Gthoughts’s Weblog

Here is a sermon by Voddie Baucham on Reaching Postmodern’s.

http://pks.edgeboss.net/wmedia/pks/basics/voddie_5_7.wvx

God Bless

If you are within a Christian community, these three things go synonymous with one another. Pastors go to school to learn theology to teach to their churches and thus the cycle is complete. In response to my last blog a friend asked a good question: “How do you see the theology one holds as affecting the way pastors organize and run their churches?”

Being a seminary student, I will let you in on a little secret… When being taught how to lead a church all of the examples come from the American consumer business style of leadership. You are taught how to run the church like a big corporation that wants efficiency in all areas of the church. We want to maximize the most with our time, money, and efforts. This then effects our preaching of salvation to a dying world and makes us change and tweak how we present the gospel to a changing world. Making church more of a hour of entertainment than true learning and life change. Unfortunately that is the nature of the beast these days because we have a culture that is hard wired for something instant and changeable, America’s attention span is like that of a over stimulated squirrel. Now that we don’t live in the modern era, we have postmoderns and emergents who are and have been questioning the modern way of doing things within the church. Which is causing ruckus within the traditionalist way of doing things.

Back to pastors and theology…. I think almost all pastors start out wanting to preach the good new of Christ and want to have a biblical church but I think somewhere along the way, they have sold out for that higher position, to bigger is better, how much money can I make at that church, what kind of budget will this church give me, to what kind of name can I make for myself, all while sacrificing the theology of being like Christ. Pastors become consumed by numbers of people in the church, in Sunday School, on the roll, numbers to get the approval of their respected Convention. Theology is important in pastoring a church, the problem I see is human goals. Are goals bad, no, but what happens when man tries to set goals for something that is God’s? If a pastors selfish goals are met, this produces self pride and the thoughts that his ideas are for the benefit of God, but what if, what we want for the church isn’t what God wants? The goal of God in the scriptures is to make disciples of all nations, teaching and training them up in everything that Christ taught and trained the disciples in. I think this is where a majority of churches and pastors stop. They forget about the service part, the needs of the community. They think that if we have all the right technology, music, building then people will come and we can train them through bible study, in sermons, on mission trips and stop their…. but if we are following Christ… it’s clear in scripture that he went to the wounded, the unrighteous, the beggar and met needs… then those people found salvation. What if this was the theology preached in churches…. but instead its come see our hour of entertainment and carefully packaged sermon.

David E. Fitch, who wrote “The Great Giveaway”, writes about how churches seek to be like American business but should “seek to first discover the leadership we have been given in Christ before we seek its reality in the world. If we do anything else, we risk ‘giving away’ the leadership of Christ and exchanging it for American business because of our unexposed confidences in the myths of modernity.”

John Howard Yoder also makes the comment on leadership within the church by saying “evangelicals should seek to discover first what it means to follow Christ in our leadership as a people under his lordship and only then to look to American business and sociology and seek to distinguish which leadership practices we must reject as Christians in the world.”

I think seminaries are great, pastors going to seminaries are great but if we continue to gleam our leadership ideas from American business and then incorporate our theology we are going to continue to fail as a church. Especially if we stay in our walls and learn theology or systematic beliefs. Fitch also quotes in his book that in “postmodern evangelism it requires the evangelical church to take its own salvation seriously as it does other issues and, in the process make its own way of life impossible to ignore as the standard-bearer for what is real and relevant in a fragmented and seeking world.” What if this was the theology held by pastors?

So, I noticed in my last post that I mentioned that I don’t think a lot of the churches are going in the right direction. After much thought, discussion, and reading of Scripture I have come to find a few things.

The first comes from a friend who asked me to name one good thing that has come out of religion? After hearing why this question was asked, I was disappointed because what they were really asking is to name one good thing that has come out of the church. She was thinking church and religion were the same thing. I think she falls in with a majority of believers and non-believers when people associate religion and church as the same thing. For the longest time I believed that as well.

Many people would say that church and religion go together like peanut butter and jelly, which you could make that argument. Church has become a place where people go to talk about and learn about their ‘religion’ - for today’s crowd that means system of beliefs or doctrines taught by that church. But after searching scripture I am convinced that today, in most cases, church and religion should be one but aren’t.

Acts 2:42-47 describes ‘The Fellowship of Believers”
“42They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. 44All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. 46Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”
I realize, this describes the very early early church. In quoting this, it lays the foundation for future churches. Throughout time and history the church has shaped and evolved into a consumer what’s best for all people type of mentality, where you have to be at 3 bible studies, commit to being in a church building twice on Sunday and once on Wednesday, where money is used to build a bigger building, buy more supplies, where in most cases you can’t help someone in need because the person’s information and need, have to go through a committee….. I could go on but I won’t. All these things in our current way of doing church isn’t bad, but is it working?

Maybe I should suggest my current thoughts about how I see church… one that is similar but somewhat different. What if church was just a group of your friends, who meets together, shares meals together, reads and studies the Word together, who prays for one another, sells their possessions together to meet the needs of someone who is in need, goes and shows mercy, justice and grace for all those in need. Who then include people who aren’t believers into their church. Who through time realize that they act this way because God has performed a changed in their life and then themselves see the need for Jesus. If you think about it, aren’t you more apt to learn and struggle when you are with your closest friends. What if this was church?

Back to religion. Many in today’s society take religion as a set of beliefs or doctrinal statements about the Bible, Trinity, Meaning of Baptism, Salvation and etc…. which yes, those things do need to be addressed but they aren’t True Religion. James 1:26-27 says this: 26If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless. 27Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” Throughout scripture you find True Religion described as: defending the cause of the poor and needy, serving those in need, showing mercy to all men = right conduct toward one’s fellowman, acknowledging God in all we do, acting justly, to love showing mercy, to walk humbly with God (obedience to his commands),. feed those who have no inheritance, rescue the poor and fatherless, seek justice for all people, and to encourage the oppressed.

What if this was the church lived out within the community of your friends? What would the church look like if we practiced this kind of religion? Do you think people would see God then? Would we be like the church in Acts where we see people added to the Lord daily?

As Harry Caray would say “Holy Cow!”. If you have never read the book “Don’t Waste Your Life” by John Piper, I highly suggest that you stop what you are doing right now, go to a bookstore, search until you can’t search no more to find this book and read it. It is going to rock your world, turn it upside down, laugh at you, call you names, and make you feel worthless. But hopefully, hopefully it will ignite a passion deep down within you to do something meaningful with your life but more importantly to do something meaningful for the cause of Christ. Here is an excerpt about how American’s and American Christians face an avoidance ethic about what behaviors are acceptable or aren’t:

I can’t recommend this book enough. I have this tugging at my soul that says following Christ is more than sitting in a church building three times during the week and that’s it. Maybe it’s my fault but I know something needs to be different about the way the church as a whole is going.

We’ve all seen them, read them and laughed.  Some are pretty classic, others more random and strange than anything else.  Few make me laugh, others I find annoying.  I don’t know if I necessarily don’t like them but for some reason today….. I want to rip on Christian/Religious bumper stickers.  I mean really?  C’mon!  Is it really going to change the world?  Are they really going to lead the person or family in the car to think about their spirituality or just confirm their hatred of the religion your bumper sticker represents?

Has anyone wasted good money on doing a survey of how many people have come to enlightenment from religious bumper stickers?

I don’t know why this is on me but I think Christ wants us to do more redemptive things than sticking catchy phrases on the back of your car.  How bout build relationships, meet needs and show people the love of Christ instead of showing people you are a crappy religious driver?

Just a thought..

With “No shave November” coming to a close, it got me thinking if there are any other months associated with such as cause. After discussing this with my sister and not being able to come up with another one, she cleverly came up with Dirty Drawers December. Thats right…. One pair of your style of underwear for the whole month. Participate at your own risk and pray for no. …..