I’m coming across an awful lot of rumor mill alarmists that are sharing things on Facebook and Twitter without really understanding what they are sharing.  What this amounts to is gossip.  Facebook and Twitter make gossip easy.  You can do it with the click of one “Like” button.

My concern is that in the end, all of this RT’ing and Liking will only result in delaying the Scripture getting to these people groups that so desperately need it.

The above article is an abridged version of this one, which is longer but more detailed.  Please share these articles whenever, wherever, you can.

Which position is your default?

We are the Bride of Christ.  Loved beyond measure, with no borders to His patience, forgiveness, and grace.  We are never beyond repair. Never out of the reach of His transformation.

I believe the Church in America is being romanced by Jesus.  We are being redefined as His Bride, and only His Bride.  We are being ravished by Him – called by name.

This spoken word poem/skit reminds me of who I am as a friend of God.  I hope it does the same for you.

This is what my heart as a pastor beats for.  Pointing people into their destiny to shape and transform the culture that exists beyond the sacred walls of the church.  We do not exist to feed the church building, the programs that fill it, or the budget that pays for it.  We exist to be loved by God and to be unrestricted conduits of that love to a world that is dying to be rescued.

What would church life be like in this world that Alan Scott proposes?  I think it would look and feel a lot more like the book Acts than what we typically experience right now.

But that’s not to say it ALWAYS goes well. Sometimes I have to take DayQuil because a cold has hit me before it’s too late to call in reinforcements. That’s what happened this past week.

When I started the morning on Sunday I had no idea that the day would eventually end with me inspecting the inside of my toilet at home with the kind of scrutiny that only health inspectors and ecoli should endure.

I got out of bed with a dull headache from the cold I had come down with, but was generally feeling better.

Knowing that I would have to be focused for my message in a few hours, I dropped a couple shots of DayQuil. I should have remembered what this unholy elixir does to my tender brain cells, but still I threw caution to the wind and dropped those shots like a Pepto on Bingo night. Had I read the label, I’m now sure it would have read “DayQuil: Meth Formula — for those mornings when that snuffy head, fever, cough, runny nose, achy, sneezy, sinus disease you have can only be dealt with by an over-the-counter methamphetamine”.

I never lost consciousness, but I do vaguely recall the following events in a kind of dreamy, subconsious, chuck-norris-whispering-in-The-Octagon kind of way:

• I forgot how to end worship and start Communion (communion almost always immediately follows worship at KCC). Instead I decided that ending worship and just sitting down on the front row while everyone stared at me confused was a good way to keep things moving. I recall a strange, worried look from our worship leader as if to say, “Dude. What are you doing?”
• I remember several people telling me important things for me to remember prior to the service, but straining my brain to remember them feels a bit like staring intently at one of those “look at this dot until this ugly poster becomes a 3D image of Billy Idol” things at the mall. All I get is a headache and a strange feeling that everyone else is smarter than me.
• At some point in my sermon I wanted to say the word “castrated”, but only in my head. Some little voice said to me, “Don’t say castrated. That’s gross.” So I didn’t say “castrated”. I said, “neutered”. But that wasn’t really what I meant. So I said, “I want to say another word, but can’t. How about I say, ‘impotent’.” Then I realized that was neither what I wanted to say, nor any less gross than “castrated” when you really think about it. But I didn’t want to think about it anymore because thinking (thanks to DayQuil) was only making things worse. So I think I just moved on. At least I hope I did.
• Then I remember Claire Alston speaking about this being her last Sunday at KCC before she leaves for the mission field. It was a big moment. I remember praying for her. I’m sure what I said was fine. Hopefully “neutered, castrated, and impotent” didn’t come up again. Though I’m sure memorable, this would not be the best way to commemorate a new missionary into the field.
• Then I recall driving home willing my insides not to become my outsides as my son Owen tried to talk me into dropping by KFC for a bucket of greasy chicken. I tried to explain, “Daddy feels like he’s about to swallow his appendix from the inside.” but when little boys want chicken they get tunnel vision.

One never appreciates a clean and sanitized toilet, or the loving understanding of church members with a sense of humor more than when the pastor is hopped up on DayQuil.

Here’s to next year’s flu season.

The Christian Church has always been good at mimicry.  We can take just about any successful technology, idea, method, or style and create a Christianized version of it.  Ever hear of GodTube?  Yeah.  YouTube + Jesus.  Christian search engines? Wouldn’t want to come across any sinners, right?  The problem is that as long as we are mimicing and not innovating, the Church will be an obscure, parasitic sub-culture instead of becoming the transformative counterculture that Jesus called it to be.

I’m not calling for a re-creation of the wheel, nor am I saying that history cannot teach us.  Rather, I’m saying that history DOES teach us.  It teaches us that it is the innovative thinkers that in the end lead the culture into the future.  Innovation changes the culture, not parasitic mimicry.  This is the potential danger that I see in the current push for cultural relevancy.  It’s not just that we could lose the message of the gospel. We must be careful to not only refrain from compromising the message, but we must also refrain from falling into the trap of cheap mimicry that seeks to beg, steal, and borrow the most superficial aspects of current culture.  In the end, it just comes off as, well, cheap.

We should be students of culture so that we can see the holes in it where innovation needs to happen.  Cultural savvy is important not only to help us communicate in the vernacular, but more importantly it should give us insight into how those who worship the Creator can enter the culture and transform it with ideas born in the mind of God.

I’m praying that we all learn to be led by the Spirit.  When we mimic Him, we will tap into the ultimate Innovator and we will cease to be irrelevant.

But where are the works of God that I see in this film?  I believe in miracles, but I do not see them like this.

Why is this not happening here?

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[box]Let’s ask the hard questions. Saying that God simply doesn’t do these things anymore is a cop out, is it not? Clearly it’s happening. The hard question is why isn’t it happening in most of our churches. Is this really “normal” Christianity?[/box]