Tribute to MLK

Having been in full-time ministry the past year I've come to discover the many different approaches to church there are. As a matter of fact, my head starts spinning after a while in any effort to keep up with all of them. And you can imagine how they conflict. You've got Calvinists vs Armenianists, which boils to down to key theological differences that, in the grand scheme of things, don't matter a whole lot. Then you've also got the newer debate over HOW to do church: traditionalist, contemporary, and emergent.

Then I ran across this. It put things into perspective. I confess I've never watched all of Dr. King's famous speech until now, and it is very moving. The message is simple. He had a a dream of an America without racism. That's it. He didn't get caught up in debates of how to end racism, he just made the call for whites and blacks to be treated equally (and that spills into so many other ethnicities today).

So it's spurred a thought in me that sometimes we can get so caught up in the "new thing" of church that we forget the basics. I'm convinced that it doesn't matter your presentation, as long as you speak relevantly to people today and constantly grow an authentic community for people to connect in. The presence of a band or a choir or an organ or none of the above doesn't matter if you don't have the heart of Christ beating throughout your church. It's all smoke and mirrors if you don't.

So on this day, I'd like to offer a tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. and say thank you for being an inspiration. If you never watched his speech, I would encourage you to click on the link above and watch the whole thing.