I was climbing a mountain with a couple of friends the other day and some how the topic of Pasteurization of our Faith came up. It was actually a play on words’ that started the whole thing. We were asking each other the question as to “ why the church today puts so much focus on the pastor?”
In the early days of the church the focus was on the Holy Spirit running the show not a pastor. So I said, that’s the PASTOR-IZATION of the church and the floodgates were opened.
I think you get my drift in terms of that topic so let’s move to the more interesting one of Pasteurization of our Faith.
Pasteurization is a process that heats things up, not to a point of boiling, but just below that level to remove some bacteria from our food. The idea is to make our food safer.
Now, in terms of our faith, maybe that’s what’s wrong with the church today? Maybe instead of boiling out all the impurities we are simply making it warm enough to get rid of the stuff you can see. We’ve gotten to a point where, to be safe, we control the level of heat in our lives so it doesn’t hurt so badly.
I think God is ready to turn up the heat and clean out all the bacteria from His church. The world see’s the impurities that we try to cover up and isn’t buying our products. (As if God is something we can sell anyway)
Maybe Pasteurization isn’t enough anymore. When you make gold you boil the heck out of the metals to bring the “Dross” to the top hence purifying the gold. In our attempt to make Christianity easier, we’ve reduced the process to Pasteurization and it’s not working anymore.
