How can you know someone you that you know nothing about? It has recently become the avant-garde thing to do to once again proclaim no creed but Christ and to know God outside of church, doctrine or creed. But my question is how do you do that?

I was one of the few people I know who were really discipled. Don Nonnenman took me under his wing and he taught me what he felt was important, then I spent two years in Bible College, and 8 years as a heavily active member of the church that sponsored the college. I still feel woefully uninformed when it comes to orthodox thoughts on Christianity. I learned a lot of about word of faith practices and how to “work the Word” for all that it is worth but very little about the core beliefs that make Christianity what it is.

Having not grown up in church I was never subject to Catechism or even much more than a very basic Sunday school experience. Heather and I have spent some time reviewing Catechisms for ourselves and our girls so that they will know what to believe and why as they grow up. Just from an anecdotal evidence I see very little proof that those young people who have grown up in church know much more about Christianity than those who have not been to church before.

Christian Smiths book Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers interviews thousands of young people from many different church backgrounds and he discovered that many of our church kids follow what he describes as therapeutic moralistic deism and not orthodox Christianity. Could this be because we have gotten away from tougher deeper teaching to in order to be attractive to consumer driven seekers? I am not sure but I believe it must be considered.

In her new book “Quitting Church: Why the Faithful are Fleeing and What to Do about It
” Julia Duin (pronounced dean) talks about the new reformed churches that are a growing number of churches that are gaining popularity. Churches like Mars Hill in Seattle is taking on tough questions and would never be accused of being seeker sensitive. Pastor Mark Driscoll pulls no punches with his devotion to the Gospel which he admits is an offense to most who hear it. He uses all the larger words of the Bible that many shy away from for the fear of sounding to religious.

The question becomes whether or not Christianity will be able to separate itself from any general spirituality that surrounds it. Although on paper we may be able to I don’t know of those who call themselves Christians can articulate the difference.

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It is all about the Gospel.

Last week at our house church I heard probably the greatest message on sex and marriage I have ever heard. The reason was because it went past pop psychology to the gospel and how our fallen nature affects our marriages. The Gospel should always be at the center of our lives, ministries, marriages and blogs.
The message was by Mark Driscoll and I will embed it here in the post if you would like to see it and I suggest you do…

The trouble with many marriages including my own is that we never plan for sin. We have a financial plan, a plan for raising our children, and plans for our vacation but not a plan for sin. I am a sinner, I am evil by nature and I married a sinner who is evil by nature, that doesn’t make for a sinless marriage. Pastor Mark Driscoll calls us to account for that in our marriages.

I am a shamefully proud person and it is very difficult for me to admit I am wrong. I will argue points I don’t even agree with just to ‘win’ the argument at times. This has hindered me in many relationships but consistently with my wife. After hearing from God on the details of this issue we are working on it together but we must consider the fact that we are fallen people and we will hurt one another.

One of the parts of the message that really touched me was when Mark’s wife joined him for the Q&A at the end and he asked the question if he deserved to be forgiven by her when he sins. The answer is no, forgiveness is mercy and grace which is by nature not deserved. The issues is not that we deserve to be forgiven by God or our spouses but that we forgive because God forgives.

I really hope and pray that Heather and I can live the gospel out more and more in our marriage so that our girls can truly understand the majesty of the glory of God.

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Every year since this blog has been up it seems like I have a large number of readers at the very beginning of the year only to have the numbers drop back down to average by February or March. I assume that is because every year I attempt to read the Bible all the way through and encourage others to do so as well. People come by to see how things are going and check the schedule only to fall off the bandwagon like so many other resolutions.

Again this year I am going to be reading the Bible, I haven’t decided on a schedule as of yet but I would like to know what would help you meet the goal of reading God’s word? I could do a newsletter/mailing list of encouragement, or set up a forum to discuss what we are reading, a podcast of the daily reading? I am willing to try anything if it will help people read God’s word.

I think it is important for everyone to read and understand the Bible, how else will we know what God said versus what we have always thought. It is the primary way God speaks to us, and most of us, including myself ignore it far too much.

Let me know if you are interested in partaking or helping this year.

Drop a comment and let me know what you think.

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Last week I wrote a little on our financial woes but I wanted to look on the other side.  You know in this time of financial trouble it is easy to loose track of important matters in our panic.  It is very possible that if we do things right, the church of Christ could truly thrive in the midst of trouble.

One of the founding factors in this trouble has been increasing energy costs.  That means that everything is going to be more expensive and that includes the huge mega churches that we have been building.  I don’t think we are going to see an increase in their number because they are simply going to be priced out of existence.   But that isn’t necessarily bad news; it means we are going to have to adjust to new ways of doing things.

I believe one of the reasons the Bible doesn’t give any prescriptions on how the church should operate is because God knew it would have to thrive in many cultures throughout the ages.  I think we will have some great advantages if we take advantage of them.

1. We can eliminate some of the more useless programs that simply attract the “Serve us” instead of the Service Christian.

Let’s face it as an organization we have tried every marketing ploy and outrageous idea in order to attract people to the church.  Some have been affective but most have been laughable.  Now maybe we will be forced back to the basics.

2. Smaller organizations

I have spoken many times about the benefit of smaller organizations but it never hurts to do it again.  We may actually be able to build community in smaller churches with more ease.  Less wasted money because there will be less to waste.

Small organizations have a higher percentage of involvement.  When you can’t simply pay someone to do the work the leader’s job really becomes “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ,”

3. No more prosperity

False prosperity gospels had an easy time flourishing in the soil of our rapidly rising economy but when things are turning around I think it will cause people to be a little more discerning.

4. Building Community

I have touched on it a little but I believe our economic times have helped us to ignore one another.  My child hood home didn’t have Air conditioning and my mom used to sit out front and so did the rest of the neighbor hood we would talk to each other.  If we actually turn the AC up and have to go out side it might be nice.

Or it may be difficult to go out on the town so we may have to have people over for an evening; there is something much different about inviting people into your home.  Let us not forget how the gospel was spread from house to house in the early church.

Heather and I have recently taken a friend into a spare room in our house, she needed a place to stay and we had a room.  It seemed only right that we offered her our spare room it wasn’t quite a necessity but who knows it may be depending on how bad things get.

We can’t always do what has always worked but we can always find new ways of doing things for the sake of the Gospel.

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On the heels of my extrmeme Christianity blogs I thoutht it would be good to point out that I am not the only one feeling this way.  This is a great little post I just stumbled across.

Dorie Morgan’s Rising Up » Wasteful Spending in Suburbia » Navigating Twenty-Something Suburban Life

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A recent Time magazine article looks at just that. The author notes that these prosperity preachers have been telling people for years:

That God will “make a way” for poor people to enjoy the better things in life — had developed an additional, dangerous expression during the subprime-lending boom. Walton says that this encouraged congregants who got dicey mortgages to believe “God caused the bank to ignore my credit score and blessed me with my first house.” The results, he says, “were disastrous, because they pretty much turned parishioners into prey for greedy brokers.”

It also caused some people to ignore their current income and the obvious results of an ARM assuming that God would have doubled their income by now, but in most cases he hasn’t.

That branch of the church has been left with very little good financial sense, people are just as in debt as the rest of the world. I myself and struggling with the hangover of a little of this easy credit drug, I do not feel able to give what I would like to because of my current financial situation, and believe me, I am not as bad off as some people I know. Or lack of biblical sense and financial sense along with the financial situation of the time has left us washed up on the beach after being pounded against the sand.

It seems that we have gotten into a place as a people where we don’t want to know about God through old fashioned ideas like doctrine; we simply want to know God through what ever means that could be. We are super humans who can ignore common sense and the rules of the universe and human nature. You can not know someone if you know nothing about them; human or divine.

I am becoming more and more convinced that it will be this group of “Christians” that will be part of the great falling away because they have no root of doctrine to hold to but are like that double minded man James talked about; thrown about by every wave of doctrine. Orthodoxy (correct thinking) leads to orthopraxy (right living).

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