“...who formerly were not a people but now are the people of God.”

“Los Angelisation” (sometimes spelled as one word) is a term used to describe the urban disasters that modern cities become.

 

One urban planner said that Los Angeles did not become the polluted monstrosity it is because of individual bad decisions.  Each step of the process, he said, was a good idea to meet a current problem.  But as each new problem arose, and something was constructed to address it, gradually the city was turned into a tangled knot of roads and freeways — “a great big freeway”, to quote an old song.

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Sometimes it seems the best idea for a city would be to give up, move everyone elsewhere, and start again.  Or perhaps bulldoze the entire city and start again on the same ground.  This has been done throughout history, often because the city has been destroyed by war, natural disaster or climate change, but sometimes because the “old city” was such a mess that the people opted out for new digs.  The “new city” was built either on or near the old one.

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Los Angelisation is not a problem limited to urban development.  Many things that humans develop end up in just as much of a mess, far from achieving what they started out to achieve.  Government bureaucracy is often pointed to as an example, but Churchianity is another.  What a mess!  What similarity do most churches today bear to the movement Jesus established?  Very little.  Bit by bit, “good ideas” were added.  Well, they might have seemed like good ideas at the time, but when you think of it, how could you improve on God’s plan??

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Sometimes, when people see how “Los Angelised” their church has become, some try to “reform” it with changes, but they really only continue the Los Angelisation process.  What they really need is a bulldozer.  Start from scratch. Go back to the blueprint, the original design of the architect, Jesus.  If we stick to what God’s word tells us he wants us to do, we’ll avoid the ecclesiastical quagmire that humans tend to fall into.  Jesus said, “I will build my congregation” (Matthew 16:18), and that’s the group of people he purchased with his own blood (Acts 20:28).  Let’s be careful not to Los Angelise it.

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