church had purchased an empty shopping center to use for its operations.  Just before closing, the county tried to stop the sale using eminent domain laws.  The county argued that even though they had no use for the property and were not going to buy the property, they could prevent the church from ownership because of the taxes that would be paid if a retailer purchased the property.  The county believed that gave them a compelling reason to prevent the church’s ownership of the shopping center.  Thankfully, the church won its case.

But the slow creep to tax churches occurs in other ways.  I served a church that considered a small building addition, about 2,500 square feet.  The city government was going to extract close to $100K dollars before we ever turned the first spade of dirt.  These were not building permits, but things such as purchasing trees for the city arborist, donating land for a mass transit/bus stop and building the bus stop shelter.  By the way, there was no bus service on Sundays.  Building sidewalks that went from no where to no where.  On another occasion the city levied a Fire Service Fee on all churches, assessed whether there was ever a fire or not.  Taxation has begun, but only in minor ways.

I believe there are three places where the tax burden could fall on the church.

·      First of all, churches could lose and end up paying property taxes.  According to Cragan, the removal of property tax exemption would result in an additional 26.6 billion dollars in revenue.  The last church I served as pastor had a building worth about $750,000 in a county with a tax rate of 28.5 mil.  The property tax would be annual $21,375.

·      Second, we might see a straight tax on church’s offerings.  Suppose the IRS imposed an adjusted tax rate based on your annual donations, somewhere between 10% and 39.6%, as they do for households.   The result would likely negatively effect giving as will as drain resources.

·      Third, there might be the loss of tax deductions for those giving to churches.  According to the Congressional Business Office charitable giving to all groups costs about $39 billion each year.  The CBO also states that 32% of charitable giving goes to religious organizations.  So, in theory, at least taking the tax deduction for religious giving would amount to about $12.5 billion for use by the government.

 Simply put, the status quo for churches would not survive the church loosing its tax-exempt status.  However, I believe there is a tremendous opportunity for the church in these chaotic possibilities.

Next week we will look at how we got to the place in America where the thought of taxing churches is even being considered.

Great Week, Great Lesson

There are no times like the times you can say remember the old times.

You know it is a lot of fun when most of the conversation begins with, “Do you remember when…”

This last week was a GREAT week.  It started on Sunday afternoon when a dear couple with whom we have been friends for over 30 years came for a visit. About midnight, though the stories were far from exhausted, we had to call it a night.  The next morning, we started all over again.  Finally, about noon we had to let them go; they had other vacation plans and we had to get ready for an important trip.

On Tuesday, I had a client meeting with one of my churches.  This church has a new preacher and as we discussed our strategic plan for our campaign I was impressed by the hopefulness as we talked.  Long before the campaign begins there will be a strong emphasis on developing some deep and abiding relationships.  I was thrilled as the new pastor talked about getting to know people and making friends.  True, this was the pastor’s 2^nd day on the job and there is a long way to go.  But in this circumstance this is a hope-filled beginning.

Wednesday, I spent talking to prospects for my consulting firm.  One of these prospects is a church that meets in the building where I used to minister.  I toured their building, which was built while I was there, and saw that many of the dreams and visions I had for ministry have been fulfilled in their ministry.  Memories flooded over me with every step I took.  This was a profoundly joyful and humbling moment.  

Thursday was about performing a wedding for a dear friend of many years.  When first we met, she had a nine-month-old baby on her hip and a little girl riding a tricycle around our feet.  That baby is now a high school senior and looks like a lineman for the NFL and the kid on the tricycle is a beautiful college girl.  This wedding allowed us to reconnect with other friends from that time and again we sat around and told stories and laughed at those long ago moments.

Friday was a bloody mess.  We were with our daughter and son-in-law. He is a fine country boy and it was butchering day for the chickens.  He and I took 10 chickens from the pen to the freezer and while that will not be the high point of the week, it certainly was a memory moment.    Saturday was my granddaughter’s first birthday party.  She will not remember that party at all, but it was an occasion that people related by birth, marriage, and faith came together to build memories.

Sunday we worshiped with our daughter and grandkids and her preacher, another old acquaintance, shared with me the vision of his ministry.  The speaker of the day was one of a number of younger men he is mentoring to send out to plant churches.   He meets with them for teaching, accountability, coaching and the growing of relationships.

As we drove home on Monday, I asked my wife to get out my yellow legal pad and we began writing down the specific lessons we learned from our friend’s visit the previous Sunday.  In a matter of moments, we have a legal pad full of notes on what they taught us, confirmed in us, or with which they challenged us.   I will forgo sharing these lessons; they are a bit personal.  But one common thread ran through every moment of this fantastic week.

It was nothing other than the incredible value of relationships.  I needed that lesson.  My personality is one that wants to build empires, projects, campaigns, or programs.  I want a checklist of things to do and then delight in making the check marks.  I can be very agenda driven.  But as I had conversations with people who have meant so much to me over the last 30 years we never mentioned projects.  We told stories of the events that shaped our friendships and made memories.

Today, I have a lot of things on my checklist; I was gone for a week.  But in the midst of my strategic planning for the next 6 months I want to take time to do something and build a memory with someone.  Thirty years from now it is possible that the gathering will not be a wedding, but a funeral-mine.  What I hope happens after the service is that people will sit around and eat a potluck dinner and someone will say, “Hey, do you remember when Charlie…?”  To have that moment then, I have to build the relationship now.

So, today, go do something that will build or begin to build that relationship.

The absence of a magic bullet

Magic bullet: Or, sometimes, silver bullet. 1. The perfect drug to cure disease with no danger of side effects.  The term magic bullet was first used in this sense by the German scientist Paul Ehrlich to describe antibody and later the drug Salvarsan that he created to treat syphilis. 2. In general, a magical solution to any vexing problem that one thing that will solve the problem.  The cure for what ails you or for the troubling situation that has to be over come.

The church has its fair share of supposed magic bullets.  They seem to range across all the spectrums.  Left to right, Bible-based to humanistic, enduring to faddish, sober to goofy.  Every so often, someone latches on to a new idea, or more creatively repackages and re-markets an old idea, and heralds it as the fix for what ails the church.   These packages, programing, publications or proposals hit the church market, sell like hot cakes (for a while) and then end up on the top shelf of the church’s library or the back corner of a storage closet.  But sadly, the congregation, the Church, and the world are by and large unchanged. 

At one church I served, I went through the library, storage closets and educational resource area to find a total of 43 different programs, all of which in their day were touted as having the ability to set the church on the right course.  Most came with a three ringed binder filled with outlines and A.V. materials (some were transparencies [and, yes, we still had the over head projector], others held cassettes, some VHS tapes, the newer ones had CD’s and there were even a few DVDs).  When I took time to dig all these programs out, the church was the same size it had been for the 20 years prior to my arrival-the date of one the earliest programs I dug out.   If we assume that each program with all the workbooks and other paraphilia cost about $200 those 43 programs represent nearly $9,000 with nothing to show for it. 

That does not take into account the cost in sending leaders to conferences to be trained.  There is no accounting of the human effort and labor of staff and volunteers to learn the material and then teach it to the congregation.  We can make no calculation of the hours given by the congregants to come to the church building and learn the material.  

I am not opposed to helpful resources.  Over the years I have bought and used more than a few of these; some to great affect, others were useless.  I am not opposed to Christian leaders sharing their thoughts and how to be more effective in ministry.  But let’s be honest, over the last 50 years the church in America has spent a lot of time, effort, and resources to do church better and the condition of the church is not improved.  I know of no one who believes the condition of the church in America today is strong and healthy. 

I do read, study, and try to be a more informed disciple.  I try to add new tools to my toolbox on a regular basis.  But I have given up any hope for finding a magic bullet. 

In contrast, here is what I have found.  The Lord doesn’t call us to do many things.  He calls us to do one thing-to make disciples.  It is so weird, that as I read the Great Commission and the Great Commandment in Matthew 10 and Acts, and the New Testament in general, there is a beautiful and powerful simplicity to what we are to be about.  As we go, we make disciples. 

I become frustrated with the hype and promise of the latest and the greatest programmatic answer to the problem of static and declining churches.  In my travels I see churches that have layers and layers of infrastructure and operations, but appear to lack any urgency for making disciples.    We do not need another nationally marketed program.  I’m not sure that there is a program that will solve the church’s problems.   What I do know is, if I love God more and love people the way Jesus did, I will be compelled by that love to tell them about God’s amazing grace. Then I’ll be heading in the right direction. 

Measurement tools

Clowdisley Shovell was apparently an excellent naval commander.  But you would never know it from the way his life ended. 

Admiral Shovall’s record at the end of the 17^th century sounds like a who’s who list of navel action for the British Fleet.  He began his naval career as a cabin boy and began his climb through the ranks; he also saw action in 10 major battles.  Among other heroics he distinguished himself as a naval commander at the Battle of Barfleur, by being the first captain to break through the enemies’ lines.  In addition to being an excellent navel officer, he was a benefactor to his parish church and a Member of Parliament. In 1704, he was named Rear Admiral of the fleet and in 1705 he became the Admiral of the fleet.

But Admiral Shovall is better known for his greatest disaster, rather than his stellar career.  In the summer of 1707, he lead the British fleet in an operation in the Mediterranean and pummeled the French fleet off the coast of Toulon.  In the fall of 1707, Shovall was sailing for England and home when he lead his fleet into disaster.  On November 2, in foul weather, Admiral Shovell miscalculated his position and ran his flagship, H.M.S. Association, aground on the Scilly Isles.   The Association sank in only four minutes with all hands lost.  The Scilly Isles are a collection of rocky islands off the southwest coast of England.  The fleet followed their Admiral in absolute trust.  Four ships ran aground; however, other ships in the fleet saw the danger in time to avoid their own destruction.  The proud, seafaring British Navy lost four ships and about two thousand officers and crew. Among those lost were Admiral Clowdisley Shovell and two of his step sons, whose bodies were found washed up on a beach about 7 miles from his flagship.

Now, in all fairness, the weather was very foul with storms and fog.  Additionally, at the time no one had an accurate way to measure longitude.  While the Admiral was ultimately responsible for his fleet, the loss is understandable.  It wasn’t till the development of the Seafaring Chronometer that it became possible to accurately establish longitude.  Until this device and the mathematical calculations to back it up, the best a captain could do was dead reckoning, an educated guess, that at times was based on bad information.

I have this question for you.  What measurement tools can we use to measure our success in ministry? How do we measure the growth of the spiritual communities we serve or of which we are a part?

Please do not assume that I have a grudge against larger churches, the church growth movement, or tracking attendance.  Nor do I claim that I have found the solution or have the right canon.   But if we are using the wrong measurement, we will pursue the wrong goals and we may find ourselves sailing at high speeds to our own destruction.   

Embrace rejection

I was working a part time, temporary job in which I asked people to apply for a credit card.  It was a job fraught with rejection.  I would stand outside a convenience store/gas station and approach EVERYONE to solicit him or her to apply for a credit card.  There were lots of reasons why folks rejected my offer of a credit card.  “I’m in a hurry.” “ I have bad credit.”  “ I don’t buy gas here often.”  My personal favorite, “I never use a credit card.”  To be honest, with an interest rate of 29.99% I wouldn’t want one of these cards myself.  Part of the job was rejection; lots of rejection.

After turning down my offer, one patron asked me, “How is it going today?  Getting many takers?”   I answered, “This is a great job if you need to learn how to handle rejection.”  For every 20 people I approached with this stellar offer, 19 would say no.  Most were polite, some engaging and conversational and more than a few were rude.  I also spent a lot of time with nothing to do but watch the shadow creep across the concrete.  But it gave me time to think, especially about the value of rejection.

Ours is a society with a growing sense of self-importance.  It is the age of pride, convinced of how important we are, in which the prime value is self-esteem.  Rejection is, therefore, especially hard to accept.  The greater our pride the greater our offense when we are rejected.

In a culture driven by consumerism and advertising, we are taught to do everything possible to avoid rejection; everything from buying mouthwash to having the ‘right’ clothes or cars or address.  To be rejected, to be the outsider, to not be included may be the worst fate we can possibly experience.   Parent to teenager, “If all your friends jumped off a cliff would you?”  Honest teenager, “YES.”  And in a sense we are a society of teenagers.

Wherever this pattern spreads the implications are bad.  We could talk for days about what it means in politics, respect for police officers, or sexual morays.  But when this creeps into the church, it can have eternally negative implications.   It appears that the church has become so afraid of rejection that we are beginning to act like an early adolescent obsessing in from of a mirror wondering what others think of us. Unless you have been living in a parallel universe, you cannot help but notice that we are living in a media craze about deviant sexuality.   From the first NBA player to come out, to the first openly gay football player to be drafted into the NFL, to the radical mutilation of a formerly Olympic athlete there is an explosion of sexually driven drama.  In the midst of this whirlwind of noise and pseudo news, the message I hear from the conservative church, not exclusively, but dramatically, is one of fear of rejection by culture at large and concern about image.

For those of you who have not unsubscribed from the blog on that last paragraph (I can embrace that rejection) let’s step away from that powder keg and look at a couple of areas where we might live in the tyranny of fear of rejection.  Using these examples we might find a template for a better approach. 

Worship:

No one is in favor of boring, monotonous worship.  But shaping our worship based on opinion polls to avoid being rejected or to shape our worship to suit people tends to shift the focus and object of worship.  How many times have the worship wars begun when someone says, “I want” this or that kind of music.  It can be traditional or contemporary; the same narcissistic spirit drives them both.  And we feed that spirit by trying to avoid rejection from either a segment in the church or the world.  We try to please as many as possible with our compromises and politically arrived at decisions. 

I understand that the forms of worship must have a cultural aspect.  What is dynamic, effective worship in an outlaw church in China will not be the same for a gathering of believers under an Acacia tree in Kenya.  I am not proposing that there is one form by which we all must worship.   But one story may illustrate the struggle.  I visited one church and when I was handed a bulletin I was offered earplugs.  I must have had a quizzical look on my face because the greeter volunteered, “We like our music loud.” The ownership statements in their reply told me more than they might have expected. 

It is time for us to embrace the rejection that comes when we refuse to make the worship, and especially the music, simply another choice to please me.  Is it time for us to tell demanding individuals, “You didn’t like something in worship?  GOOD!  Worship is not about you or for you.”?

Teaching:

I am not in favor of picking fights.  The methodology of the Westboro Baptist Church is clearly deeply flawed, if not demonically guided.  We will not develop the right to be heard by the lost world by yelling at them that they are lost.  But in our world today the anthem of compromise is sung loud and by a large choir.  We are advised that the prime virtue is tolerance and/or acceptance.  I do not know any preacher or Bible teacher that publicly advocates compromise or says, “I’ll gladly change my core convictions in order to be popular.”   I do know preachers that categorically refuse to address certain Biblical themes for those same reasons.  If pressed on the issues, these preachers would say they believed the teachings of scriptures, but because of past rejection these Biblical subjects have become a taboo they will not address.  A conviction that is held in the heart, but is not taught and lived is not much of a conviction. 

It is time we embrace the rejection that comes when we lovingly address the difficult statements of scripture.    

As I wrote this, I kept coming up with other areas where the cultural fear of rejection has impacted the church.  Given its head this list would be endless.  I would end up railing against all of my pet peeves and frustrations.  So, I will reframe from opening up the cans of worms associated with discipleship, evangelism, church discipline, etc. and ask you to look at your own life and ministry and reflect on where you need to embrace rejection. 

The better approach:

This better way is found as a lonely individual walks away from the seat of power on a lonely and deeply rejected path.   In the ancient Roman world, when a man carried his cross he usually did so alone.  There would, of course, be spectators, by standers, the accompanying guards, accusers, curiosity seekers, and even sympathizers.  In the case of Jesus, there was even a commandeered, temporary slave.  But, ultimately, the cross is for one alone, one rejected.  When we are told to take up our cross, we are told to embrace rejection.