missionaries: coming or going?
Whose job is the proclamation of the good news? Who gets to tell the world about Christ’s rescue of humanity? Who is ideally suited for it? As many retreat from culture we must re-examine the Biblical answer to these questions.
DUDE, so good,
Did you use a real camera or did you just use your web cam on your mac??
And what did you use to edit it, so good man, great message, Ive been trying to tell people this very thing for YEARS!
Thanks Matt. Just the web cam on the mac and iMovie, I’m afraid, nothing fancy.
Love your message. This has been on my heart and in my thoughts for years. You said what I have been thinking, you are my Aaron (Moses’ brother.)
I would love to see you smile more :) So serious
Thanks Shannon. Serious? Me? I defer to Cowper: Behind a frowning providence…
I agree that as a church if we’re continually in retreat–just the word suggests an ignominious ending–we’re heading away from what we are called to do. Not only that, but to take your thought a little further, we are trying to get people to come to us, as you said, and then we are telling them to run away with us. What a terrible gospel! And I suppose I could go on about how that fosters a two-bit Christian ghetto poorly reflective of the current pop culture. Perhaps that’s a part of why people look at the church with disdain, it appears to be a disingenuous attempt at a “sanitized” pop culture, an attempt that is poorly derived and artlessly realized.
What do you think about those retreats that you mentioned early in your presentation? I detected a hint of sarcasm. Is there anything of value in sending our kids out into the desert to ride zip-lines and go swimming? Or is it just indicative of the dominant church culture of separatism?
I personally loved camp. Some of it was silly (hence the sarcasm), some of it was great. Many times, however, the camps were described as a chance to “get away from the world”. I would submit that to the extent that this is our message we are training our children to think in the wrong direction about their Christianity.
Yeah, I definitely agree. Camp was (and is) great for a short time of fellowship and recharging. However, there is definitely way too much of an us vs. them mentality in the greater American church today. I think it stems from a misunderstanding of the whole “in the world, but not of it” thing, where the church wants to be in the world, but as separated from it as possible. Personally I think where this is most disturbing is in the trend of the religious right to try and legislate Christian moral values on America through government. The church has divided the world into two groups: those that live “Christian” moral lives and those that do not, while the Bible’s dividing line is those with a heart of stone and those with a heart of flesh.
An anecdote, a group did a presentation on religious discrimination in my graduate diversity course at SPU. They had us fill out an anonymous survey to list things like, if a member of “x” group were to be elected, which group would be most opposed to your beliefs about America. The “x” could be a whole list from homosexuals, Muslims, Jews, Catholics, Atheists, and Conservative Christians. In my class, at a private, blatantly Christian school, over 60 percent of the class voted for some form of conservative Christianity as being opposed to their beliefs. That is saying something terrible to me about the image we portray to the secular world. I think this ties in hugely with what you, David, are saying about trying to “legislate Christian moral values on America.” Great post.