You can know that you have fallen from grace when you become a referee.

We all know what a referee is — someone who is not playing the game, but a person who is calling fouls on the people who are.

This, tragically, can be the state of many churches.  Instead of being training camps for missionaries, they are classrooms where people learn all the rules and how to identify when people break them.  And all of this flows from religion.

Religion’s essence is, “I perform, God blesses and approves.”  So you may believe that you believe the correct things, have obeyed God sufficiently, or have had a spiritual experience that proves that you are right with God.  And then you begin to look down and disparage people who don’t measure up.  You start blowing the whistle.

Now you might not be a person who blows the whistle out loud, although that’ll happen eventually.  You might just be despising people in your hearts: “They don’t measure up.”  ”They are not doing what I think they should do.”

And nowhere is this more evident than in the mission to reach lost people.  The story repeats itself every generation.  Missionaries rise up to connect the gospel with their culture and their brothers and sisters begin throwing flags and calling penalties.  New technology arises to reach unbelieving people, or new ways of communicating that connects with contemporary audiences and the religious guard rises up to oppose.

Referees are in the game, they are just not part of it.  They are very knowledgeable — they have to be.  But they don’t care about the mission.  They care about following the rules, not about people.  They are an anchor in the church.

But the wonderful news is that grace exists for referees.  More on that next week …