.Dear Beautiful Bride.

I see you, beautiful Bride - yes you - the Church - the one who is preparing for her Groom to return and sweep her off of her feet and into eternal bliss. I see you. I hear the whispers and the shouts about how you are getting it all wrong, doing it all wrong, being it all wrong. I have been guilty of adding my voice to those, because you see I encountered you in a place I never expected you, and you left me breathless with your beauty. I stared at you on a Sunday morning in a tin shack in the slums - the garbage dump - of Ethiopia. You radiated beauty, so vibrant that it was blinding, and you looked so out of place in that ugly mess. Yet you looked more at home there than I had ever seen you here. Your love was overflowing, and I was captivated by it and drawn into your warmth. I swayed with your music as your lips sang out praises. You looked different in Africa. You made me hungry for more of you. You made me hungry for more of Jesus, because of you.

I came home, and I didn't know what to do with you anymore, because my face burned in shame realizing what I had been missing - because of me. I wasn't sure how to live - how to be. I missed the you in Africa, and I tried to find the Africa you here. I tried to manufacture it, but that kind of beauty cannot be replaced or cheapened with imitation. It is not possible, and I learned that. I laid in bed at night, and I cried for you. I was striving to fix the part of me that was staining you. But in that striving, I was missing the beautiful you that is here.

The Church is here in North America and there in Africa and there in Asia; she is large and beautiful and spills over borders. She is who Jesus died for, and the one He is coming back for. She is loved and prioritized by her Groom. She should be honored and cherished. I realize this. So I started noticing you - really noticing you. And while everything is not perfect, nor will it ever be. While there are things that need repair; He is using the imperfect and the weak to showcase His perfection. And that makes you so beautiful. The Church will never fulfill us completely - it is not meant to - because it is not Jesus. So she will always leave us hungry for more of Him. But if we can look and really see what she is doing, and what she is capable of, we would be so excited to be a part of her.

I see you Beautiful Bride as you bend your knee to the homeless in your community, bringing coats and blankets and McDonald gift cards. I see you stepping out in faith, crossing the Jordan, and entering the hurts of your city in big, risky ways. I see your arms spread wide for the outcasts - the ones that walk into your buildings dressed a little differently than you. Community and relationships are your heartbeat, and I see you embrace sisters and brothers and turn your open hands toward future sisters and brothers. I see your weary, tired Pastors cry tears for you, and the love for Jesus and His bride that pushes him through the exhaustion. I see Pastor's families sacrifice time for you. I see you inviting neighbors to your table, and I see you breaking bread with the stranger.

I see the Kingdom being built, and the body rising up to action. I see the way warming the pews doesn't jive with you, so you push to do more and open up margins in your life to spill out into the lives around you. I'm amazed by you. God is alive and working, and you, the beautiful Bride, are His vehicle. He is using you in cities, in orphan care, in missions, in rec. centers, in hospitals, in broken homes, in back allies, in family reunification, in schools, in nurseries, in the lives of pregnant teenagers and CEO's, in coffee shops, in slums, in social justice, in after school programs, in your poor neighborhoods and so much more. The Church is building the Kingdom brick by brick, little by little, proclaiming the gospel of Jesus in little and big ways. Things are happening. The Spirit is moving.

You are a living, breathing, beautiful Bride. There have been shifts in the Body, and you are enduring a lot of gossip, but you are still needed. I am still dreaming with you. This is our only spot in history. This is the only chance we get to do what we are called to do for such a time as this. Let's look and see the Bride, for who she is, and what she is meant to be, and watch as God uses her to transform lives through Jesus.

I see you Beautiful Bride, standing there with your arms flung open with grace, your pulse beating with love and mercy, and I know that God still has much in store for you - for us - for the Church. I am anticipating watching the Redeemer continue to redeem, watching Him call out people from all nations while understanding that He chooses to do this through us - His imperfect, yet beautiful, Bride.

I see you beautiful Bride. I am a part of you. We are the body, and I am desperate for the pieces of you that fill in the missing pieces of me. I am passionate about you, and I am celebrating you. I have not given up on you Church, and neither has He.

.Reclaiming the Bride.

I first noticed it and began to understand it when we arrived home from our first trip to Ethiopia in January of 2011. I had been to a culture that wasn't driven by it, and it opened my eyes to my culture which is. Consumerism. We live in a country who is consumed with consuming. It has infiltrated our homes, our churches, our hearts, our lives - and our souls. Everything around us is positioned to help our wants, lusts, and desires to be met and to be met quickly before the next desire surfaces. We grasp for more and better and bigger, and we consume until we are bloated, lethargic shells of what we were created to be. Because it is all futile, fake, and fleeting, and it is never, ever enough. We can point fingers and say it is the world and those without Jesus who have fallen victim, but I dare say that the Church - the Bride - has swallowed consumerism hook, line, and sinker. I will go as far to even say we have amplified it. We cater to the needs of the saved rather then pouring our lives into making disciples. We are afraid to rock the boat - afraid to disgruntle that person who puts a fat check in the plate each Sunday. We grasp for bigger churches, better programs, flashier music, fuller offering plates, brighter billboards and advertisements that have so little to do with Jesus, and in return we exchange our souls for consumerism rather than the abundant life we were promised. Abundant life and consumerism cannot coexist. We sit on our bottoms on plush pews and complain about "not being fed" and "the contemporary music" or "the outdated hymns" and "the teenager worshiping in ripped jeans". We desire comfort and for it to be done "our way" to "our preference", and all the while the world around is dieing to know our Jesus and to know that His followers really are different.

But are we?

Are we really different? Are we really disciples of Jesus? If we attract people to our churches using consumerism, then the only way to keep them there is with consumerism. Or else they will just move on to the church down the road that will meet their needs and desires, and the nasty cycle spirals out of control. I look at the life of Jesus and study His Good News, and this consumerism that we have become enchanted with, is not found there. It is actually antithetical to the invitation that Jesus gives us to follow Him and to spread the news of His Kingdom and His Good News. It is antithetical to Jesus' Gospel. This consumerism is contrary to the teachings of Jesus, the One who beckoned us to deny ourselves and lose our lives in order to find them.

It seems to me in getting sucked into this pit of consumerism we have traded Jesus for a product  - a product that has fed and encouraged consumerism not true discipleship. A product that has just become a band aid, a facade, a mask - offering no real hope or change - because so little in us is changed. I want to erase the marketing, the product that I have helped to create, because I am so much a part of this problem. I want to tear off the band aid and replace it with His healing. I want to rip down the masks and walls and expose the imperfections that show off His perfectness.I want to fight the consumerism and my personal desires and comfort, and strip it all away to Jesus. I want to fall in love with Jesus again - or maybe really for the first time. I want to serve Him, love Him, and make much of Him. And when the programs are not flashy enough, when the offering plates are a little less full, and the music isn't my taste, when the sermon didn't resonate with me like I had hoped it would, and when people let me down, I want to know that all that matters in this world and in the Church is Jesus. I want to be captivated by Jesus, not by the video feed on Sunday morning, or the praise and worship band, or the promise of another Bible study and better coffee. I want to know the abundant life that repels consumerism and looks so counter-cultural to those on the outside looking in. I want a part in reclaiming the Bride and breathing fresh life into her. Mostly, I want to know Jesus.

And Jesus is enough. Because nothing - nothing else ever will be.