What are you done with?

A new brother in Christ that I've connected with over the internet has a worthy blog Pilgrimage of the Heart which I've started visiting. This morning I found his latest post which is an invite for people to leave comments about what they're "done with." Click on the link above, read his post, and leave a comment. My comment is reproduced below. This is a chance for you to sound off and encourage all your fellow blogothetes with a testimony of what you're "done with."

Very good idea, but I'd have to scan my own blog posts and dish up a few dozen items to put in as my comment, as my entire blog is more or less dedicated to following Jesus, and how that affects your relationship to the institutional church (your own, and others), for better or for worse.

A summary response from me could be this:

I'm done with serving my church by doing the kind of busy work associated with programs and other forms of flock maintenance, and I want only to serve the Church by doing absolutely anything that Jesus asks of me, regardless of the consequences.

An extreme statement? Not really. What Jesus asks of all of us, both in the scriptures and in His daily talks with our consciences, is only to do that which He places before us, imitating Him, doing what we see Him doing. This is both hard and easy, complicated and simple, depending on how much of ourselves we factor in.

But if we take Jesus at His word, all will be well.

Following His call and doing what we see Him doing in the world (remember, He is still the most active Person alive in the world today, as He has always been) actually preserves and protects us from the worldly powers, because they quickly learn to identify us with the Master whom they reject, and they carefully segregate us as much as they can, just like the denizens of Gadara who begged Jesus to leave their neighborhood as quickly as possible, so they wouldn't lose any more pigs.

What are YOU done with?