Your Thoughts

I am in the process of writing a paper about the Church. It is not intended to be something that slams the Church, but an honest look at what needs to change if we are really going to reach people in this generation. Here are a few things that I am thinking:

- The Church has become more about the building than the people.
- We have made it so that people have to be like us before they can come
instead of accepting them as who they are.
- We have forgotten the story, Christ's story and our story. In this
we have made the Bible a text that has to be memorized and known, but the
experience is gone, the emotion, the journey have been left out.
- We have made God an out there God a great God that can't be reached
instead of a personal God.
- The hope, mystery, and life have been drained out of Christ.
- We have forgotten that Christ's story was dirty. He came into a
dirty story, loved dirty people and saved the dirty. We have forgotten
that we are dirty.
- Community has gone away. People in the church are no longer open,
honest and authentic. Instead we hide behind our Bible Answers and fake
smiles and fake community.
- I think that hope, story, authenticity, vulnerability, love and service
need to be brought back into the Church.
- We need to remember that Christ loved everyone and that is something that
we forget.

Ok, so these are my thoughts, I am still figuring out where I am taking this fully, but I would like to hear your thoughts and opinions. I am not saying that anything I am saying is right or wrong, just where my thoughts are leading. What do you think? What is good about the Church today and what needs to be changed?