Evangelism – SeqHim

April 7, 2009

Do you allow people to surprise you?

I recently did some study on critical thinking. One of the core principles is what I would call the art of the question. That is, spend more time asking questions and less time trying to explain yourself. While I agreed that understanding one another is good, I was bothered because the ephasis on questioning felt very pluralistic…like to be a critical thinker, you had to accept others views as being equal to your own. I now understand that rejecting intense questioning simply because others use it in a pluralistic manner would be throwing the baby out with the bath water. What I have discovered is that questioning is the only way we can learn about people…surprise! The culture today needs us to learn about them in order to relate to them. It’s amazing how hostile people become conversant if you just start asking questions rather than preaching dogma and defending yourself.

Those of you following this blog know that I believe the power to change a person’s heart resides in the gospel alone. But, with some people, you simply have to earn the right to be heard. We do that primarily by asking questions and genuinely trying to understand where they are coming from. Once you know where they are coming from, then you can share the gospel in a way that they can understand and relate to. This applies to all people…no matter where they are in their walk…no matter if they are world, fringe, or core. If you want to help them move toward the middle, you have to be prepared to ask questions and be opportunistic with your teaching rather than dogmatic.

You also have to ask questions to know whether your time is better invested in this person or if it would be better to move on, which brings me to my final point. When you change your attitude away from dogma (here is the truth, take it or leave it) and move toward questioning (once I understand where you are coming from, I’ll communicate the true and full gospel in a way that you can understand), people will surprise you. Hostile people will calm down. Intellectuals will become emotional. Facades melt away. Issues are uncovered; hearts are softened. Defensive people will begin to listen to what you have to say. You will have earned the right to be heard.

I’ll add one more thing here…as an aside, but very important. To be successful in this, you must have thick skin. You must have already placed your reputation on the alter as a living sacrifice. If you take on a challenging relationship, you may be called out to your face or in public. Are you strong enough to control your response? Are you strong enough to resist the tempation to defend yourself, to strike back, to control your emotions and allow God to deal with how others perceive you, to focus on your objective which is to a) determine whether or not this person is being prepared by the Spirit to receive the gospel; b) share it in a way that they can understand it; c) be obedient to all of God’s commands, for the right reasons, throughout the process.

So, here is my encouragement, in three parts:

First, you simply must know your Bible and be working on your own transformation. Anyone can be dogmatic; it requires a different kind of Christian to engage people where they are.

Second, ask questions before making assertions. Know where people are coming from before assuming you know what they need to hear. This is how you get past the natural defensiveness of a lost person in today’s culture.

Third, don’t become distracted from your ultimate purpose of sharing God’s gospel and His Truth. As you question, the conversation may tend toward distracting topics…it’s ok to weave, but don’t forget where you are trying to head. Look for opportunities to share God’s truth related to areas of confusion, difficulty, struggle that people have.

March 16, 2009

Treasure in Earthen Vessels

One of my favorite bands is Jars of Clay. They get their name from 2 Corinthians 4:7…

“But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves.” 2 Cor 4:7 (NASB)

Paul’s point here is that God has chosen us (as ordinary, fragile, and insignificant as a clay pot) to hold and distribute His gospel so that He would receive all of the glory for it’s power and not us. But, you do not even have to leave Paul’s letters to the Corinthians to see something else that this body of ours “contains”.

“Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.” 1 Cor 6:19-20

And so, God has chosen (for reasons that are hard if not possible to comprehend) to use fallen, broken, sinful, frail people to hold something as significant as not only God’s universal message of justice, grace, and mercy but also the very Spirit that regenerates and transforms us. This is the same Spirit who participates in Creation and who resided among men only in the Holy of Holies before Christ. Amazing…absolutely amazing.

What could be more amazing? The fact that I, and I’ll bet many of you, do not think on this very often let alone allow it to affect our moment to moment behavior. How can it be that I get so caught up in the meaningless, being tricked into thinking that it is somehow more significant that the fact that God has called me to be a vehicle of His gospel and His Spirit to a fallen, lost, Hell-bound world? How can it be that I worry more about the price of a tank of gas than the price Christ paid for my sins. How can it be that I worry more about how I’m performing and measured by my boss at work than I am my boss who redeemed me, resurrected me, called me, and indwelled me? How can it be that I worry more about what other insignificant earthen vessels think of me than what the infinitely significant contents of my own vessel thinks of me?

I’m often reminded of a couple simple and practical points that I have used throughout the years to move my attention away from the vessel and toward it’s contents. I’ll share them here and pray that He would use them to help you as well.

First, frequent and regular prayer matters. As busy as life gets, too many times I am duped into thinking that my relationship with God is strong enough to skip daily prayer for a season so I can “get things done”. That’s a lie. I don’t care how “mature” you are, we all have to be reminded of the treasure within us or we will forget.

Second, every moment of our lives represents an opportunity to live through the strength of what lives within us rather than the weakness of it’s container. We do not have to change anything about our circumstances to fully glorify God.

Did you know that a single mom changing the diaper of her 6-month old has the same opportunity to glorify God as does Billy Graham sharing the gospel with millions of people on TV? This relatively unknown single mom and Mr. Graham are made of the same insignificant earthen material and possess the same gospel and Holy Spirit. How could one glorofy God and the other not? It’s all in the heart and motives for doing what you do. Are you doing all you can, wherever God has placed you, to hear Him, believe Him, and obey Him? Are you genuinely concerned about how much you reflect the Spirit’s joy, compassion, humility and perseverance? If you change that diaper out a selfless concern for the baby, joyfully content with the role God has given you then you will be more pleasing to God than a person sharing the gospel with millions of people only because of the attention or money it brings him.

At the end of the day, especially when the world begins to become confusing, I come to the same conclusion that Solomon did:

“The conclusion, when all has been heard, is: fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person.” Ecclesiastes 12:13

Any believer, no matter their job or circumstance, can and must fear God and keep His commandments. In this way, we live by the power of that which lives in us and not by the frailty of the vessel itself. This is how we glorify God, and all of us have the same opportunity to glorify God to the same extent.

And so, my encouragement for the day is to seek God and his commands, then live them to the best of your ability right where you are moment to moment. Let’s leave the excuses behind and help one another in the journey.

February 24, 2009

Deeper Dive on Growth Themes

In my last post, I introduced the concept of a growth theme. Think of themes (joy, compassion, humility, perseverance) as the more concrete sub-components of the growth dimensions (knowledge, character, and behavior). And remember, growth on these dimensions within the themes is a result of hearing, believing and obeying God. Later, I’ll go a little deeper on hearing, believing and obeying God…the things we do. But first, lets look a little closer at what we are trying to become (increasingly joyous, compassionate, humble, and persevering).

Joyfully forget yourself and focus on others forever.

The above statement is something I made up as a kind of personal mission statement. Notice how it includes each of the four growth themes…joy, humility (forget yourself), compassion (focus on others), and perseverance (forever). We are followers of Christ if we do this increasingly, genuinely and in the context of God’s truth. Note that I did not say we are “saved” because of it. We’re “saved” because we professed faith in Christ and He gave us life by His grace alone. What I’m taking about here is actually following Christ after we have been regenerated.

Now, let’s look under the hood. Are four themes really enough? What about love, wisdom, righteousness, contentment, faith, dependenance, generosity, etc? As I said before, we created a mind map to organize these characteristics so that we could get our arms around the different facets and begin to eat the elephant one bite at a time, so to speak.

Here is a link to that mind map: Themes v0.3

Remember, this is one of an incalculable number of possible arrangements. This is just one that works for our purposes. I’m happy to take feedback on it, because I do want to improve it…but, let’s not miss the forest for the trees either.

And so you will see that we’re framing contentment as a joy issue. If you do not have God’s joy, it is possible that the underlying cause is a contentment issue. With this kind of vocabulary, we can use it in a number of different ways to help people. Here are a few:

Assessment: Helping Disciples Know Where They Are

We can develop a means of helping people understand where they are in their walk with regard to joy, humility, compassion, and perseverance. This then drives where/how they spend their time addressing areas of weakness (rather than simply ammassing knowledge by an endless stream of “bible studies”). The intent of “assessment”, would be to help someone understand that contentment is a bigger issue in their life than say generosity.

Guidance: Helping Disciples Know Where to Go and How to Get There

Guidance can be attached to the same vocabulary. Guidance (e.g. passages of scripture, teaching, books, podcasts, disciplines, ad-hoc experiences and advice, etc) can be provided on how to become more generous, for example, and loaded into a shared repository.

Search: Helping Disciples Find The Best Stuff Fast

Now that guidance has been loaded against a specific vocabulary, and a person understands their need using the same vocabulary, an extremely efficient search capability can be put into place that helps a disciple find exactly what they need almost immediately.

There is alot more to be said, but alas…it will have to wait until next time. Until then, I will continue to pray for all of you as you strive to become more like our Savior.

February 20, 2009

Themes of Spiritual Growth

Let’s pick up on a thread that I started several days ago re: spiritual growth. Remember that we discussed two basic principles:

spiritual growth occurs along three dimensions: knowledge, character and behavior.
growth on these three dimensions occurs by iterations of hearing, believing and obeying God.

And, we used the following as a picture to illustrate the basic concept.

Now let’s break down the components of knowledge, character, and behavior so we can get to something that each of us can use in our daily lives and help others to do the same.

Several months ago, some faithful buddies and I brainstormed “christian attributes”. We asked, “what are the characteristics you would expect to see in a follower of Christ?” Obviously, many attributes came to mind, including wisdom, righteousness, humility, generosity, love, contentment, etc. We then organized them into four major themes: joy, humility, compassion, and perseverance.

Therefore, when we talk about growing in knowledge, we’re really talking about growing in knowledge of what it means to be joyous, humble, compassionate and persevering. When we talk about growing our character (internal attitudes and unseen behaviors), we’re talking about developing a joyous, humble, compassionate, and persevering character. When we talk about growing in behavior (externally observable behaviors), we’re talking about acting joyous, humble, compassionate, and persevering.

Clearly, there are many, many ways to organize these attributes. This is just the way we did it, and I think it works pretty well. In future posts, I can share the detailed “mind map” that describes how we organized the attributes and dealt with “super-themes” like righteousness and wisdom.

Now, remember the second principle that describes how we grow in the three dimensions and their four components. Generally speaking, we grow in knowledge by hearing God; we grow in behavior by believing Him; and we grow in behavior by obeying Him. Therefore, we grow in our knowledge of what it means to be joyous by hearing what God has to say on joy; we grow in chracter with respect to joy by genuinely believing these truths from God; and, we grow in joyous behavior when we obey these new truths that we genuinely believe.

I have lots of examples from Scripture and from my own experience to share, and will do so over time, but for now let’s start with one from Acts. Do you remember Paul and Silas in prison (Acts 16)? They behaved in an extraordinary way. First, rather than grumbling (which I’m sure I would have been), they are singing and praying. Then, when the earthquake hits and the prison doors are busted open, they did not flee.

Now look, I’m excited by the growth God has caused in me over the past several years, but I am nowhere near this level of mature behavior. Paul and Silas were so focused on the welfare of their guard, they essentially sacrificed themselves for him…a non-Jew and a non-Christian. Why on earth would they a) be singing in prison; and b) not leave when God “obviously” was trying to set them free by way of the earthquake? In the first case, they had learned to be “content in all circumstances” (we bucketed contentment within the joy theme). In the second, they had serious compassion for the jailor and knew what “the right thing to do was” (see my previous post). Why were they so joyous and compassionate? Because they knew the promises of God and they genuinely believed them. They had already invested years into knowing God’s word and practicing the disciplines required for training themselves for just such a moment. Of course, Paul (at least) had the additional experiences of supernatural encounters with God, but these are not necessary to grow to the point Paul was. We can all get there by studying God’s word, proactively training ourselves to believe it, and them acting upon it in any circumstance.

And so my encouragement is simply this: know God’s word, believe what you know, and obey what you believe. Over time, learn a little more, believe a little more and obey a little more. Just keep moving forward and never stop.

If you need help, please raise you hand. I, and many others joining this community, are here to help you!

February 19, 2009

The Ultimate Goal

In my last post, I spoke about the specific and immediate goal of ministering to God’s people. But what is the ultimate goal? How does the mission of SeqHim converge with and support the ministry of the Church?

I mentioned what I believe is the ultimate goal in my last post, and I want to expand upon it here a bit: bring glory to God. That ought to be the underlying reason for anything we do (or do not do). Otherwise, what is the point? Do everything you do for the glory of God, and work hard at it. Yes, it is good to just chill from time to time, but even that brings glory to God…it acknowledges a) that God designed us to need rest and recreation; b) that our efforts are not nearly as important as we usually think; and c) that God himself rested and commands us to rest as well. And so, go play golf, take a nap, or watch HGTV this weekend knowing that you may be bringing great glory to God in the process!

Given that it is good to rest and it is good to work, what do we work at? What work brings glory to God? Is it only “ministry” work? Am I bringing glory to God when I go to church, serve in the nursery, help little old ladies across the street? Sure, but does that mean that I am not bringing glory to God when I am writing a computer program, changing diapers, taking out the trash, leading a marketing project, punishing the kids, performing financial analysis, studying for a test at school, and so on? I certainly hope not, because most of us spend most of our time doing these things that are usually perceieved as less or even non-spiritual.

Then how do we glorify God in everything we do, whether it is a ‘rest’ activity or a ‘work’ activity? Here is a phrase that has helped me tremendously through the years: ‘do the right thing for the right reason’. As long as you are doing the right thing (with pure motives) in any situation, you are bringing glory to God. Sounds easy, right? Ha! If you think that is easy, you have never really been serious about it because it’s incredibly hard! As a matter of fact, it’s impossible as long as we remain in this fallen world prior to our perfection. And so, allow me to revise our goal statement to make it a bit more accurate to what is really expected of us: “strive to do the right thing for the right reason”. We are to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength…to do the very best with everything God has given us to do the right thing. Thankfully, God’s grace enables us to try and still accepts us when we fail! But the true measure of our faith is the effort we put into doing the right thing, purifying our motives and avoiding the wrong thing…regardless of the personal risk.

So, may this be an encouragement to you today. Strive to do the right thing, moment by moment, for the right reasons. Make it your number one priority, higher than any any other objective you have for today. Expend yourself learning how to determine what the right thing is, seeking the Lord in His Word, asking the Him for moment by moment wisdom, trusting that He has granted you that wisdom (James 1:5), and then acting accordingly, confidently and courageously. In this way, you will be a delight to the Lord, He will be glorified, you will be transformed, others around you will be loved as Christ loves them, and others will be attracted to the Savior through your example of Him.

February 10, 2009

Is God at the Center of your Life?

For six years, I have engaged a wonderful ministry called Bible Study Fellowship (BSF). I often tell people that I have not benefited more from any other ministry (or church, for that matter) than BSF. This morning, I spent time in Numbers Ch 1, 2 and 3. In these chapters, God takes a census and assigns encampments to Israel. He places His Tent of Meeting in the heart of the encampment. Why? Because God should be at the center of the life of His people.

Ok…nice cliche, but what does that really mean? It means that faithful obedience to God is more important than work for God (or anyone else). It means that it is more important that we know God’s word, believe it and obey it ourselves than teaching or helping others to do the same. It means that it is more important to obey the higher principle of love than sacrificing it for family, vocation, ministry, or even adhering to religious tradition (like attending a church service).

Does this mean that we don’t have to go to church? (Gasp!) We don’t have to give sacrificially? We don’t have to take communion, serve the poor, etc? Well, yes and no. Here’s the rub…people who know God’s truth, genuinely believe it, and desire to obey him want to worship him. They want to give sacrificially. They want to obey Christ’s command to be baptized and to take communion. They want to perform works of service. They want to work hard at their vocation. They want to pay all of the their taxes. They want to build healthy famililies and sacrifice for them. These are all things they naturally want to do and do them as well as they can (given the obstacle of our flesh). If you don’t want to do these things and are constantly looking for ways out of them, God is not yet in full control of your desires. That’s a problem that needs to be (and can be) addressed. (BTW, if you want help with this, keep following the blog or send me an email, jreeves@seqhim.org.)

For example, let’s say it’s Sunday morning…you’ve got the family all dudded up for church, about to walk out the door, and the phone rings. It’s the neighbor down the street (who is a ‘fringe’ person that frankly you don’t care much for). He is supposed to be at work in 15 minutes, and his car will not start…he’s asking for a ride. What do you do? I’ll argue that putting God in the center of your heart means caring more about providing for this person that you don’t even really like than taking your family to church. It means understanding that the love of Christ is better manifested by sacrificing the benefit and desire to worship with other believers. It means understanding that the blessings that come from sacrificing your desires for others are more significant than performing religious ceremony and tradition. It means providing an example of love to your family is better than getting them to church so they can hear a description of love.

So, ceremony and tradition are good things. Christ commanded baptism and communion for a reason. Worship is good, and we should not forsake gathering together on Sunday or any other time.

BUT, the goal of all of these things is not to make us rule keepers; it is to transform us to the point that we no longer need the rules!

My prayer for you and for myself is that we be transformed to the point that we are so much in tune with the heart of Christ that we no longer worry whether or not we are in His will…we are confident that our desires are His desires and can freely and aggressively pursue them. We don’t worry about God’s favor if we choose to leverage the resources He has assigned to us to manage (time, money, materials, relationships, etc) in a way that is non-traditional, because we are confident that we are focused on His Kingdom and not our own comfort or preferences.

I’m a long way from this personally, but as I’ve said, I’m praying for it because I believe God desires it for us and is the ultimate goal of our perfection.

February 9, 2009

Core, Fringe and World in Luke 15

I owe this one to my pastor, Pete Chiofalo, and his wonderful message from Luke 15 this past Sunday.

First, I’ll provide a quick interpretation of Luke 15:11-32; then, I’ll comment on how each of the three groups we have been discussing (i.e. core, fringe, and world) are represented in “the prodigal son”.

Luke 15:1-2 makes it clear that the next three stories (i.e. the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son) are in response to the grumbling of the Pharisees that Jesus is hanging out with “sinners”. Each of these parables makes essentially the same point: God has great concern for the lost; He will in a sense leave those who do not need finding to look for the lost one; and, God (and all those of like mind) will rejoice greatly when the lost one is found.

Focusing now on Luke 15:11-32, we have a man with two sons. The younger requests his future inheritance ahead of time and leaves the home to squander it; he becomes “lost”. The older stays behind to continue working diligently for his father. The younger “comes to his senses” in v17, which simply means that God has convicted him of his sinful ways and his heart has repented. He returns home to confess his sin, and his father is eagerly waiting for him – rejoicing to the point of throwing an extravagant welcome home party for his “found” son. Meanwhile, the older son is angry, because he felt he had “earned” what the younger son did not “earn” and was given anyway. He was jealous of the father’s forgiveness, grace and mercy toward the younger one.

A plain interpretation of this story is that the the father in the story is God; the younger son represents all of us who have realized our “lostness”, confessed our sin to to God, and received His welcome into the Kingdom through genuine faith in Jesus Christ; the older son represents all of those who have grown up in the church and yet continue to try to earn God’s favor by keeping religious rules, completely missing the importance of forgiveness, grace, mercy, and faith to the point that we look down on (and are even jealous of) those who are received into the Kingdom on the basis of God’s grace through faith alone.

If you’ve read some of my earlier posts, I’ll bet you know where this is headed. 🙂

What I have been calling the ‘world’ are all of those who are in the same position that the younger son was in while he was away from his family “squandering his estate with loose living”. In verse 17, this younger son moved from the “world” to the “core”. He confessed his sin to the father (v21) and received life (v32). And the ‘fringe’? You got it…the older son. Though he grew up in the same house, he never realized it was grace and mercy that bound him to the father. He always believed it was his efforts. People in the ‘fringe’ typically have “grown up” in the church, hearing sermons on God’s grace and forgiveness every weekend (or, at least every Easter and Christmas). And yet, somehow, their inability to rejoice when the wretched and poor are sought and embraced reveals are heart that was never right with the Lord to begin with.

I’ll end with two questions:

1. How do you act around “sinners”? How do you feel about other believers who seek out “sinners”? What is your immediate reaction when a known sinner walks into your church on Sunday? What will you do to help move people from the ‘world’ to the ‘core’?

2. Do you love those in the ‘fringe’? Or, do you feel superior because you are the younger son rather than the older one? What will you do to help those in the ‘fringe’ move into the ‘core’?

Here’s one suggestion on how to answer each of these: keep reading this blog and engage with your feedback. I have some ‘blue sky’ ideas on how we can help one another do both of these, and I’m going to need alot of help to make it happen!

http://seqhim.org

February 2, 2009

Are ‘fringe’ building churches such a bad thing? Maybe not…

The problem is not so much with what churches are doing; it’s with what they are not doing.

Many churches are so focused on growth that the majority of their resources (money, materials and people) are focused on growth initiatives; i.e. building campaigns, community events, etc. This leaves little left for internal growth initiatives. In other churches, particularly those overseas, there is precious little resource to invest in either external or internal growth. Either way, churches are struggling to help people to grow. We are adding to our numbers, but we’re adding ‘fringe’ and we’re not helping ‘fringe’ move to the core.

BUT, what if there existed a community of ‘core’ believers whose sole purpose was to birth new believers from the ‘world’ and develop baby believers in the ‘fringe’?

If this community was effective, it would complement churches of all sizes, shapes and styles while filling this all important gap of internal spiritual growth. It would have to be orthodox and yet inter-denominational. It would have to be united on the essentials of the Christian faith, but mature enough to give and receive the freedom granted by grace. It would have to be seemlessly global, not bound to a region or local church body. It would have to be large in number, but it would have to be more concerned about the maturity of the community than it’s size. It would have to be simple for community members to communicate with one another; it would have to be accessible, transparent, authentic, and helpful to those outside of the comunity.

If such a community existed, ‘fringe’ building churches could leverage the community to supplement their existing internal growth initiatives, practically free. If such a community existed, a small town church in west Texas, an isolated body of believers in Zambia or an underground small group in a communist or muslim country would have equal access to the same global support structure as a mega-church in the USA.

Does this sound exciting? Do you want to engage? Let me know…

January 27, 2009

Fringe to Core; World to Core

So far, we have presented our fundamental mission as moving people from the ‘fringe’ to the ‘core’ and from the ‘world’ to the core. In this post, we’ll begin to explore how we might do that. Before we begin, let me say that while many of these terms may sound familiar, you will see in the next few posts that we’re going to land on an approach is that quite unique. The drive toward a unique approach is not simply to be different but because I believe that if the current techniques were working, we would not be getting worse instead of better.

Let’s begin with a reminder that while God sees the black and white lines between “believer” and “non-believer”, we cannot. To other people, it is a continuum of people who range from the obvious “non-believer” (world) to the obvious “believer” (core), with a wide variation between the two. An obvious “believer” might be the apostle Paul or Billy Graham; and obvious “non-believer” would be anyone who does not profess belief in Jesus Christ (regardless of how good their behavior is). The rest of us fall somewhere in between…we profess Jesus as Lord, but we either have not actually been spiritual born (i.e. we profess Jesus as Lord for social reasons and not because we actually want to follow him) or we have not “grown” spiritually to the point of, say, an apostle Paul. More accurately, we have not grown to the point of being just like Christ (the perfect human and standard for all of us), in a spiritual sense.

And so, our charter is to a) challenge people in the ‘world’ end of the spectrum to profess Jesus as Lord (spiritual birth); b) ensure that the ‘fringe’ understands what it really means to follow Christ as a genuine believer (maybe spiritual birth; maybe first steps of growth); and c) challenge, encourage, and support all those who profess genuine faith in Christ to move toward the ‘core’ end of the spectrum (spirit growth).

What is the technique that we use to accomplish these goals? This is where we’ll spend most of our time in the next several posts. Right now, I’ll set it up by simply saying that the technique varies per person. Where the person is squarely within the ‘world’, pure evangelistic (or apologetic) techniques are appropriate. Where the person is squarley within the ‘core’, pure discipleship techniques are appropriate. Where the person is somewhere in between, a personalized mix of evangelistic and discipleship techniques are appropriate.

If you are interested to hear further on a unique approach, specifically targetted at discipleship and enabled by community and technology, keep checking back!

January 22, 2009

And so, our mission is…

… to help willing people move from the fringe to the core (discipleship) and from the world to the core (evangelism).

My observation is that the majority of local churches today, particularly evangelical churches in the west, are focused mostly on the evangelistic portion of this mission using mostly a strategy of “attractive” worship services. It’s staggering to see how much money is being poured into these ‘attractive’ worship services; it’s even more staggering to observe that many churches are coming to the conclusion that to make the service ‘attractive’ they must minimize the role of God and the Bible in it.

This weekend, I received a flyer in the mail for a new local church in my area. I don’t have it with me at the moment, but I saved it…maybe I’ll scan it and upload it if I think about it later. But I noted that it did not have the word “God” anywhere on it. It also contained a number of comparisons between it’s style and other (obviously, less ‘attractive’) styles of worship. The phrase, “we have a talk, not a sermon” comes to mind.

Now, I understand the concepts and purposes of the “seeker” church and the “emerging” church, but what kind of a church believes they have to hide God to be effective? Would God really call us to something that requires us to hide his Name to be successful? Isn’t the power to save in the gospel itself? Isn’t the biblical model for evangelsim Christians sharing their faith unashamedly with other Christians, in large group, small group, and one-on-one settings? Looking at today’s churches, you would think that the power to save is in concerts, dramas, social events, community service, and pop psychology ‘talks’…that it’s more important to go to church, be in a small group, have a good marriage, help people find their parking spots and not be stressed out than it is to have a genuine, personal, saving relationship with the Savior of the world, Jesus Christ which demands that we give up many (not all) elements of comfort to do the right thing and not just the popular thing.

My purpose in saying these things is to make a very specific point.

That point is that unless something is done to reverse the trend, we will soon find the visible Church dominated by the fringe…an intermingled group of lukewarm believers and Godless non-believers united not by one faith in God but by one faith in the world’s system. The core will be reduced in size, influence, and effectiveness. We will all rejoice in our election of leaders who promise a hope that is of ourselves and not of God.

If the core is going to do anything to reverse the trend, it has to rise up now. Time is running out …