House Church Talk - Bono no go - to church, that is.

[David Anderson]

    Hi all, 

It's freezing here in TN. Last night in the single digits... Chatter, 
chatter, chatter.

U2's Bono has criticized churches in the West which has come right back 
at him, not being a participant "in church." 

I know of several other prominent writers who dropped out: A.W. Pink and 
R.J. Rushdoony. Are there others? How did these happen to overlook house 
church, if they did?

............ Began quoted portion:

Bono's full-throated judgments on the church prompt this question: Just 
how would he know? He has, after all, avoided the church since breaking 
with Shalom, a Watchman Nee-inspired group in Ireland, in the early 1980s.

This arm's-length experience of churches leaves Bono with a paper-thin 
ecclesiology that measures the church's mission (or its "relevance") 
almost exclusively in geopolitical terms. Bono seems unaware of the aids 
relief work that has been done in Africa for years, both by missionaries 
and by indigenous Christians (CT, Feb. 7, 2000). Never mind that many 
Christians were bringing relief to suffering Africans in the same decade 
that U2 poured millions into its bloated Zoo TV and PopMart tours 
(keeping the latter on the road cost $1.3 million a week). If Americans 
fail to persuade the Bush administration to increase foreign aid to the 
percentage of gross domestic product that Bono finds acceptable, then 
Bono finds the church guilty of standing by, like Germans watching Jews 
being hauled away to the death camps.

Bono has shown a clear compassion for suffering people throughout his 
career. He has performed at global benefits like Live Aid and has made 
quieter efforts to relieve people's suffering (such as spending a month 
in an Ethiopian refugee camp in the 1980s). We understand why Bono feels 
angry when he believes the church is sitting by in complacency while 
thousands of Africans face a daily threat of death.

Bono has said repeatedly that Christianity without an element of social 
justice is empty. We agree. But a Christian's pleading for social justice 
without worshiping God regularly within the community of the church is 
little more than activism for its own sake. Any person can stand outside 
the church and critique its obedience to the gospel. Part of God's call 
on a Christian's life is to walk inside and die to self by relating to 
other human beings, both in their fallenness and in their redeemed glory.

God may very well be using Bono to challenge the conscience of American 
evangelicals. It is well within God's frequently evident sense of humor 
to use a brash rock star in the causes of justice and mercy. If that is 
so, we hope that God also uses this time to draw Bono into a deeper sense 
of what it means to be a Christian.

Copyright © 2003 Christianity Today. March, 2003, Vol. 47, No. 3, Page 37

   forwarded by David Anderson