Popularity: 13% [?]
Archive for the 'Emergent' Category
Bob Hyatt has taken on George Barna’s book titled Pagan Christianity. I heard George speak at a minister’s conference last year. According to his research nobody in the room was saved (except for him).
He went on and on about how people were becoming disconnected with Christianity except for a little subset of Christians called Pentecostals.
I never read this book. I have run into enough people who agree with it to know that it is not of interest to me. That’s why I am glad someone like Bob has taken him to task chapter by chapter. The series is worth reading just for the laughs you get out of finding the nonsense that people get paid to write in books.
You know those churches that God inhabits when people gather to worship Him? You know, the ones that He saves people in, touches their hearts causing them to fall in love with Him and give their lives to His cause? Apparently God hates those places according to Barna.
Maybe one day Barna can bend a knee and ask the Father what He thinks about the situation.
Popularity: 27% [?]
If you have been saved more than six months it is more than likely that church is no longer what it is supposed to be. For far to many saints,church is no longer a place to be equipped for the working of the ministry and is instead the place of always learning and never coming to the knowledge of the truth.
Somehow, church becomes our world. Sure, we venture out of it from time to time. We go to work. We go to the store. But we rush back into our safe house so we can get away from “them.” We kneel at the altar and ask God to deliver us from our jobs that have us in to much contact with “them.” We pray for schools so our kids won’t be influenced by “them.” Some go so far as to arrange church activities on holidays so our Christian festivities won’t be spoiled by “them.”
The big problem is that Jesus sent us to share the Gospel with “them” and that’s hard to do when we have no contact.
I have been here. When the center of our Christianity is church we surely know that we are missing the mark. As leaders, when we gauge believers by their faithfulness in listening to someone teach we have wandered off course.
Some believe that the problem is the structure of church all together. Many ascended to leadership in a church and saw major flaws with the leadership. Their hurts cause them to stay withdrawn because of perceived hypocrisies. Others have come out of the conventional church because of their belief in a better structure. They believe that the church is not an institution but an organic creature that is to be small and without ordained leaders. I am ok with that but many often leave the conventional church and don’t join anything else. As with the hyperchurched, these groups allow their church experiences to distract them from the Gospel as well.
I was once in the place that all of my prayer life was consumed with the horribly dysfunctional church that I was a part of. It seemed that all of my Christian life had to pass through that church mostly because of a controlling spirit that was channeled by the leaders. When I broke free, I almost was affected by it enough to quit church all together.
After one week of this my wife declared that this is not who we are. We are Christians and we go to church. I got plugged into a fellowship that is preaching the Gospel and reaching and teaching the lost. As I look around my current fellowship I see people who are both hyperchurched and hypercritical. The good news is that I am of neither group.
I refused to be distracted again, and so should you.
Popularity: 26% [?]
Popularity: 15% [?]
Who has any info on this? Appearantly Rev Ralph Sexton has had extended meetings that have seen quite the move of God. There was supposed to be a two week tent meeting and it turned into six. Before you dismiss it as jus another camp meeting watch this.
That’s fruit baby! Here are photos of the same.
I have an idea why this has happened. In an article in the Ashville Citizen-Times they reported,
Sexton began this revival in a cornfield six weeks ago with nearly 30 area pastors and churches who came together for a single cause: healing, soothing, saving and bringing God into troubled personal lives and into a world in a state of unrest and war.
I heard David Copeland exhort a crowd along the same lines. If we can stop looking at what revival can do for our church and start looking at what revival can do for God’s people and God’s purpose on the earth then we all might see the move we have been crying out for. Remember that the very creation is crying out for the revealing of the sons of God.
Sexton is quoted as saying,
“In our communities, there seems to be a hunger to return to basic moral and faith values,” he said. “We have an unsettled world. Every continent has a madman and every country is asking for peace and safety and we’re finding none.”
What do you know? The Gospel still works. We don’t need to reinvent it or repackage it.
Maranatha!
More report in the Wilmington Star
UPDATE:Hal Donaldson wrote in thte PE about disunity in the church being its greatest problem.
Popularity: 25% [?]
Hear me out for a minute. I don’t fit in. The problem is, I don’t think I want to.
I did not grow up in church. I grew up heathen. I was lost in my sin and thought that God was ok with it. I knew that Jesus was the son of God who died for my sins on that cross. I knew that he rose from the dead. I knew that He was and is God. That seems to be enough these days, but it did not seem to be enough for God.
One day I encountered the living God. He absolutely invaded my life and knocked everything else off of the pedestal of my life. At that moment He became the pearl of great price Matthew 13:45-46 for which I traded everything else in my life for. That was it.
So I find myself today in a Christianity that seems to have had some other entryway than I went through and I wonder to myself if I missed something.
When I am around other Christians I would like to talk about Jesus. If I ever find myself in another men’s meeting that looked no different than any other business networking event I will simply go home and play with my children. At least I would have done something with eternal value.
I believe that we should sin less tomorrow than we did today; and that should not happen by chance. That should be a primary focus. Love God hate the devil. One or the other is not enough.
I was recently accused of being weak and offendable because I said that a new believer should not be allowed to invite his lost friends to get onstage with him to lead Sunday morning worship. I could not believe that this was debatable. Is this the best the church has to offer? And if so, do I have to accept that?
Am I religious because when I go to a meeting of the called out ones I want people who have answered the call to be separate to lead the meeting? If someone is not close enough to Christ to realize that his lifestyle if filthy I don’t think they should be in a place of ministry. Does that make me a Pharisee? I don’t buy into the notion that all sins are the same. The thought that it doesn’t make a difference if we simply thought about a sin or are currently in it without repentance is total nonsense to me. I think Jesus was making the point that we should strive to be more holy because none are perfect. Not that holiness is futile. Does that make me a works-centered humanist?
I ask these questions but I do not know that I care about the answers. I am on fire for Jesus. I know that my sin is a reproach to Him. I am going to continue to tell other believers that their sin is the same. I want to be around others who will tell the same to me.
I have no desire to be in a church that sets the bar so low that any unconverted person feels at home. Church meetings are supposed to equip the saints to do the work of the ministry. Not a place where convicted consciences are soothed with soft words of a false hope. From my perspective that’s what lots of people are advocating. And I simply do not want to go along with it.
Maranatha!
Popularity: 20% [?]
Our pulpits are filled with people eager to tell what the Scriptures mean instead of preaching what the Scriptures say. Everything is up for interpretation and personal analysis. We have been robbed of absolutes and the Kingdom of God has suffered because of it.
There is nothing more relevant than the Advent. Nothing more relevant than the God who takes away sin and transforms lives. Lessons on how to live happy and wealthy lack the life changing power of the Gospel yet the church has been taught to settle for that.
Maranatha!