Many of you may disagree with me, and thats alright. But I think I am seeing a new way that the Spirit is moving in the world and in people's hearts lately. Please watch it all the way to the end for the full effect. Watch it with your heart and discern what the Spirit is blessing. Check it out:
The Spirit used to move mostly in church, or at least that is my impression. I suspect the Spirit has always moved far more frequently and dramatically outside the church than we ever knew. After, it is the Spirit through which Christ holds all things together with his word (Col) and it is the Spirit who not only ordered the universe (Genesis 1) but probably operationally manages it. I believe the Spirit is always at work in social settings ... like the one in the reality show above. I often sense the Spirit working through the popular Radio Show called Delilah, for example. (In Miami after 7 pm on 97.3)
Stop looking for the Spirit only in church meetings (my impression is that he does not go there much anymore, but I really don't know since I don't go either) and start looking for his initiative all around you, Monday through Saturday in the mundane world. You will be amazed....
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Friday, June 26, 2009
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Do you support Torture?
one of the reasons so many people are dropping out of church, is the terrible image problem that Christians have. Check out this article from CNN
Religion and Torture
As a post-evangelical, post-conservative, I have had to face the fact that my "pro-life" views have been terribly inconsistant. I am personally against abortion, but I have had to re-examine my views on war, torture and capital punishment, and I have found myself moving toward a Quaker-Catholic or anabaptist view on all of these issues of human rights and respect for life.
In a recent book "UnChristian" by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons documents the terrible image problem that evangelical Christians have in contemporary U.S. society. In my own opinion, it is because evangelicals are more "conservative" than they are "Christian" -- they have exchanged their faith for a cause. Below is a quote from the article on torture:
.........................
More than half of people who attend services at least once a week -- 54 percent -- said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is "often" or "sometimes" justified. Only 42 percent of people who "seldom or never" go to services agreed, according to the analysis released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
White evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to say torture is often or sometimes justified -- more than six in 10 supported it. People unaffiliated with any religious organization were least likely to back it. Only four in 10 of them did.
.........................
In my humble opinion, it no wonder that when normal, everyday people find out that someone is a "Christian" they run in the other direction. This is not persecution, this is simply "Christian" stupidity to put it crudely but honestly.
Click here to read the entire article on CNN.com
Saturday, April 4, 2009
The greatest thing you will ever learn....
I have been giving this a lot of thought ... and I have come to the conclusion that the writer in Moulin Rouge was right: the greatest thing you will ever learn is to love and be loved....
Monday, March 16, 2009
Justin Timberlake and the seeds of the LOGOS
Justin Martyr once described Plato as a “Christian” who had some intuitive pre-revelation of the divine LOGOS in Christ (McDermott, 2007:93). He reasoned that if Christ is the Logos who lights up the whole world, then there must be “seeds” of ultimate divine reason or the LOGOS of God scattered in many non-Jewish or non-Christian cultures (of course, this was before there actually existed a “Christian” culture, properly speaking – at the time there was only a growing Christian subculture within Hellenistic and Roman paganism).
Nearly ten years ago, in August of 2001—a very traumatic year as you might remember-I stopped over at my friend Steve Humble’s house to speak at his church. Steve treated me to my first exposure to the FIRST LOVE videos that document the testimonies of most of pioneers of early “Jesus” movement music. Worship, music and testimonies from such musicians as Honeytree, 2nd Chapter of Acts, Chuck Girard and Love Song, Terry Clark, Randy Matthews and Randy Stonehill, and Keith Green posthumously were deeply inspiring and helped me to reconnect with my own “first love” in the months around my visit to Steve. I had listened many of those albums back in the early to mid-seventies. Long Song was the very first Christian worship band I had every been exposed to. At that time John Meadows had an afro and was organizing live Christian rock concerts in Ohio. I attended the one he did with Andre Crouch. (Ok … hang with here, I am going to make point in a moment).
Over the last ten years, I watched the FIRST LOVE videos probably a dozen times, not only for the worship, and the encouragement about loving Jesus, but also with a weeping longing to see the divine initiative of the Spirit again in a new generation that is very lost.
I also used the video’s analytically, as a way of getting at primary oral histories of the beginnings of the Jesus movement (I didn’t realize that was what I was doing until I got into the methods class in the history department).
Here are a couple of facts about the pioneers of the Jesus movement:
LOVE SONG wrote a lot of their much of their best “spiritual” music of devotion to God and Jesus BEFORE they became Christians. After they were initially baptized, they went out and got “high” to celebrate.
Keith Green was writing devotional music to God BEFORE he was a Christian, while he was still a secular Jew. In the interview, Melody Green reads from his journal about his passion for God months before his official conversion.
The same kind of testimony is shared repeatedly by artist after artist. Only three of the pioneers out of nearly twenty, were raised as Christians, and they were not the prime movers of the early Jesus movement music.
Conclusion: Most of the impetus for the Jesus movement came through the activity of the Spirit working through marginalized secular young people who were desperate. After they were already tracking along with the Spirit, they became involved with Calvary Chapel or The FourSquare church and some with the discipleship movement, and others later with the Vineyard. A separate discussion would be to look at the fruit of these "church" movements today and to ask oneself if the discipling they received was a good thing or not so good.
My point:
If another "Jesus" movement is ever to come to those young people born after 1982 (and there is some sociological support for this generation to be a strong and activist generation: See Strauss and Howe, 1992), it will not likely originate within the church. It will originate with the initiative of the Spirit OUTSIDE the walls among hurting, lost and desperate kids.
check out this Youtube video by a rapper named T.I. and Justin Timberlake
I discern the activity and the LOGOS of the Spirit speaking through their song, “Dead and Gone” amidst some really bad words by our evangelical baby boomer sensitivities. I think the Spirit is already moving in the hip hop generation in a similar fashion to what He did in 1968-1971 in the hippie movement. The question is, do we have the “ears to hear” through young people who may be as offensive to us, as the long-haired hippies were offensive to our parents generation? (I was one of them). Are they doctrinally correct? Highly unlikely. Is the Spirit moving in them? I really think so. You may disagree with me.
Second question: If this is true, how will we disciple them? (assuming they give us an opportunity). Will we raise up some new Calvary Chapels? Or can we do better than that? Even more important, how can we connect with those rappers and gangsters (vampire and tribal people?) in whom the Spirit is already at work so that we EVEN HAVE A CHANCE to offer some discipleship? Hint: it won’t happen at church on Sunday morning.
Nearly ten years ago, in August of 2001—a very traumatic year as you might remember-I stopped over at my friend Steve Humble’s house to speak at his church. Steve treated me to my first exposure to the FIRST LOVE videos that document the testimonies of most of pioneers of early “Jesus” movement music. Worship, music and testimonies from such musicians as Honeytree, 2nd Chapter of Acts, Chuck Girard and Love Song, Terry Clark, Randy Matthews and Randy Stonehill, and Keith Green posthumously were deeply inspiring and helped me to reconnect with my own “first love” in the months around my visit to Steve. I had listened many of those albums back in the early to mid-seventies. Long Song was the very first Christian worship band I had every been exposed to. At that time John Meadows had an afro and was organizing live Christian rock concerts in Ohio. I attended the one he did with Andre Crouch. (Ok … hang with here, I am going to make point in a moment).
Over the last ten years, I watched the FIRST LOVE videos probably a dozen times, not only for the worship, and the encouragement about loving Jesus, but also with a weeping longing to see the divine initiative of the Spirit again in a new generation that is very lost.
I also used the video’s analytically, as a way of getting at primary oral histories of the beginnings of the Jesus movement (I didn’t realize that was what I was doing until I got into the methods class in the history department).
Here are a couple of facts about the pioneers of the Jesus movement:
LOVE SONG wrote a lot of their much of their best “spiritual” music of devotion to God and Jesus BEFORE they became Christians. After they were initially baptized, they went out and got “high” to celebrate.
Keith Green was writing devotional music to God BEFORE he was a Christian, while he was still a secular Jew. In the interview, Melody Green reads from his journal about his passion for God months before his official conversion.
The same kind of testimony is shared repeatedly by artist after artist. Only three of the pioneers out of nearly twenty, were raised as Christians, and they were not the prime movers of the early Jesus movement music.
Conclusion: Most of the impetus for the Jesus movement came through the activity of the Spirit working through marginalized secular young people who were desperate. After they were already tracking along with the Spirit, they became involved with Calvary Chapel or The FourSquare church and some with the discipleship movement, and others later with the Vineyard. A separate discussion would be to look at the fruit of these "church" movements today and to ask oneself if the discipling they received was a good thing or not so good.
My point:
If another "Jesus" movement is ever to come to those young people born after 1982 (and there is some sociological support for this generation to be a strong and activist generation: See Strauss and Howe, 1992), it will not likely originate within the church. It will originate with the initiative of the Spirit OUTSIDE the walls among hurting, lost and desperate kids.
check out this Youtube video by a rapper named T.I. and Justin Timberlake
I discern the activity and the LOGOS of the Spirit speaking through their song, “Dead and Gone” amidst some really bad words by our evangelical baby boomer sensitivities. I think the Spirit is already moving in the hip hop generation in a similar fashion to what He did in 1968-1971 in the hippie movement. The question is, do we have the “ears to hear” through young people who may be as offensive to us, as the long-haired hippies were offensive to our parents generation? (I was one of them). Are they doctrinally correct? Highly unlikely. Is the Spirit moving in them? I really think so. You may disagree with me.
Second question: If this is true, how will we disciple them? (assuming they give us an opportunity). Will we raise up some new Calvary Chapels? Or can we do better than that? Even more important, how can we connect with those rappers and gangsters (vampire and tribal people?) in whom the Spirit is already at work so that we EVEN HAVE A CHANCE to offer some discipleship? Hint: it won’t happen at church on Sunday morning.
Monday, March 9, 2009
The Frog in the kettle continues to boil....
More Americans say they have no religion
By RACHEL ZOLL, AP Religion Writer Rachel Zoll, Ap Religion Writer – Mon Mar 9, 12:14 am ET
A wide-ranging study on American religious life found that the Roman Catholic population has been shifting out o of the Northeast to the Southwest, the percentage of Christians in the nation has declined and more people say they have no religion at all.
Fifteen percent of respondents said they had no religion, an increase from 14.2 percent in 2001 and 8.2 percent in 1990, according to the American Religious Identification Survey.
Northern New England surpassed the Pacific Northwest as the least religious region, with Vermont reporting the highest share of those claiming no religion, at 34 percent. Still, the study found that the numbers of Americans with no religion rose in every state.
"No other religious bloc has kept such a pace in every state," the study's authors said.
In the Northeast, self-identified Catholics made up 36 percent of adults last year, down from 43 percent in 1990. At the same time, however, Catholics grew to about one-third of the adult population in California and Texas, and one-quarter of Floridians, largely due to Latino immigration, according to the research.
Nationally, Catholics remain the largest religious group, with 57 million people saying they belong to the church. The tradition gained 11 million followers since 1990, but its share of the population fell by about a percentage point to 25 percent.
Christians who aren't Catholic also are a declining segment of the country.
By RACHEL ZOLL, AP Religion Writer Rachel Zoll, Ap Religion Writer – Mon Mar 9, 12:14 am ET
A wide-ranging study on American religious life found that the Roman Catholic population has been shifting out o of the Northeast to the Southwest, the percentage of Christians in the nation has declined and more people say they have no religion at all.
Fifteen percent of respondents said they had no religion, an increase from 14.2 percent in 2001 and 8.2 percent in 1990, according to the American Religious Identification Survey.
Northern New England surpassed the Pacific Northwest as the least religious region, with Vermont reporting the highest share of those claiming no religion, at 34 percent. Still, the study found that the numbers of Americans with no religion rose in every state.
"No other religious bloc has kept such a pace in every state," the study's authors said.
In the Northeast, self-identified Catholics made up 36 percent of adults last year, down from 43 percent in 1990. At the same time, however, Catholics grew to about one-third of the adult population in California and Texas, and one-quarter of Floridians, largely due to Latino immigration, according to the research.
Nationally, Catholics remain the largest religious group, with 57 million people saying they belong to the church. The tradition gained 11 million followers since 1990, but its share of the population fell by about a percentage point to 25 percent.
Christians who aren't Catholic also are a declining segment of the country.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
