Finding Jesus on the Streets

By Heber Brown, III

Ok, so Mark Scandrette, author of Soul Graffiti, has a little Will Ferrell slash Vince Vaughn thing going on, but I dig his message. (no surprise there) He’s challenging us to think of Jesus differently – not as the head of an organized religion called Christianity, but as a homeless prophet who turned the world upside down (or right side up depending on who you ask) with a message and a movement known in its earliest form as The Way. My challenge now revolves around how to rediscover The Way and provide a safe haven for it inside the infrastructure of the local church. Is it even possible?

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 8th, 2008 at 11:05 pm and is filed under Beloved Community, Christian, Free Your Mind, Jesus, Religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Comments on “Finding Jesus on the Streets”

Rev. Do Right says:
July 9th, 2008
7:04 am

The church as I understand it is the reign of God in the hearts of men every where. Everywhere includes the streets. Check the Book. Jesus went to the temple to pray and teach. He was in the market place and along the dusty roads, (lexington and northeast market, North and Penn, social security, bon secur, etc. etc.) engaging and ministering ( meeting people at the POINT of their need).
Those who are about it follow the montra of the old Nike shoe commercial, they JUST DO IT! No fanfare, no spotlight, no fancy jet, no shoe tying, robe buttoning, wanta be, knock off, bootleg, fake, flunky bearers (entourage) who at the first sign on real trouble will run and hide.
Just soldiers, holding up the blood stain banner, taking nothing with them, trusting God to provide their every need.

Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, decieving your own selves. James 1:22 KJV

Rev. C. Solomon says:
July 9th, 2008
12:43 pm

Before Jesus’ departure from the Earth 2000 years ago, he instructed ‘his disciples’ to avoid the establishment church prototype in Jerusalem, the Temple with its sacrifices and orders of priests, which represented organized/institutionalized religion! Instead they were instructed to go to an Upper Room and to be endowed with the Holy Spirit!

In America, over 90% of us claim to believe in God, and the overwhelming majority claim to believe in Jesus. So one has to ask, where is the disconnect between what Jesus taught and what most individuals in organized religion (who claim to be of The Way), particularly Christianity in America, are doing? Get my drift, if over 90% believe, then what’s wrong and why does Mark have to have this challenge?

I have concluded that the problem is ‘religion’ itself, for religion has co-opted the message of truth, having turned it into something else altogether. Finding the truth and what is actual ought to trump religion, even organized Christianity (which in its present state has become something different even from what Jesus intended). I kind of feel that if Jesus were on Earth today, he would likely not be a member of a Christian church. On the other hand he would be walking with Apostle Mark (Scandrette) and the Heber Browns of the world this time, while visiting Christian churches (and other religious organizations) to overturn the tables of the money-changers, rebuke modern-day Pharisees, and to come against the spirit of apathy, greed and violence and to pursue a social as well as a spiritual agenda/dimension in addition to one of faith!

Jesus was a revolutionary; too many of today’s Christians like members of the church at Pergamos are clearly settled into the world to include institutionalzed religion, as they have been conditioned to do by their leaders. I suspect that too many people get saved for the reason that they been taught to get saved, so that they won’t go to hell – that’s not good enough!

Rev. C. Solomon says:
July 9th, 2008
8:40 pm

Reverend Brown I expect this topic to be another one of your hot topics. I had a brother in my church a decade ago who announced one day, pastor; I want to be a missionary/emissary to the prostitutes. I wasn’t too certain that Jose’s motives were in the right place at first, however, when you think about it, Jesus certainly did not discriminate did he? This brother had a vision where God showed him the term, HERALD, written across the sky, and he began to minister in the streets for the Lord.

The Jesus movement was a movement that often ran into conflict with religious (harbingers of the only one True God establishment Judaizers)…! What concerns me about religion in America (and around the world today), particularly among Mega’s, is that the parishioners are being groomed to become a part of the establishment, ergo show me the money, abundant (wealth) bling-bling church prototype. What’s wrong with Mega’s? Motive, I suspect!

Over the past 2 decades, consider just how many individuals have joined mega churches because of the abundant (show me the money), blow me up like Jabaz financial networking and let’s build bigger barns ministries – not the word. God knows that there has been enough wealth in American churches alone, to have eliminated poverty and to have eviscerated America’s permanent underclass long ago.

I lament the fact that so many believers are still waiting for God to open the windows of heaven and pour out blessings that they won’t have room to receive, when he’s already done it. Christians keep buying larger houses with more closet space, larger garages and storage space and to boot bigger Urban Assault Vehicles…and still they are looking to receive even more blessings which could be used to provide social-uplift for other people, at a time when believers are craving even more for themselves! My former Bishop sports around town in a Rolls, while his parishioners walk to church, hmm!

Established religion can and has hurt, at times, more than it appears to have helped even institutionalized Christianity. It would appear that God is raising up a new group of workers. It would also appear that many of our ministers today will be left at the Temple just as the Priests of Jesus’ day were left behind on the day of Pentecost, when they were apparently not invited, at large, to join the 120 in the Upper Room in order to be a part of ‘the new movement!!

Tony Andrews says:
July 10th, 2008
9:24 am

Start giving and stop taking would be one of “the way”.

Rev. C. Solomon says:
July 10th, 2008
9:02 pm

Too many have found the church to be an unequivocal REVENUE producing resource. It was not uncommon for the Jewish priests to behave in the same manner. Many of them found that it was more blessed on a personal level to receive than to give. Often times they would insist on receiving the best offerings for themselves; many of them were very very well off.

I pray that one day we will conduct an objective religion/church/Christian evaluation. We need to sort out what has been good and what has been bad about religion, Christianity and all other faiths. All faiths have some serious instutional problems that need to be addressed and abandoned. I suspect that just as Copernicus and Galileo experienced in the 17th century, that there is a lot of truth that we are simply not getting at – truth that is being simply because religious groups want to hold on to outdated myths and paradigms!

Common Sense says:
July 10th, 2008
11:08 pm

The trickeration that has festered in the black church for so long now has sullied the black churches great legacy. In many cases I would go as far as to say that the black church has broken as many homes as it has kept together.

Morally back in the day, the black church was a conduit of how we felt, what we should do, how we should act, how we should fight and respond to injustice, sin, and all the ills that befell our community. It was a place where you went to show your belief and be re-energized with the spirit.

I don’t blame black men for not going to church. Game can spot game and that is what the black church in some cases has become. A man in his right mind cannot work 40 plus hours per week and give 10 percent of his earnings to “Gawd”. Not in this day and time where unemployment among black men is at record levels.

That being said, the preachers don’t want the black man’s money because the black women is making more than the black man hence the all out campaign for the black woman’s dollar. The black woman has a lot of the jobs(and yes they deserve them as a lot of y’all are the head of household) and that is the focus of a lot of these prosperity preachers or whatever other moniker you want to put on them.

Sister girl, you don’t need no man! A man is no good! If he does not come to MY church with you, get rid of him! My new tape/CD series will save you! Plus he ain’t no good because he doesn’t tithe! Unequally yoked! I’m having a new powerful women only revival!! Visa, Mastercard, Discover or American Express will hold your spot! Don’t block your blessings! The moon is made of blue cheese! The Great Pumpkin is coming!

The black church is causing more riffs between black men/women in pursuit of that mean, mean green. Some zealots will deny and justify but in these critical times I want to tell you in advance that y’all are part of the problem. I know that some of you zealots are like trained dogs taught to attack anyone who goes against your prosperity doctrine of cold hard cash.

In the spirit of giving back to the community, that the church is a beacon in the hood, in as many years as Bethel AME has been on Druid Hill Ave., why does it look like West Hell in that neighborhood? Millions have been raised at that church but who is benefiting??? I know, I know, it is not for us to worry about. God will take care of it. Plus 10 dollars for the building fund. God bless you my child.

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