CONSPICUOUS

I Was Just Thinking About - - - 

Conspicuous means: “easily seen or noticed; readily visible or observable; attracting special attention, as by outstanding qualities or eccentricities.” The British Dictionary defines the word and uses terms such as: “obvious or showy; attracting attention because of a striking quality or feature.” Negatively, it can be used to indicate one’s conspicuous absence or one’s demand(s) to be always first among equals. It would be easy to illustrate and apply conspicuous to people who were known or with whom one has had to work. Peculiarities and idiosyncrasies can be unnoticed by the one possessing these propensities and others just ignore those who model these negative qualities.  

There is an excellent Blog by James Emory White posted in Church and Culture for January 8th, 2015 in which he writes: “My heart has been filled with a fair amount of grief of late. No, nothing in my own personal life…my grief is over the many pastors I have become aware of – seemingly more than usual of late – who have felt forced to resign or have been outright fired from their churches. A tipping point was hearing of yet another local pastor who was fired by a small group in the church that was apparently empowered to do such a thing…He had just given a “vision” talk, and apparently it didn’t go over too well with the group. I went online and listened to the talk. For the life of me, I couldn’t find anything about it that was a) non-biblical, b) controversial, or c) not what any and every Christian church on the planet ought to be doing. But it did involve reaching out. It did involve taking the changing surrounding community and its demographics seriously. It did involve scaling back to the new realities of a church that once was in the thousands and is now in the hundreds. In other words, it reflected sober leadership…I have since learned that the tipping point was reaching out to people of different color and ethnicity…I seldom know such details. And even with those in mind, I’m sure there was plenty of fault to go around…But my heart cries out because this is not the way it is supposed to be.The church is supposed to be marked by love and functional community, not acrimony, discord, division and dysfunction. The great calling-card of the Christian church is to unity. When disunity erupts, it is always a victory for the evil one.”

There are too many churches and people who are elected as “leaders” for whom this shoe is a perfect fit. It is painful to admit it but, if one observes the decline of church attendance and the dropout rate of young families and young people, it cries out with the need for the the leaders and church members to seek repentance, renewal, restoration and revitalization. This is conspicuous to the observing eye looking in whereas those who are part of the church entity are blind to that which is obvious. Acts 28:25-28 closes with these words to a people who had numerous opportunities but chose to ignore them: “Paul had made one statement: The Holy Spirit was right in saying to your fathers through Isaiah the prophet: Go to this people, and say, You will indeed hear but never understand, and you will indeed see but never perceive. For this people's heart has grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear, and their eyes they have closed; lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn, and I would heal them. Therefore let it be known to you that this salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles; they will listen." 

The parallel for this passage is Revelation 2 and 3 where Jesus walks in the midst of the churches and makes his assessment and proclamation about and to them. To each church, Jesus said: “I know your works…” In other words, Jesus is stating that some churches have done some very good things. The issue He raises is that they have missed that which is conspicuous to the observing eye, such as departure from one’s first love; the toleration of error, etc. To those who were oblivious to the conspicuous, the words of Jesus are consistent, (1) Remember what you are supposed to be, (2) Repent for what you have allowed yourself to become, and (3) Return to the core values and foundational principles from which you never should’ve departed. Consider these things with me.