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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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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Extreme Christianity III

Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God-this is your spiritual act of worship.

– Rom 12:1

I have read this passage many times, in fact it is one that I have memorized but the context has alluded me to a great degree.  Most commentators divide the book with this verse as the beginning of the second part of the letter, which may be true but the word therefore means that the beginning of the book predicated this verse.  Why would we present ourselves as living sacrifices? Because of all the reasons listed by the apostle in the first 11 chapters.  What it is in those chapters?  The greatest dissertation about on justification by faith in Christ.

Just go and read it out loud to your self it is wonderful…

This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe….we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ…You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly…But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us…

It is this that drives the therefore of 12:1.  Can any of us say we have presented our bodies as living sacrifices to the Lord?  I doubt it.  What would it be like if we would strive in every area of our life to bring Glory to the Lord and his Gospel?  If we lived this life not as our own but purely as God’s what could we accomplish.

I have heard it said that the Christian life is one of moderation but I am starting do doubt that.  I believe it may be intended to be an extreme one, one of extreme love and sacrifice.  I just don’t like what that looks like and how to do it.

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OK, not really all the time but at times it really does; We just got back from Kings Island, an amusement park for those who don’t know.  It was my company picnic and we had rented out the whole park, which was really nice.

King’s Island owns the rights to all the Nickelodeon characters so Alora was very excited to see Dora and Boots and all her favorite characters (If you don’t know who they are then you are lucky.)  Well one of the rides that was themed was a Swiper the Fox ride, another character from Dora.  It is what we always called a whip.  You sit in a car attached to the center of the ride by a bar and the track is oval and when you reach the turn it whips you around.

Well this was the first ride Alora really wanted to ride that we couldn’t ride with her…EVER.  Daddy was not OK with it but we decided to let her go and she was having a great time until the ride started and she hit that turn.  She screamed like someone had just hit her and although we positioned ourselves at each turn to encourage her she screamed the entire time.  I haven’t felt that bad since this day. I was almost crying as much as she was by the time it was over.

To make matters worse they have added seat belts that you can’t open without a key to all the kids rides to prevent children, or their parents from getting them out.  The silly boy running the ride didn’t start with the child who was crying, he started with the one closest to him.  Luckily Alora is so small Heather was able to pull her out of the seat belt.

Well, Alora handled it better than I did because she saw a Diego ride and I showed her it wasn’t just for boys.  It was a nice little merry go round type of ride where she could drive a car in circles.  She rode this and had a great time.

Finally, she decided to ride another driving ride where she would go all over a winding track, again without Daddy.  But she was more prepared than I was in fact by the time she was halfway through I was crying because my little girl was growing up.  As she drove away from me on that track, I can just imagine her driving away from me to go to School.  I am sooooo not ready for that.

I am glad Mark Driscol encouraged me in the fact that it is fine for a man to cry if it involved his daughter because I think I am going to be doing it a lot more in the future.

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This past weekend Heather and I spent the weekend in WV celebrating our six year anniversary. Normally, we have quite an adventure like last year, or our trip up a dirt road that almost got my car to bottom out so we could visit the “Family Fun Center”, or the moonlight canoe ride during a new moon. Let me tell you there is nothing romantic about a pitch black canoe ride, topped off with wine served out of a 10 gallon igloo cooler. I wish I was kidding.

This year was no different, we didn’t plan anything big but we did book an evening on a dinner train out of Elkins WV. We didn’t know anyone who had done it before and we weren’t sure what to expect especially with our track record. We boarded the train and were directed to one of the last three cars. We walked into a car that we prayed was not the fine dining car we had been promised. It was something out of a small town diner, complete with plastic table cloths. But, all in all it was actually a very good time.

Heather and I have been happily married now for six years and it has been great.

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