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Political Talk, & Conduct Worthy of the Lord.

8/24/2018

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I'm appalled by the vile verbal river that flows in nearly every forum of public discussion today. There is no excuse for anyone who names the name of Christ for talking in the way we read in chat-threads. As Christian citizens we need to set a higher standard. Even on explosive topics we need to write and speak in self-controlled, godly ways.

At the simplest level of ethic, the Lord does not permit a Christian to talk abusively to others. Merriam-Webster defines "revile" as to inflict verbal abuse about another. This includes profanity, name-calling (such as calling someone an "idiot" or worse), dirty innuendos, and other such things.

Reviling is a serious sin in God's eyes. We're not to associate with revilers (1 Cor. 5:11), revilers are on their way to hell (1 Cor. 6:10), and the Lord lumps it in with other reprehensible sins, such as self-love, greed, boastfulness, arrogance, rebellion against parents, ingratitude, and ungodliness (2 Tim. 3:2). 99% of what I read on Twitter, comment threads, and sites like Reddit pertaining to current-event talk, is reviling. 

Second, God is politically impartial, which should make all politicians of all parties in every nation tremble. God doesn't take sides.  He does not favor Republicans. He does not support the Democrats. Jesus was not a socialist. God is not even an American. 

He is His own side.

Third, God has a moral law. God's law hangs over America like a sword dangling on a thread, and only His mercy holds back the blade. If God's law condemns something, like abortion, homosexuality, needless wars, and the abuse of the poor (which it does), then we Christians are obligated to condemn those things also. God's law condemned Herod for taking his sister-in-law as his wife, and John the Baptist was right to call him out on it. (I bet there were people who called John a snowflake.)

Fourth, Christians in every nation need to remember that this world is not our home. We are not living in the Promised Land. We're more like the Jews in exile in Babylon. We ought to seek the peace of the various places where we all live, but we are not of this world. 

I believe it is possible for Christians to serve honorably in public office. The Bible does not support the Amish way of withdrawal. Total withdrawal from society would betray our commission to be salt and light. Deborah served as a judge. Daniel worked for a pagan government. Isaiah served as a prophet and as a government official. I'm sure it's hard, but with God's help I believe Christians can serve in public elected office, and we should.

But to imitate swinish behavior disgraces the holy name of Christ. If worldlings are tearing each other up, we should take a step back. Do not join in. We need to maintain a higher standard, even if we are mocked as weaklings. We Christians need to set a godly example to a lost and dying world, including when we engage with the heated social issues of the day.

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Top Church-Growth Myths

8/13/2018

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When I attended seminary, our dean was a big fan of the late Donald McGavran and his sociology-based theories of church growth. During the 1980s and 1990s there was also an avalanche of books, seminars, and live-streamed conferences purporting to grow the church of anyone who used the principles. Because I pastor a small congregation (less than 100), I had to wrestle with these ideas, that worked their way into my mind and caused me all kinds of frustration.

Myth #1 is that people want a relationship with God at all. There are Pentecostal church-growth theories, many of which promoted by C. Peter Wagner, that talk as if the only force keeping people from the Lord is the devil. But the Bible says that people by nature dislike God, strongly. His authority offends our desire for freedom, His righteousness makes us feel guilty, and His rules clash against the very things we like (or at least feel normal to us).  We like the gods of our own imaginations, but we sure don't like the real God.

Myth #2 is that a needs-meeting ministry will result in true conversions to Christ. Bob Schuller's old motto was, "Find a need and meet it; find a hurt and heal it." That's a good motto in itself, because it reflects a servant's attitude. We should help people just out of love for neighbor.

People flock to needs-meeting ministries, but then at the same time they'll turn away from the Gospel. Jesus' feeding of the 5,000 in John 6 describes this situation. Crowds of people surrounded Jesus as He healed their sick and made bread and fish for everyone. But at the same time, Christ knew they were only there for the miracles. When He started preaching about Himself being the bread of life, the people turned away. 

Myth #3 is that the preacher is the primary cause of church-growth. Pretty much all of the contemporary church-growth gurus are celebrity pastors, or the writers use celebrity pastors as their examples of how to do it. (To be fair, that wasn't McGavran's focus. He put a lot of emphasis on impersonal ethnic and social forces).

The idea is, if your preacher does certain things, growth was always occur. If growth occurs, it automatically proves God is pleased with your preacher. As one staff-pastor at Willow Creek told a visitor who was caught griping about celebrity preachers, "Bill Hybels has more people in the church bathrooms on a Sunday than you have in your whole church".  In other words, Willow Creek's attendance proved that God approved of Bill Hybels and how he did things.

But the Bible contradicts this myth. Some preachers in the Bible were very popular, but the audiences were hypocritical. Ezekiel was very popular among the Jews in exile, but they also never did what the Lord said. Jesus was very popular, then they killed Him.

God must have been very pleased with Jonah's attitudes, since Jonah had a national revival break out in response to his preaching. Right? Elijah on the other hand must be judged a huge failure, based on numbers; and Jeremiah was an even bigger failure.  Rick Warren said that growth results from the quality of a ministry, so Elijah's quality must have been pretty bad.

You can't use numbers alone to judge a preacher's effectiveness, pro or con. A community's interest in spiritual things shifts like the sands of the seashore shift from one generation to another. The Holy Spirit blows wherever He chooses. One town can be in revival, while the next town over is as cold as a stone.

A community's biases differ. There are some white communities who would never give a black preacher the time of day, no matter how anointed he was.  A community's embedded traditions change from place to place. There are towns where nearly everyone is a Lutheran, and other towns where the people would not even consider visiting a Lutheran church. There are churches where the pastor is fine, but the congregation has a bad community reputation for some reason.

In other words, there are complicated, multiple forces (spiritual, cultural, psychological, styles) at work in every community. To credit all success or all failure to just one man isn't wise. That makes way too much of the man.

I know there definitely are some preachers who are poor at their jobs, or who are ill-fitted to the particular community where they serve. There are preachers who aren't gifted, and they have no business preaching. There are preachers whose foolish attitudes or methods turn people off. But Paul attributed success in preaching to the Lord's working, not to any power in himself or his co-workers (1 Corinthians 3:5-7).

What I'm saying is that a lot of the church-growth material to which I was exposed in past years was unbiblical and simplistic. Much of it was built on an underlying semi-Pelagianism, as if people of this world weren't biased against God. Much of it quoted the Bible selectively, cherry-picking a verse here or there, but Christians leader should develop a rounded, Bible-based approach to church expansion. 

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