Youth Evangelism - The Elephant in the Room

In all of my years of being a Christian (I received Christ as an adult), I've never heard anyone talk about what I am going to present here. There is a lot of talk from emergents to Third Wave Charismatics, as well as in other church movements about youth being "missional." Youth are supposed to jump at this chance to practice "relational evangelism." I think relational evangelism is great. However, are we really seeing our youth jump at this chance? A few are evangelizing their schoolmates. But there are always a few who do. What about the rest of the Christian youth? The majority?

What no youth pastor, youth movement director or others working with Christian youth want to confront - and it is always the elephant in the room that no one wants to acknowledge - - is.........the middle school/junior high/high school societal groupings. The common vernacular for this is cliques. You know - - the jocks, the dweebs, the nerds, the druggies, the hip-hoppers, the cheerleaders, the student body officer types, and so forth. IN fact, recently there is now on campus "Christian" cliques. TO ask our youth to transcend these groupings IMO is nigh impossible and somewhat cruel, if there is no direction and solutions given. And I never see that direction coming forth from the churches or youth ministries. They basically never talk about it.

So, does anyone out there have any solutions to this dilemma? What should we tell our Christian youth about relating to those "outside their group?" How can they start conversations with members of a different clique than their own? Or can they?

I realize that some of you might think California is the land of the fruits and the nuts. However, perhaps you should visit our churches out here; you might learn a thing or two. In my 43 years of being a Christian here (Southern California) and being a member of many diverse evangelical churches, both Charismatic/Pentecostal and non-C/P, I have never seen anything like I hear from the red states. Greg Boyd, the open view guy - and I certainly don't agree with that theolology - pastors a church in Minnesota. He had the audacity to say to his church that....

the church should steer clear of politics, give up moralizing on sexual issues, stop claiming the United States as a “Christian nation” and stop glorifying American military campaigns.

“When the church wins the culture wars, it inevitably loses,” Mr. Boyd preached. “When it conquers the world, it becomes the world. When you put your trust in the sword, you lose the cross.”

Frankly, I have never seen nor heard of this type of preaching in churches out here. I don't recall the last time I saw an American flag in a church here and on July fourth most have a regular Bible message, not a Christian Right message. No one in their right mind here would talk about who to vote for. At times abortion might be mentioned and a few times homosexuality. But since we are overloaded out here by the gay community, we have to be careful not to hurt them so they won't come. Not that they come anyway - we are not having much luck out here either in attracting the homosexual/lesbian/transgendered community to church. I guess we all have to work on that one.

You can read the entire article about Boyd's sermons, his forth coming book, and how many people left his church over this issue(20%) HERE.

20% left his church over this? And not the open view teaching? Are people in the Midwest crazy??



My thanks to the post at TotemtoTemple for cluing me in on this.

Around the Blogosphere

Some very, very good stuff at other blogs this week. I do hope you will read them all.

*Here is some info from Slice of Laodicea:

(commentary is mine) Judgment House is coming soon courtesy of Winn's Baptist Church. It is a story of two people, one a Christian and the other not. They die in a "calamity" and one goes to heaven and one goes to hell. This seems to be used as an evangelistic tool by the church.

Oh yes, suggested "donation" to hear the gospel in this presentation is $3.00. Well, actually it's to cover the cost of the hotdogs, drinks, chips and popcorn they will be serving. Ingrid, from Slice makes a beautiful observation about this:

You can see the Day of Wrath for yourself and then when the show is over you can munch popcorn, hot dogs, chips and a drink while you think it over. What would really scare most Americans would be the absence of snack food.

LOL....Inrid....I love it...:)

*Youth Pastor Skip has the neatest job at Central Baptist. The ministry is going great and growing; and the church and parents love it and him. He starts a coffee house at the youth facility of the church and it's booming (with mostly church kids from his and other churches). But something troubles him. They aren't reaching the non-Christian kids. Skip wants to go to the "other" part of town and rent a building for a coffee house as an outreach to those kids. He brings this up at a staff meeting. And the reaction of the other pastors and staff is......well, you've got to read what happens next at Internet Monk - The Coffee House: A Story. Tomorrow I will blog on this more.

*“ACTS 2:42 - And they were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ new bestsellers and to small group meetings, to the eating of Krispy Kreme donuts in the church foyer and to contemplative spirituality.
43 And everyone kept feeling the bass from the praise and worship rock band; and many video clips and light shows were taking place through the apostles.
44 And all those who had believed were together at three different services, and had casual attire in common;
45 and they began selling their stocks and bonds, and were giving the proceeds to the building campaign, as the church might have need."

TotemtoTemple - An Act of Satire has recorded Andrew Strom's great satire on Acts 2. The satire would be funny if it wasn't so true...:(

*I love Steve Camp's blog. In his most recent posting he asks the question: Are There Any Men of God in the EC Movement Who Stand for Biblical Truth and Are Willing to Confront Error Head ON? Ok...are you sitting down? Are you ready? He actually asks WHY no EC (emergent church) leader is disciplining Brian McLaren. And folks, Camp is serious. Hooray for him.

*For one of the most unusual descriptions of the Bible story form Genesis to Revelation, you've got to read Life is a Buffet - Polly's Book of the Month. Here's a sample:

Author: God
Synopsis: God creates the universe and a man and a woman and then the story blasts off from there with an ending that is out of this world.
Publication date: Ages ago.
Genre: This book covers most all the genres except fiction.

and a portion of the "Book" review......

I'm sorry to give away the whole plot and ending, but it's just too exciting to keep it a secret. Don't worry, though. I understand from the ending of the book that there will definitely be a sequel to this one. There's no date set just yet, but I'm assured it will happen. I believe it's going to be titled something like, "Jesus Returns!"

Personal Evangelism - Then and Now

A few years ago I visited my local Christian bookstore to see if they still had books on personal evangelism (as opposed to oversea missions). I found a few on the dusty, dark back shelves, beyond the Spanish section. I had to get on my hands and knees to find the 8 or 9 books the store carried. I found this same sad state of affairs in other Christian bookstores too.

But in the 1960's - boy! Were things different! Evangelism was all the rage. The evangelism books on how to win your neighbor, fellow housewife, fellow student and people at work were in the bookstore windows and on the front shelves as soon as you walked into the store. I mean even in this same Christian bookstore. What happened?

Last Sunday in my Sunday School class I commented that evangelism had gone out the door during the 80's and 90's and beyond. I related to the class the story of my visits to my local Christian bookstore. After class a man came up to me and told me that he rarely hears anyone talk about person to person evangelism anymore. He seemed excited that I even knew about it. It turns out this gentleman was the Campus Crusade staff member at Stanford University. Since I was in Crusade during my college years, I was really glad to meet and talk with him.

So, what has happened to personal evangelism? I think at least two factors have driven the topic to the back bookstore shelves. First of course, the "meism" that has invaded the church courtesy of the Baby Boomers. For a while, we saw books on the closest shelves to the front door on how to have a successful life, marriage and so forth.
Second - and I think this was a big factor - there was way too much hit and run evangelism in years back. People felt they were scalps on your evangelism belt, rather than people you cared about. The backlash to this was just to forget evangelism.
But there is good news today and I hate to say this - but the emergents are influencing this trend. Now if they can just get the message straight, it would be very effective IMO. And what is this trend? We are now being encouraged to do what is called "relational evangelism." I personally believe the relational evangelism people are right on. This is how we should have been doing it all along. Relational evangelism is simply getting to know people and loving them (as well as you can -of course you may need to ask the Holy Spirit for help on this...:)). And, do stuff with them. This is what was missing in the 60's because the pervasive legalism of "we cannot do anything with non-Christians" was still ruling many facets of the church at large. However, there is a caution here. And this is where the emergents and others IMO are going over that fine line. We have to be discerning in WHAT we do with the unbeliever.
One more extremely important consideration in personal evangelism is the leading of the Holy Spirit. This is where a dose of Calvinist thinking really comes in handy. Assume the Holy Spirit is leading you to certain people (or person). Now you can relax and not mentally "stalk" someone "to witness to." You wait for the Holy Spirit to open the door, all the while praying He will of course. If we can combine the relational evangelism with the correct leading of the Holy Spirit, we might just get it right this time around. I certainly hope so.
By the way, all of this came up because of a post I read at Dan Edelen's blog, Cerulean Sanctum entitled, Gut Check #1. In his post he asks this question:

In the course of your lifetime, how many people have you led to Christ?
I'm wondering if that is the wrong question? Perhaps it needs to be, "How many people has the Holy Spirit led you to talk with about Christ in your lifetime?" And, did you spend time with these people first? Or was it another "hit and run?"

Disclaimer: I realize there are times when God leads us to someone we don't know well. Also, there are people who are evangelists (see Eph. 4:11) who do this a lot and are good at reaching people they don’t know well. However for the rest of us.......well.......you know.........

Book Review: Faith of My Fathers

I've been reading a most interesting book recently. It's called Faith of My Fathers, wriiten by emergent pastor Chris Seay.
Chris brought together his two bothers, one the worship leader at Chris's emergent church and the other working for a music booking agency. In addition to himself and his two brothers, the conversation included his grandfather, a pastor during the 50's and 60's; his father, a pastor during the 70's 80's and 90's; and Chris' close friend Donald Miller - yes THAT Donald Miller - of Blue Like Jazz fame. All of the Seays are affiliated with the Southern Baptist denomination. Their conversations were basically about how church was done in their generations and under their ministries.

Chris actually pastors two congregations in one church. The morning congregation he does the old fashioned way because the members are between ages 60 and 99. At night he does the younger emergent church in the same building.
The topics included generational issues; female advances to pastors; attitudes of each generation toward homosexuality, abortion and church music styles; their famlies and the ministry balancing act; finances; and racism in the church.
One of the more fascinating sections of the book was the conversation about what congregations wanted - and didn't want - in each genertion. For grandfather, they wanted gospel preaching - that is how to get sved. But they didn't want verse by verse teaching. However, he knew they couldn't grow without good exegetical teaching, so he did more of that. A few even left the church over it.
Dad, on the other hand had no trouble with that type of teaching. His congregations came to expect it. The wars in his church were over music styles. And now the son is pastoring and he finds that the generation in the emergent service requires lots of question-discussion type of presentations and short story-type sermons. Chris tells how he has to go back to the Hebrew Midrash type of learning (asking questions), instead of the didactic type (lecturing). And they certainly do not wish to hear about hell, fire and brimstone. But that is what the 1950's congregations expected from granddad. Granddad also talked about how you always followed the bulletin and never varied from it or people got upset. Of course in the emergent church, they would say, "what bulletin?" What's a bulletin?"
Snce Chris Seay pastors an emergent church, I of course was interested in his thoughts. I The most fascinating part to me, theologically, was his view of those "in the community of the church." His father and grandfather found it disturbing. I did too.....sort of.
Here is that part of the conversation,
Robbie (Chris' brother): A few Sundays ago we had two lesbian women who come to our church sitting on the first row. And our biggst hope and prayer is that they actually join our community bcause we just don't feel like there is hope for them outside the community to ever realize the grace of God unless they get in with people who love them and nuture them. That is the most important thing to me - the way we appraoch church membership and our association with them when it comes to repentence.
Dad: I guess it depends on what you mean by 'join the community.' I mean it's one thing to be in relationship with the family, so that you might have a redemptive relationship. It's another thing to be publicly and officially indentified as a believer, a professing believer. And if you accept them as professing believers when they are unrepentent in a sin that the Scripture says....
Robbie: We would profess our public belief through baptism. That is our public profession of belief, and the way we view it is, 'Please come join so that we can walk with you.'
Dad; I guess we would not use the word 'join' because of the baggage. Are you going to baptize an unregenerate person? My plea to them (some who left my church becauwe of our stand against active sin) was, 'You know this is our stand, but hear me clearly, we love you. We want you to be a part.'
Grand dad: What if a couple [heterosexual] comes down and they want to join the church and they are just living together they are not married - do we accept them [as church members]?
Chris: In the community I think we do, yes.
Dad: Would you baptize them if they weren't repentent of their sin?
Chris: Probably not, no. That is the challenge: it's like all those things. We baptize ungenerate people every week [he means here that everyone has some type of sin].

Chris and Robbie's point was equalizing sin instead of having a hierarchy. In other words, why do we accept gossips as church members but not homosexuals living together? They have a good point, but to me the emergents need to tighten up the line. I think dad and granddad are basically pointing out the key here - repentence. It's one thing for people to say "I am going to try to change now that I have accepted Christ." But it's still another to say, "Now that I have accepted Christ I live in grace and I can continue in sin." But what is even more grievious to me is the idea of accepting into church membership and baptism non-Christians - people who don't even pretend to make a profession of Christ. And that is just ONE reason I have oodles of trouble with the emergents.

Tnegreme*

Throughout the Christian blogosphere, as well as on email lists and forums, there is much talk about Gary Gilley's series on the Emergent church.

You can read his three-part series here:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

After reading his series, a trigger about the emergents was once again set off in me. So, yesterday's post as well as todays and perhaps a few more will be on the subject of the emergent church.

This year Modern Reformation magazine has been doing a series on the book of Romans. As I review their outline of themes for each issue this year, it struck me that the emergents were actually going backwards in Romans instead of the usual forwards.

Here is the Modern Reformation magazine progression:
Romans 1:1-17- introduction
Romans 1-2 - God reveals Himself in general revelation and natural law
Romans 2-4 - How good is "good?" The sin factor.
Romans 5-8 - Our righteousness is in Christ but now the war between flesh and spirit begins.
Romans 9-11 - Israel and God's divine will
Romans 12-16 - How we carry out our salvation in living before the world.


Here is the Emergent progression:
Romans 12-16 - How we carry out our salvation in living before the world.
Romans 9-11 - rarely mentioned
Romans 5-8 - THis is where they usually get bogged down, confused, and stopped.

The B-I-G part they are leaving out is the foundation of chapters 1 through 4 and a muddled 5 to 8. One must build a foundation for a house first, and then build the house. The emergents want to build the house and then see if it should be put somewhere, although they don't seem to care where it goes. What does that old hymn say? Something about building something on shifting sand....?

*Read the title backwards

Emerging into Emergent

Gary Gilley's posts on the Emergent church are all over the Internet, so of course that has sparked the next few posts from me here at Crossroads.


Let's take a time travel trip back to the 1960's...............the era of the Baby Boomers coming of age..........

Flower children. Joan Baez. PCP. Uppers, downers and all-arounders. P*E*A*C*E. Bob Dylan. Make LOVE not WAR. Janis Joplin. Liberal idealist socialism. McCarthy (Eugene, not Joseph). Marijuana. Chicago police. Black Panthers. The Beatles. Transcendental Meditation. "Don't trust anyone over 30." Hair. Volkswagon vans with flower power painted all over. Woodstock. The Who and Tommy. Love, Peace and Joy. Jesus Christ Superstar. Vietnam. The Mamas and the Papas.

Their Philosophies
*Truth is what we think and say it is.
*Helping people is more important than sitting around talking about and obeying rules and decorum.
*Lots of hypocrisy in the society.
*The environment is what we should be focusing on - in fact let's live in the woods.
*Perhaps the Eastern religions can teach us something we are missing here in Western society.

Somehow, with the exception of the Jesus People, the church missed out. In most cases this was very good because they retained their teaching and morality; but in another sense they never really did engage it.

And so as a result of that.....................


The Emergent church (children of the Boomers for the most part)......
Their Philosophies
*Biblical truth is what we think and say it is.
*Helping people is more important than doctrinal truth.
*Lots of hypocrisy in the church
*The environment is somehting we should be focusing much more on.
*Perhaps the Eastern religions can teach us something we are missing here in the Western church.


I would say the children of the Baby Boomers have learned their parents' teachings quite well.

Quote of the Week

David Wayne of Jollyblogger finally seems to "get" it about Rick Warren. Here is a great quote from one of his most recent posts.

he [Warren] is perfectly consistent with his ministry philosophy that the audience dictates the message.....he savvily tailored one message to the calvinists at Modern Reformation and savvily tailored a different message to the folks back home at his church. And in this case he has used his savvy to tailor a Jesus-free message to the Jews

Wayne goes on to say that to Warren, tailoring the message means actually changing it so that the gospel changes, or is even non-existent, depending on the audience.

Welcome to Warren-land.

Disarming

I heard this on Bill O'Reilly's radio program today, and I thought it was very insightful.

If Hezbollah and the other Palestinian organizations were disarmed, there would be peace.
But if Israel was disarmed, there would be a holocaust.

Think about that for a minute and eventually it will hit you.

First a disclaimer. I have been a conservative Republican all my life, although not a neo-con. I am a Goldwater Republican. I mention that first of all so I won't get beaten up after you read this post.

Can you name the number one (#1) state for around three decades in the 1940's, 50's and 60's that had the best schools in the nation? Can you name the bottom three?

We will get back to that.

Were Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson our "Christian" Founding Fathers?

No. They weren't Christian in any sense of the word as they denied the virgin birth, denied Jesus as the Son of God, denied the effectual working of the Atonement, denied most of the miracles and so forth.

The Christian Right has told us all about our "Christian" Founding Fathers, Franklin and Jefferson. However, recently they have stopped using the term "Christian" since it became an embarrassment - to the Christian college history professors I suppose. Now they are "godly" men. But who is godly? People who deny Christ? I don't think so. Can we just say they adopted a morality that was similar to what Jews and Christians (as well as some other religions) adopted?


Now back to the first point. The number one state for education was California.

The bottom three were in the deep South.

The Christian Right tells us that the schools got worse after prayer and Bible reading were taken out in the middle '60's. I cannot find one person who went to public school in California during that time, including me, who ever had prayer or Bible reading in the schools. But the schools here were #1 nevertheless.

Meanwhile the bottom three schools had plenty of Bible reading and prayer.

I don't get it. Do you?

So here is the BIG Question:

Why are so many American Christians supporting (with their time, sentiments and energies) the Christian Right (CR)? The CR often exaggerates and outright lies.
Does anyone else out there see a problem with this?

(Does anyone smell a lot of codependency among evangelicals perhaps?)

Early Christians Were Healthy Folks

Every time I turn around something written by Rodney Stark stares me in the face. I just finished a book by him which didn't make me happy at all. I felt his statistics about the number of Christians int he first centuries were rather low. He doesn't think there were really three thousand converts on the Day of Pentecost, more like a few hundred. O-Kaaay. Then last week in my Sunday School class our summer substitute teacher told us 20% of the colonists in 1776 were regular church goers. I knew the percentage wasn't as high as most Christians here in America think. But 20%? I thought it a bit low. I wondered if it was that low because we were having a war on at that time and many men were on the war front. When I asked our teacher where he got that number, guess what? Rodney Stark. O-kaaaay.

And just the other week I read a very interesting article on the Christian History site. And guess who wrote it? Yes....Professor Stark. He is a professor of religious sociology at the University of Washington.

Well, I thought the article interesting and so would like to share some of its contents. So here goes.

Stark essentially says that Christians in the first centuries were healthier and lived longer than the average person living in the Roman Empire because of better care of Christians for one another. He points put that there really were no government or even private social services. He writes,

Tertullian wrote that while pagan temples spent their donations "on feasts and drinking bouts," Christians spent theirs "to support and bury poor people, to supply the wants of boys and girls destitute of means and parents, and of old persons confined to the house.

The pagan emporer Julian wrote,

"The impious Galileans support not only their poor,but ours as well.

Stark ends the article with,

"To cities filled with the homeless and impoverished, Christianity offered charity and hope. To cities filled with newcomers and strangers, Christianity offered immediate fellowship. To cities filled with orphans and widows, Christianity provided a new and expanded sense of family.. Christian women benefitted further from their considerable status within the church. We have it from the apostle Paul that women held positions of leadership, as was confirmed by Pliny the Younger, who reported to Emperor Trajan that he had tortured two young Christian women "who were called deaconesses."

Inside this month's Christianity Today magazine(July), there is an interesting interview with Stephen Monsma, former professor at Pepperdine University and presently at the Paul B. Henry Institute for the study of Christianity and Politics at Calvin College.
He did a four-year study of faith-based welfare-to-work programs,studying programs in four cities - Chicago, Lo Angeles, Dallas and Philadelphia.


Stats
*500 programs were studied
*117 were faith-based
*96 were Protestant
*There were almost twice as many evangelical faith-based welfare-to-work programs than mainline - 61 were evangelical and 35 were mainline.
*46% of the evangelical programs were African-American. That is, the majority of staff and the majority of recipients-clients were African-American.

One factor was the emphasis on values. For example, many of these non-profits encouraged participants to become self-supporting but also reminded them that God loves the out of work too. They also talk about work as a way to honor God.

From Andrew Strom....and I say a hearty AMEN!

"There is no tragedy in the world worse than this - the church losing the gospel. We could have a hundred terrorist attacks, or earthquakes, or hurricanes, and it would still not outweigh thetragedy of this one thing - WE HAVE LOST THE GOSPEL.
Nothing can compare to this disaster - nothing.

For when you lose the gospel, you lose salvation. People are actually no longer becoming saved. (Remember, Paul said that the gospel is the "POWER OF GOD unto salvation"). And when people are no longer truly becoming saved, you also lose the
church. For no true gospel = no true church.

People will tell me that I am being too 'drastic'. Well, I want to say to you that I am not being drastic enough. In fact, if I were to shout through 1000 megaphones directly into your ears, it would not be possible for me to overemphasize just how disastrous and awful and horrific it is that our backslidden Western church today
has - to all intents and purposes - lost its gospel. And in doing so it has lost its very reason for being."

He then says that saying a little rote prayer to accept Jesus won't cut it. He lists the following as necessary parts of becoming a Christian:
-CONVICTION of SIN
-DEEP REPENTANCE
-WATER-BAPTISM
-GETTING FILLED WITH THE HOLY SPIRIT

The last point might be controversial. I believe being filled with the Holy Spirit is necessary to live a victorious Christian life, but I don't agree with the Oneness Pentecostals' position that it's mandatory for salvation.


He ends by asking,
"And what about getting a CLEAN CONSCIENCE (-washed in the blood) and KEEPING IT CLEAN?"

His last thoguhts say it all IMO,

"No wonder today's church is lukewarm! The gospel is the building block upon which everything else is built. Without it we have nothing - literally nothing. It affects all that we do and all that we are. To lose it is simply the worst disaster imaginable. So how on earth can we get it back?"

The Prosperity Message - the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

I've told you that I am a Presbyterian and a little on the Reformed side but not to the extreme. I grew up in that denomination and am presently in it. In between I was a member of quite a few different types of non-Charismatic/Pentecostal evangelical churches. I also spent 19 years in Pentecostal-land, and 8 of those years in four Word of Faith churches. So, I can probably be your guide to all things Hagin, Copeland and the gang. Fortunately, I had been a Christian a long time before my association with Word of Faith and was fairly Biblically and theologically astute. After all, I did date a few Fuller Seminary students in my time...:) But getting on with the topic at hand. What most people outside of the Faith churches don't know is this - there are actually some redeeming theological concepts in their teaching. And of course there are also the "other" things - the bad and ugly concepts. First up, they are covenantal, they believe that it is very difficult to lose your salvation (but it is possible according to Hebrews 6), are very cross-centered (that is, what was accomplished there), very Christ-centered and very, very Scripture-centered. They are also Pentecostal, NOT Charismatic. The Third Wave Charismatics in practice, don't seem to believe much of the former.

Second up, the late Kenneth Hagin has refuted much of his disciples' teachings on the 100-fold return and seed faith. He did this in his recent book Midas Touch which I've reviewed elsewhere on this blog. So when we talk about the "prosperity teachers," it's really not fair to include the late Kenneth Hagin Sr. or his son. We basically are talking here about Kenneth Copeland and Fred Price, and the teachers they have influenced.

Third up, I am only talking about Hagin, Copeland and Savelle. I cannot vouch for everybody who calls themself a faith teacher.

Yesterday I presented to you Michael Spencer's post on American Idolatry: The Good Life. What we need to do is find the fine line between the Good Life as being in God's will, and the Good Life as being in idolatry. Surprisingly, some of the prosperity teaching can help us with this. When you first get into this teaching, they start you at the beginning. That is, the beginning for each person - namely, getting out of debt and believing for your needs to be met with enough left over to give to worthy ministries, your church and people you might know that are in need. And IMO, for most of us, that is the fine line. BY the way, you will find that in II Cor. 9:8.

The next step from the prosperity teachers, and the one troubling to most of us, is to go into what I would call opalescence more than prosperity. And for everyone except those called to be minister to the upper-middle or upper class, opalescence would be going too far. As I wrote in another past a while back, I believe firmly that God wants us to believe for finances that relate to wherever He puts us. So, if we are in a poor area, we don't need as much. If we are in a wealthy area because we are called to be there, we will need more. But using prosperity as a self-esteem tool, which I believe many do, is out. In fact, some of those teachers are now saying that you are in sin and being selfish if you don't believe for as much wealth as you can. Their reasoning is so you can help more people AND at the same time have lots for you. Some of the WOF teachers have the strange idea that if you live in the inner city and you drive up in a Mercedes and have a Rolex watch, people will automatically assume God is blessing you and then they will fall all over themselves to accept Christ. No; actually they probably will think you are either a drug dealer, or if you are male, a pimp. Again, wealth goes with where you are called to be.

So, are there any good parts to this message? Actually there is. I got a lot out of Jerry Savelle with his illustrations about helping people he knew or met. One story that particularly stuck with me was when he received $1000 (this was many years ago) from someone who was blessed by Savelle's teaching. Savelle had wanted a Rolex watch and so decided to use this extra money for that purpose. When he got home, his wife said, "Turn around. We have to go to our friend's house because they cannot pay their mortgage and are being evicted. We need to help them move."
When the Savelles got to their friends' house, furniture was already in the front yard ready to be loaded to be moved. Jerry told the friend to take the furniture back into the house as he was going to pay their mortgage. And you guessed it. The mortgage payment for that month was exactly $1000. I am assuming this story is true - I hope it is because it really got me to thinking about a tenant that the Faith teachers constantly harp on. They want you to believe for extra money so you can help the poor and finance the gospel and help your church. I'm sorry to disappoint all of you who are 100% against this teaching but I never hear other non-faith teachers and pastors saying this kind of stuff. I've been a member of many churches - all types - and I have never heard anybody teach us to stand in faith for money to help people. Stand in faith to help the church? Yes, I've heard that. Or, missions? Yes once in a while I've heard that. But poor people you know? I've never heard that as consistently as I heard it from so many WOF teachers.

So, to clarify the muddle, here is a little chart I've devised to help us see the good, the bad and the ugly parts of the prosperity teaching.

THE GOOD
-the WOF teachers show people Biblically HOW to stand in faith to get themselves out of debt and sustain themselves so they don't have to depend on others.
-they encourage people to work - not to depend on the lottery or contests for their money.
-they teach "faith steps" so that people don't bite off more of a faith chunk than they can chew. For instance, some are at the level to believe for their basic needs. Some are at the level of believing for their basic needs plus money to give. Others are believing to get out of the enslavement of debt. Others are believing for finances to move to where they believe God is leading them. The WOF teachers encourage people to go to a higher level when they are ready.

THE BAD
-The Word of faith teachers IMO often make a basic mistake. They will take Biblical passages that are meant for a group, such as churches, and try to apply them to individuals. For example, I believe II Cor. 8 and 9 is meant for "you" plural (i.e. a church), not especially "you" singular (an individual). If the church has enough, then they can help those in their midst that don't. I'm not sure every Christian is promised great wealth through those II Cor. 8 and 9 or Philippians 4:19 either. Financial promises in the OT are made to the Jews as a nation, not especially to individuals. We see this when looking at widows and orphans. Some passages promise great sheep herds, vast vineyards and land. But most of the widows, male workers and others didn't own vast land and sheep herds and vineyards. But God told these landowners to share. This is one of the reasons Israel went into captivity. Often it is assumed that there was only one reason - idolatry. But no, God made it clear that there were two reasons - idolatry AND the widows and orphans were not being taken care of. In fact they were often judged wrongly.
-This next point may not be a reflection of what the faith teachers teach as much as how their followers carry out the teachings. Often the faith message, whether it concerns prosperity or some other issue is reduced to formulaic sayings. "If I say 100 times a day that God is prospering me it will happen." To be fair, the WOF teachers do not say this. They do teach confession BUT with a full understanding of what you are saying and why. Seldom will people do this correctly 100 times a day.

THE UGLY
-As I said above, there is WAY too much emphasis on opalescence for EVERYONE who is a Christian. They get this from a belief that prosperity is in the Atonement. Where I believe healing is in the Atonement, I am having trouble seeing prosperity there. I do see it for groups but not especially for every individual. But I may be wrong. I do know this. There is a season to be not so well off and a season to be better off. Let us believe gracefully for whatever season God has us in at the present time.

Evangelical Parameters

For the next week or so I would like to comment on some very good blogs and articles I've read over the past month.

The first one we'll discuss is by Michael Spencer at Internet Monk. He wrote a post entitled, American Idolatry: The Good Life in which he sets some parameters for how far the church should go in it's mission. He says that in an evangelical church we should always see these four things:

-the centrality of Christ and the Gospel.
-the priority of the missional calling of every Christian.
-the goal of the movement to evangelize and congregationalize cross-culturally.
-the teaching of the Bible to create this kind of counter culture.

I would like to add that the "official" definition of what evangelicals believe was put forth by English church historian David Bebbington. He lists forth four marks of "evangelicalism:"

*Conversionism - the belief that lives need to be changed
*Activism - the expression of the gospel in effort
*Biblicism - a particular regard for the Bible
*Crucicentrism - a stress on the sacrifice of Christ on the cross

This pretty well dovetails with Spencer's definition. Spencer continues by talking about how entertainment has creeped into the evangelical church and has become a sort of idolatry:

The idolatry of “The Good Life” is, instead, the reshaping of the Christian movement into a particularly American religion where God becomes the means to provide us with the comforts, material blessings, experiences and “necessities” of a prosperous American lifestyle as defined by American culture.....The most popular pastors in America preside over this idolatrous affair with the glib assumption that the purpose of the church is to make us beautiful, prosperous and fully secure in American culture, but, of course, thankful to God for making sure we have all these blessings.....This is not the overt “prosperity” or “health and wealth” message of the Word-Faith movement. It is simply an acceptance of the engines that drive the culture, and allowing those energies to exist, unchallenged, as the normal lifestyle of those supposedly loyal to Jesus Christ.
And then he asks,
Imagine that you are a missionary who must return to America every five years and stand in the midst of Southern Baptist churches Sunday after Sunday, asking for the prayers and support of these supposedly missions-loving evangelicals. Look at what they spend on themselves. Look at their personal lifestyles. Look at their actual commitments to Christianity as a cross-cultural missions movement.

As I read this post what kept coming to me was where the fine line was. So, in tomorrow's post I want to once again discuss the Word of Faith prosperity message and tear it apart so we can really see the good, bad and ugly of it. Yes, there are some very important parts that the Michael Spencers don't always see. So, tomorrow we will go to it!

Holy Huey, Dewey and Louie!

Well, the truth finally comes out. Confession time for me. I attend and am a member of a PCUSA Presbyterian church. Actually I am a Pentecostal Presbyterian, not a Charismatic Presbyterian. There is a difference, although a slight one, dependening on which arm of the Charismatic movement one is talking about.

At times I am embarrassed to admit I am a member of a PCUSA church because of some of the craziness that comes out of that denomination. My PCUSA church is one of the more evangelcial ones; if it weren't, I surely wouldn't be going there. Well, that said, here is the latest weirdness from the denominational General Assembly convention held last week.

The primary item was getting one step closer to all-over ordination of homosexuals/lesbians. That step was giving each ordaining body within the denomination a wider berth in standards applied to clergy applicants. That is formal lingo for ordaining gays. They did leave the chastity-fidelity part in their constitution. The provision requires fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman or chastity in singleness. I'm not sure how the ordaining committees can bypass that but I bet some will.
Confusion? You betcha.

But it was the second item that was really wacky. Many in our denomination, especially the feminist Presbyterians, don't like gender-specific words in the Bible or in the doctrine. In other words, they don't like male words. So, this past week at the convention, a proposal was made to change the Trinity from Father, Son and Holy Ghost to other designations.

These are the exact words given by the authors of this recommendation:
It [the Trinity Paper] may not go as far as some of us would like, but it denounces oppressive paradigms that may be upheld by the idea of a God that is exclusively male. The Trinity paper stands solidly in Christian tradition when it authorizes the use of overlooked female images and promotes egalitarian human relationships. Its recommendations should be adopted.

And here are some of the paper's recommendations for various terms in worship and study for the Trinity. Ready? Hold onto your seat.

-Mother, Child and Womb
-Lover, Beloved and Love
-Rainbow, Ark and Dove
-Giver, Gift and Giving
-Truth, Goodness and Beauty
-Sun, Light and Burning Ray

The pastor of the more evangelical Bel Air Presbyterian Church in Southern California (the church where Ronald Reagan was a member and where Dick van Dyke is a member presently) put it this way in his response to this paper,

"They might as well say Huey, Dewey and Louie."

Christian Carnival CXXIX

Welcome to the Christian Carnival for July 5, 2006.

To start us off, Martin at Sun and Shield replies to an article by scientist Stephen Barr in
Stephen M. Barr on Science and Intelligent Design concerning the dichotomy between young creationists and evolutions. Can there actually be a middle position?


Mandi at Imago Dei takes a middle positon on another topic - her experience with legalism. But unlike many, she doesn’t necessarily think you have to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Read her thoughts on bringing law and grace together in harmony at
You Cannot Have Doctrine and Legalism.


Donald brings up a most interesting question. Should DDT be used to kill mosquitoes that carry malaria to so many parts of the world? Will that use be harmful? Unfortunately, he is in the process of changing his blog to another site and it cannot be accessed at this time. So, I will tell you the answer he gave. There seems to be some DDT's that are not harmful to flora and fauna, and we should be investigating the use of those products. I hope I summarized it correctly Don..:).


Veracity has an interesting post at her blog,
Veracity - the Way about the trend for those in the medical profession to make decisions that carry the weight of law when maybe there might be other options. I believe this will be an important topic for the community of faith in the future and really appreciated reading Veracity's comments in
Health Issues.


Laurie at triviumpursuit reviews several good Sermon Audio teachings. Among others she reviews is one by A.W. Tozer, An Interview of Leonard Ravenhill by David Mainse and one entitled “How Satan Gets into Your Head.” I definitely want to listen to that one. You will find her reviews at Powerful Sermons.


What exactly do we gain by working? Dave at Career Intensity presents a commentary on Ecclesiastes 3:9–14 to answer that very question in
What Does the Worker Gain from His Toil?


Jamie asks What Does it Mean to be a Mother? at her blog, Jamie Leigh. Here is her conclusion; mothering is a ---------; it’s ------- yourself out into the ---- of another. To fill in the blanks, you’ll just have to read her post.


The Bloke is at it again! This time he weighs in on outer spirituality vs. a relational aspect in
Raw Spirituality.


For July 4th, Mark at kingdom-church-culture lists nine principles of freedom in his post,
Cornerstones of Our American Republic.


Heather at Sprittibee does a good job discussing macro-evolution vs. micro-evolution and then neatly asking what we should do about the environment vs. helping people. Do we have funds to do both? Read her views in her post,
Evolution and Emissions Debate.


As I read Lisa's post, Bragging on My Toddler's Latest Accomplishments, I thought about how often we can see God in our children.


Deputy Headmistress at The Common Room has something to say about a recent Los Angeles Times article and the paper itself. Hey! That’s my hometown newspaper, DH! But I must agree with the Headmistress - the Times can be lame at times when it comes to things evangelical. Read the Times’ blooper at
Great Scot!  The LA Times Needs to Get Religion! .


Pillars that have no purpose? Stairways that go nowhere? This is how a postmodern architect views his "capricious," senseless world. Dana at Principled Discovery
Says in her post, Establishing Purpose,
"As we learn to direct each day according to our godly purpose, we instill in our children a sense of purpose in their own lives." You’ll certainly wish to read her entire post on the postmodern philosophy and where it leads. Or perhaps I should say, where it doesn’t lead.

Penitent Blogger’s post, Most Favored Nation comments on the Bible text in
Amos 3:1-8; 4:11-12. This is a post I heartily agree with - that is, we in America might take God's favor too lightly.


As not all English speaking countries speak the same type of English, so not all evangelicals speak “Modernese;” that is, holding the same world view.
Barefoot in the Wilderness tackles the differences in evangelcial thought in the post,
Divided By a Common Language.


Tom at Thinking Christian has a post for the Fourth of July entitled, Independence Day at Yorktown.


If there was a special machine that showed the occupant the entire infinity of creation and where the occupant fit into it, wouldn't the occupant see how very small they really were? Light Along the Journey takes us into space and develops this fascinating train of thought in The Total Perspective Vortex.


Welcome to the Fallout develops the theme of courage and integrity in a discussion of the movie, Hart’s War.

It's very difficult when you are pregnant and might lose the child. Nerdmom over at Nerd Family is Waiting, Trusting and Praying. She also covets our prayers.


Now here’s an interesting question. When God told Adam and Eve to have dominion over the Earth, did He mean they could have dominion over other planets too? See what Jeremy writes about this at Parablemania in his post,
Space Exploration and the Creation Mandate

At Logoscentric, Katy weighs in on the controversy surrounding self-proclaimed Christian author Ann Lamont’s recent article recounting how she helped a terminally ill friend die. She asks:
Can Ann Lamont Be Regenerate?.


Your ipod's audio isn't working so you can't get your One Year Bible reading for the day. So what do you do about this perplexing dilemma? You could get the audio fixed; or, you could read the Bible. Learn how Discerning Discipleship resolved this dilemma for himself in The Lure of the One Year Bible Blog.


And my entry is the last in a series of reviews of a fascinating book about how adult children of divorce really feel. This last post has some of the questions the author asked in a ground breaking survey. The answers might be surprising to you - or, maybe not. The post is Adult Children of Divorce - Stats.

Thanks for visiting the Carnival.