Corporate Distortion

Why is it that when God's truth gets to the corporate level there seems to be an unavoidable distortion. Come on, have you ever met anyone who has been hurt or wounded by a church experience?

Instead of TRUTH being dynamic, fresh, and transforming, it creates a burden of conformity and becomes a tool of the community to marginalize and judge others.

Instead of serving with a pure heart, interested only in pleasing God and building His Kingdom, LEADERS end up ambitious, envious, jealous, and insecure.

When enough people gather around the truth, there seems to be a mishandling of the CORPORATE expression. Image wins over authenticity. Numbers win over depth. The law wins over grace. Empty rituals win over genuine spirituality. Personal politics wins over submitting to the Spirit's leadership.

How in Christ's Name can imperfect people preserve and model His message corporately? Probably the same way that those first simple untrained men did. Each and every one of us needs to follow Jesus. All agendas aside, just follow Jesus. All preferences suspended and surrendered to the will of Christ. Just follow Jesus and maybe, just maybe, the body of Christ will shine.

Aiko

Aiko is amazing. She is the heroine in the book, Age of the Fallen, who radiates with the character that we would all love to have. She is not a flashy, image driven leader at all. She simply loves and trusts God and will lay down her life to accomplish what she is called to do. She also loves her friends deeply, inspiring the most sacrificial loyalty from them.

And she isn't a shallow leader that has never had to face pain or failure. She has lost a sister to suicide, a brother to evil, and her parents in the spiritual war. She has truly suffered. At times she longs for a "normal" life. She is weary from the responsibility of leadership and the toll that the spiritual war has taken on her and her friends. But she will never quit.

She is genuine in her spirituality. She prays constantly and knows her sword manual inside and out because she is at war. She's not frivolous but she is warm and friendly. She is not cruel, but she is intense and driven. She is not complacent, but she plans well and then takes effective action. She is compassionate enough to weep, but not weak at all. She never flinches or backs down from a fight, ever. She is fearless and dangerous and very real.

Oh, Lord, please, raise up an Aiko for Japan. (Drawing of Aiko by Masatoshi Kawabe)