Thoughts on church

There are times when a certain topic takes root in my mind, and like weeds it pops up in all sorts of places, shading most of what I think about and talk about. I see it in things I read…in conversations I have…in studies I do…EVERYWHERE! So has it been with church. In one sense, I am not sure why. In another sense I know exactly why. In regards to the former, I am not preparing for a specifically “church” ministry. By this I mean that I am not preparing for a vocational ministry within a church (like a senior pastor, minister to a specific age group, youth pastor, etc). So why the obsession? In regards to the latter, all Christians need be part of a church because this is the body of Christ…this is the family that I have been placed in…this is part of my new identity…it is created/instituted/ordained by God…so how can I not think about it??

I found these interesting statements regarding challenges to the church…issues that I find dangerously real.

The truth is that without a biblical understanding of why God instituted it, the church easily becomes a liability in a market where it competes only with the greatest of difficulty against religious fare available in the convenience of one’s living room and in a culture bent on distraction and entertainment.

The constant cultural bombardment of individualism, in the absence of a robust theology, meant that faith that had rightly been understood as personal now easily became faith that was individualistic, self-focused, and consumer oriented. That was the change to which the church marketers attuned themselves.

–David Wells, The Courage to be Protestant

For many Christians, a biblical understanding of the church is rapidly disappearing.

dem’s fightin’ wurdz

I want to deny these words, but sadly I often find that there is little proof to counter the accusation…

But what is the average Christian experience? Church members typically think and behave very much like morally upright non-Christians. They are decent enough, but there is nothing supernatural about them.
J. Robertson McQuilkin, Five Views on Sanctification

Goal of Education…Christian, that is.

[B]ut the ultimate goal of Christian education is the making of full-fledged disciples of Christ, whose entire existence has been radically transformed into full conformity with the image of Christ.

Greg R. Allison, A Theology for Christian Education

Ahhhh…now we’re getting somewhere! Dissemination of knowledge does not, even further cannot, correct morals and values, much less make one a Christian. I am seeing more clearly the far reaching influence of Platonic thought that to know the good is to do the good. Knowledge is not the ultimate goal of education that is distinctly Christian. Oh no! We have a much more grandiose end!!

thoughts revealing

PAINFUL LABORS

The cloak is lifted,
I thought to find
a brotherly embrace;
Yet instead found disgrace
and shame and humiliation.

who shall I seek?

But not only my neighbor’s will, but also his honor is more important than mine. The desire for one’s own honor hinders faith. One who seeks his own honor is no longer seeking God and his neighbor. What does it matter if I suffer injustice? Would I not have deserved even worse punishment from God, if He had not dealt with me according to His mercy?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), Life Together [1954]

 

 

mmmmm…goody

our sunday school class, like any “true” evangelical group is studying Romans…okay, i jest. but we really are working our way through Romans. we have just climaxed with chapter 8:

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (8:37-39)

Now we enter what can be the dark valley of chapter 9 (and following)…dark not because of what it reveals about God, but because of the warring battle that the heart & mind of man fights. It is a battle that I still fight, to a differing degree depending on the day. And I suspect, as with the confession of many a revered pastor, theologian, and Christian who has gone before me, it demands FAITH, then a lifetime of seeking understanding, if the Lord permits.

I am excited about the journey we as a group are taking, though well aware of the dangers that lurk as we delve into God’s Word! As we gather together to devour this slab of meat that is before us, may the Spirit help us digest the hunks lest we choke on them (ewww)!!

resurrection

To claim the risen Jesus as ’son of god’ in the sense of ‘Messiah’ was the most deeply Jewish thing the Christians could do, and hence the most deeply suspect in the eyes of those Jews who did not share their convictions. [727]

But that misses the point the early Christians were eager to make, the point that brought them quickly into confrontation with the authorities both Jewish and pagan. To imply that Jesus ‘went to heaven when he died’, is to miss the point, to cut the nerve of the social, cultural and political critique. Death is the ultimate weapon of the tyrant; resurrection does not make a covenant with death, it overthrows it. The resurrection, in the full Jewish and early Christian sense, is the ultimate affirmation that creation matters, that embodied human beings matter. That is why resurrection has always had an inescapable political meaning; that is why the Sadducees in the first century, and the Enlightenment in our own day, have opposed it so strongly. No tyrant is threatened by Jesus going to heaven, leaving his body in a tomb. No governments face the authentic Christian challenge when the church’s social preaching tries to base itself on Jesus’ teaching, detached from the central and energizing fact of his resurrection (or when, for that matter, the resurrection is affirmed simply as an example of a supernatural ‘happy ending’ which guarantees post-mortem bliss). [730-31]

The Resurrection of the Son of God by N. T. Wright

Kingdom Challenge

Hold onto your seats…in the midst of everything baby, I am writing a post that is not about Luke!

I have just finished reading The Master Plan of Evangelism by Robert E. Coleman. I recommend it as a worthwhile read! I wanted to take a moment and share a few of Coleman’s words that have challenged me in the depths of my heart. Coleman is speaking about evangelism and the goal of Christians regarding the kingdom of God:

We must always remember, too, that the goal is world conquest…We fail, not because we do not try to do something, but because we let our little efforts become an excuse for not doing more…There can be no substitute for total victory, and our field is the world. We have not been called to hold the fort, but to storm the heights. (95, emphasis added)

Are you hunkering down, trying to hold the fort of Christianity, in fear that the faith will not be preserved in the midst of the onslaught of skepticism and disbelief?

I am.

But I want my life to be spent proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ. Pouring out all that I am into another that he might in turn do the same. Join me…let’s storm the heights of the world in the name of Jesus!

Youthgroup

I’m going back to the days of highschool…I’m going back to youth group! Wooohoooo! I am teaching biblestudy the next two weeks for the church I went to when I was in youth group. This is the same group I did the senior weekend with. Hope it goes well. The group includes high school and middle school…kinda a broad age range…so I’ve picked my target and hope the rest follow along

Tonight we are going to look at Ephesians 2:11-22…wondering where you have seen this recently…yeah, it is the passage that I just did my Greek exegetical paper on…gotta double dip! I’m calling the study “The Forgotten Truth of the Cross.” Main idea: the cross is more than getting us out of Hell, it is about someone, and it is about a relationship that is reconciled.

Blame Game

Surely I am not responsible…No, I am the victim!

I came across a good expression of the reality of humanity’s situation, despite our rigorous attempts to pass blame:
“We have conjured up all manner of devils responsible for our present discontent. It is the unchecked bureaucracy in government, it is the selfishness of multinational corporate giants, it is the failure of the schools to teach and the students to learn, it is overpopulation, it is wasteful extravagance, it is squandering our national resources, it is racism, it is capitalism, it is our material affluence, or if we want a convenient foreign devil, we can say it is communism. But when we scrape away the varnish of wealth, education, class, ethnic origin, parochial loyalties, we discover that however much we’ve changed the shape of man’s physical environment, man himself is still sinful, vain, greedy, ambitious, lustful, self-centered, unrepentant, and requiring of restraint.”
  — Barry M. Goldwater, With No Apologies

I am reminded that the Fall, from a Christian perspective, is one of the most significant events in human history. It constitutionally changed man, and we now suffer from total depravity.