The World is Watching – Every day life as a Christian

The world watches our Christian witness; they watch first and listen later. Many times my walk fails to live up to my talk.

I manage properties and some of our clients and tenants are Christian organizations. I become sensitive to the implication of my witness or walk (I should be), and the witness of Christian organizations, realizing I deal with Christian and non-Christians alike on a daily basis. I am starting to see a disturbing trend in our dealing with Christian organizations. This point has also been brought to my attention by the non-Christian participants in our encounters with our Christian tenants.

Some examples: This week we had a scheduled meeting with the head of a Christian organization; it was scheduled to begin at 11:30 a.m. Four people were present at 11:30, agenda in place and the leader of the Christian organization was 30 minutes late. He waltzed in with no apology, conducted himself arrogantly. He is demeaning to most that come into his presence. After the meeting, one of the non-Christian participants said to me, “Jerry, I know that you are a Christian, but this guy is a pure dink.” It’s so easy to see the flaws of others yet he was right in his observation.

This week the cleaning supervisor of a property came to us to show us boxes of note pads that had been thrown in the trash, In good conscience, this Christian cleaning supervisor could not throw them in the trash but brought boxes of them to us. We wondered why they were being thrown away. We investigated and realized they were bonded wrong. The front of the note pads had the organization logo on each page but the bonding was upside down thus the pads were “wrong side up”. These note pads could have been used just by pulling off the piece of paper and turning it over or simply removing the cardboard, but they saw fit to throw them all away. What a waste of material and dollars.

As a Christian dealing with Christian organizations, guess what, I’m not impressed. How sad; we are sending the wrong message. We come off as arrogant and wasteful and according to some of my employees, the Christians are demanding and demeaning (this according to my immigrant cleaning crew and office support staff).

The good news is this—God is cleaning house. One Christian organization went broke at the end of the year; they could not generate additional funding. This organization had $750 chairs around their conference room table. Thirteen of these at $750 a piece, $10,750 worth of chairs used at best five times a week. They are out of business and in my opinion, it is good. God himself will rise up people to do their work. He already has and they will not drive $40,000 SUV’s or sit in $750 chairs.

I wonder if we as American Christians realize the joyride is over. Our character flaws or our sin, is becoming very obvious to the world, mine included. God has begun His refining process. The church may be struggling, stumbling over itself, but remember God’s plans are never thwarted.

God has issued us armor (Ephesians 6). God tells us to “put it on” which implies a battle is coming; as a matter of fact, the battle is here now and we are sitting in our $750 chairs showing up late for meetings with no apology, riding in our $40,000 SUV’s while a nation goes to hell in our very presence. What is the trend I see? We are isolated, self-righteous with a distant witness of our faith. God has and will rise up faithful people; His true church will prevail and assault the gates of hell.

American church, we will answer for our snitty, demanding, demeaning attitude. As God judges the American church, we cannot see ourselves naked and hungry. We may if God doesn’t withhold His wrath.

Forgive me Heavenly Father, for I have sinned. O Lord, help us witness this day. Amen.