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I was reminded the other day that Jesus was accused of being “a friend of sinners”. That was supposed to be an insult to Christ. But it turns out to be a great source of hope to all of us. We all know we are full of sin and fall short of God’s glory, but God is gracious. God in His grace allowed Jesus to hang out with unrespectable people. So I am just thinking here out loud, if our congregations are full of respectable people – then could it be said that we have not truly grasped the radical grace of God. Just a thought, any comments.
My two sons are getting excited about the opportunity to go “trick or treating”. They are talking about what they want to go as. Nathan wants to be a good guy off of Star Wars and Nole wants to go as a bad guy off of Star Wars.
Yes my wife and I allow or kid’s to beat on total stranger’s doors to beg for candy.
Some people I know will not allow their kids to “trick or treat”. Instead they let them dress up as Bible characters and go to a “Harvest Festival” or “Trunks of Treat” at their local church.
I see no harm in either of these.
To each his own.
What do you guys think?
Did you get to go “trick or treating” as a kid?
Do you let your kids go “trick or treating”?
What does your family do on Halloween?
Love him or hate him, Mark Driscoll is reaching people for Christ. Although many think he is too harsh with is language and controversial preaching. I say, “No he’s right on track.” I myself listen to his podcast quite regularly. He is speaking out on topics that most pastors do not want to talk about whether out of fear of making people mad, losing members, or they are just plane cowards.
Pastors find themselves in a very strange place now days in the church world. In that nobody wants to hear about God getting angry at the sin in their lives. Rather what ten things can we do in our lives to have “our best life now.” What pastors have to realize (and I am one of them) is that preaching the gospel is not easy or pretty at times. We are supposed to tell the congregation what the consequences of sin are. We are to tell the people what God likes and dislikes in their lives and most importantly it is to be Christ centered. Since when did preaching the gospel ever become about succeeding in life, making everyone like you, gaining wealth, and so on?
I think what stumps most evangelicals concerning Mark Driscoll and others like him is we find it hard to believe that someone can be relevant in today’s culture and at the same time be biblically conservative. I think why this stumps so many is because we ourselves want to be just like that: being relevant to the ever changing world to reach them, while still holding on to our conservative biblical truths.
Instead of letting these two topics stump us we need to be asking ourselves, is there anything here that I can learn from? I don’t think Mark Driscoll is being culturally relevant just to be cool, but rather he is trying to answer the tuff questions that the cultural is asking – that other pastors don’t want to touch. Like sex & sexuality, alcohol, what it means to be a real godly man or godly woman and so on.
A lot of what Mark Driscoll is preaching is nothing new. Just a few generations before us we see men preaching hard against sin. Sadly, many pastor have gotten scared to look at someone in the eyes and tell them what they are doing is wrong and that it will send them to hell. They would rather tell their people what God could do for them. Over the next month, see how many times your pastor preaches a salvation message, it just might shock you. Shouldn’t we hear the salvation message preached every time a sermon is delivered, I say yes we should! For what other reason do we do church if it is not to bring in other lost people into God’s flock and to constantly remind the righteous what Christ did for us on the cross.
Sadly many churches need to wake up and listen to a culture that is crying out in search of truth. We need to realize that many of our programs and fuzzy warm sermons are not answering the questions that the culture is asking. The church would be better off if it could just let go of some of it’s “sacred cows” and get back to giving biblical truths to tough questions.
Next the church needs to move outside of its comfort zone if it has any hope in reaching today’s culture. We have become to “churchy” for our own sake. We have hidden in the four walls of the church for so long that we have disconnected from culture so much that we forgotten to go out and actually be the church. So we have become an elitist club that gets embarrassed when the culture asks us questions dealing with sex and the like.
This may or may not come as a shock to many of you, but the Bible has plenty to say on hard topics like sex. It also answers the hardest question of them all, what must a person do to be saved. So question to the church is, it willing to do what it takes to answer the culture in a way that is culturally relevant but also biblically conservative?
Seth Godin, the crème de la crème of bloggers and the author of a book entitled “Tribes”, states that a Tribe is a group of people that come together for a common interest or cause. A tribe can be any size and their interest can range from a group of people that trade stamps together, to diehard U2 fans. Tribes usually start out small, but if it is a great tribe it usually grows into something great – something of which people take notice.
And this is what sparked my curiosity of the term “tribe” and the connection it could have with the church. It is my view that Jesus Christ started the greatest tribe ever. He started out with twelve men and turned his tribe into one of the biggest tribes anyone has ever seen. But when a tribe gets to big, can it lose the main reason why it became a tribe in the first place? We have a Church on every street corner; you’d think we are in competition with McDonalds.
It is my opinion that many have lost their passion to be in this tribe, we call the church. I’m sure they joined for good reasons: like to save their spirit from eternal hell in the after life or maybe some joined to feed the poor or help the sick. However isn’t it funny how after a while we can get sidetracked and lose focus on the main agenda of the tribe. Let’s face it, if we the church are not fulfilling the “Great Commission”, which is the tribe’s mission statement – then we are not helping the tribe grow in the right way. Christ never stated anywhere in the Bible, at least not what I have read – that once your in this thing for a while you can take a leave of absence or pass the torch over to someone else. But isn’t that the attitude of so many Christians (though I would question if they really are Christians with this attitude) we know. I can hear them now saying, “I’ve put my time in, it’s time for someone else now” or “God hasn’t called me to serve, but to be a student of His word”. PLEASE, this kind of talk makes me want to vomit! You would never walk up to you’re boss at work and say well I’ve put my time in, I am just going to show up to work everyday and just watch everyone else work. NO, you would be fired. Man aren’t many Christians lucky that God is not like that!
If we are to truly be a church — a body of believers — a tribe, – each one of us have to pull are own weight to make “this thing of ours” (quoting from Tony Soprano) great. God wants workers. We have no time to rest. There will be plenty of that when we get our reward. However for now let us labor and get our hands dirty — for we know our labor will not be in vain.
As for me, the tribe I want to see us become is special. It is worth fighting for, losing sleep over and working until I am tired – because my tribal Leader did the same for me. There are still far too many that are not yet in the tribe that need to be. I just hope my other fellow tribesmen feel the same way.
