Stepping out to the Club

~by Amber Rogers

From my week-long observation and saturation into the Social Media Audio App, of Clubhouse, I've come to these conclusions:

🚩Most Christians navigate, and conduct themselves, for the most part, in these Social Media Platforms, in the same way that they act in their churches! And as creatures of habit most tend to stick to the same paths that their exclusive lives dictate to them! Meaning:

🚩They hang-out and follow their same church routines, and their friends. They talk the same church-talk, and they stay away from explosive world issues and behaviors that keep the world on one side of the equation, and the church on the other.

Question?..."Why would you go into a Virtual Place like Clubhouse; which is filled with participants from every imaginable country in the world, and almost every continent on the face of this planet, and start a random, "blessings come to you" type of prayer group, and invite everybody in your church on to your stage? (i.e. room) Weren't you all together yesterday, on Sunday, and in the rest of your Church Groups? Now lets just pause right there. Because “Church Groups” were the operative words in that sentence; your many, many, many, Church Groups! Okay, Lets continue …

“Why take a worldly platform and try to carve out yet another private, “church lane” for more exclusivity and separateness, when these are the very people who could benefit from you the most? Yeah, I get it- you’re “saved, sanctified, and filled with the Holy Ghost, and baptized with the mighty burning fire”…Yep! … All of that! Oh, and you will speak in tongues as the Spirit gives utterance! (how could I forget that part?) But I have something against you. How can you, as a believer, stand on the outside of a burning building, filled with lost souls and just watch it burn while you hold an exclusive, bible-thumping, prayer meeting for your clique on the sidewalk across the street? Not once have you given thought to assisting them, or throwing them a life-line! After all, you have the answers… you sprout off the Greek and Hebrew of it all, every time that you mount your podiums at church, and rare back with your hand behind your ear, to tune up on Sunday Mornings! Why, (to hear you tell it) your hermeneutical skills and recitations are stellar!

Listen, the world won't come into our churches, nor our spaces, yet when we have the opportunity to sit in a venue like Clubhouse we isolate! It's very rare that a fish will jump into the boat... We have to cast our nets broad and wide! When Jesus showed himself to his disciples on the Sea of Tiberias, they appeared before Him hungry and dismayed. They had put away their fishing nets and stood washing them. They had been fishing all day long, and had caught nothing, and Jesus’ response to them was merely: "cast your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some." John 21:6

And as a new inductee into the Clubhouse scene, I've listened to young people talk about sex, listened to a preponderance of vulgarities, and have heard young women speak from a place of hurt, that I was just not privy to in the "First Baptist Pentecostal Assembly of the Most Holy Elite in Christ!" I would have never had the opportunity to "flick my Bic, or cast my net" in some of these dark lagoons, and listen for avenues of entrance into their dark spaces to even try to radiate some light, if I hadn't walked through the door! And I have to admit that I almost did run away from one group, when a guy said that he would "suck me up" as soon as I entered the room! And my heart did beat faster when I found myself amongst the Islamic community as the only Christian in the room! But right away, when the mic was passed to me I put forth Jesus Christ, and I stood firm to answer all questions to the best of my abilities in a soft and loving manner, and there was no debating (that’s what the leave button is for) and I am a firm believer that Christians should never debate the bible!

"People of God, Jesus is the answer for the world, and it's time for the Church to do something different... "Because you don't need a flashlight in a light penetrated, and light flooded room- but that Clubhouse, now, that's a vineyard waiting for the harvest of illumination!"