What the church is missing..

I have been very fortunate in being part of an amazing church community known as The River. Ever since I started going to the services, I have really felt what God wants me to do in my life. I feel as though I have finally found a church that understands what God is doing and how he wants to use us in everyday life. Never before have I felt like I was part of a church community in my life. After that brief introduction which was borderline rabbit trail, I feel like the church is missing their calling to be a community. Many churches can welcome you with a "How ya doin' this mornin' brother?" and you respond with "Well, I just lost my job, I have rent due next week, I just lost my grandmother, and times are really tough for my family". A likely response might be "Well brother, we can praise the Lord and pray for ya". Praying is an awesome thing but I think we are missing the point when we don't do the obvious things to help a brother or sister out. We need to be there for our brothers and sisters. We need to help them if they need financial help, give them shelter if they need it, put clothes on them if they need it, and give them food if they are hungry. The church today gets so self-centered because we are self-centered. We will agree with Bono that they need to do something about AIDS in Africa but will we actually do anything besides agree and say yes all the time. If everyone put as much time and energy into how much they think about themselves and placed it on less fortunate individuals, we would see the world radically change. People are so set in their ways. The reason I can rant and rave about this is because I go through this same junk. When I see something on TV or on the street, I automatically think "Man, I would kill for that car" or "Geez, I wish I had a cell phone like his". We drool and spend so much time envying others who have "stuff" when we just need to look at ourselves and understand that we have everything we need. I was thinking about how funny it is that most people who think they are poor really have no clue. If you are able to scrape up enough change to go drive down to a McDonalds or some other fast food joint, you have so much more money than most people around the world. I guess the moral to my blog is that we need a change in our hearts to change this world. The world can be a much better place if we took our eyes of our problems and dilemmas and focused on others. We would see the church transform if the people would take on the mindset of Christ in giving and caring for others.