Ok, if you know me or if you have read anything about me, you probably pick up on the vibe that I am very much against church as usual, or traditional ways of thinking. I went and ate lunch with our staff today at a place called Mighty Joes… It’s a pizza place… And it has a nice little feel to it, the front of the place is all windows, and the walls are brick, it’s right on the downtown square… And I began to think, how our culture is so bent toward creativity, and ambience… And in my mind I thought… “Man, the church is getting left behind, and we are missing it.” And I know there’s a progressive movement, and you have the emerging church, and the emergent church, and you can pretty much find churches that are creative and progressive, and really grabbing hold of that mindset… But there are so many that are not… And I almost get the feel from people that I meet that many would say are “unsaved” or “lost” or “unchurched”, that they feel that the church is just not meeting them where they are… And I struggle with that… Because isn’t that what Jesus was all about? When I read John 4, it seems to me that Jesus was not going to miss this moment with this woman. Like He was so sensitive to the Holy Spirit that he knew this woman needed this encounter with Him, and He was not going to miss it, instead He was very intentional… God help me to be intentional and sensitive to those woman at the well moments, help me not to miss them because I am to busy doing ministry, help me to be intentional about reaching our culture, help me to be intentional about reversing the negative stereotypes that people have about the church and Christians, help me to be intentional about the things you were intentional about…
March 31, 2008 at 4:45 pm
Good let me pick out some words that hits it on the nailhead intentional, senstive to the Holy Spirit’s the womans’ need.Jesus
went out of His way to a place that was not popular to the Jews to minister to a woman shuned by others. He was not a people pleaser, He was a God pleaser. I’m glad you have an ear to hear,and you still love souls. Remember prayer is what gives weight to your words and to your witness, I guess i’m in a grandmother mode. I’m proud of you and Jessica
April 8, 2008 at 3:46 pm
Wesley,
A few things you said in this post are a little vague, to me.
For instance:
“And I began to think, how our culture is so bent toward creativity, and ambience… ”
What exactly did you see, or have seen, that makes you think our culture is geared towards creativity and ambience? I am not qiut esure what your saying when you use the word “ambience.” Could you clarify?
Also:
“And in my mind I thought… “Man, the church is getting left behind, and we are missing it.”
Question: What is the role of the Church in your mind? And how is it missing out?
Lastly:
“And I know there’s a progressive movement, and you have the emerging church, and the emergent church, and you can pretty much find churches that are creative and progressive, and really grabbing hold of that mindset…”
O.K….a few things here worry me.
1) Most of these guys in this movement are border-line heretics, if not full blown heretics.
2) From my understnading of the Emerging movements, either camp, is that they are kinda of the “class clowns” of Christianity. They are “fast & loose” with Scripture, they would rather portray Christ as a Cool, Hip, Dude that walked around telling jokes and goofing off, than tell people what the disciples told us about him. The disicples tell us about the foundational truths of who He was, and that is all we need to know.
3) They ignore the foundational fact that the Gospel is counter- cultural. It goes aganist the grain of culture. Culture, as they use the word, is something that is neutral, in that it is good or bad. This is unacceptable, and sloppy on their part. Culture is the fabric, or make-up, of the world in which we live. We live in a world of Sin, that craves to be remade. Sin is the impetus of culture. You might think of Culture, then, as what the Bible refers to as the “World.”
Anyway, you can see why I might ask you to unpack the meaning of your post a little. Also, when you refer to other churches “not grabbing on”, I take it that you mean this is bad, right?
Thanks,
B.J.
April 8, 2008 at 3:48 pm
Sorry,
#3 should read “in that it is neither good nor bad.”
April 9, 2008 at 3:18 pm
BJ, thanks for your comments, and your interest in my blog… I will try to explain my post as best as I can, I hope I am clearer this time around… Please remember the things I type in my blog are just my opinions, they aren’t absolute truths, or facts, it’s just opinions…
1st Thing… “And I began to think, how our culture is so bent toward creativity, and ambience…”
When I say the word culture I am not so much referring to culture as what others would refer to as “worldly” like sinful or not sinful… I am referring to the people in our world, “society” may be a better word I’m not sure… And what I mean by this statement is that when I walk into places, whether it’s a restaurant, or a movie theatre, or a theme park, or a coffee house, or a mall, I look around at the way the building is built, the way the place is decorated, the feeling you get when you walk in or when you walk out, that’s what I mean by ambience, or atmosphere, it’s the feel of the place, the comfort you have with the place, the way the people make you feel when you walk in, are the employees friendly and helpful, is there an inviting feeling… That’s what I mean by ambience…
Obviously I can’t speak for all people so I will try and stay away from generalities, but I think most people like that…
For example…
Starbucks – People don’t go to Starbucks just for the coffee, they can get coffee at the gas station for .79 cents… It’s the feeling and the atmosphere of the place for a lot of people…
Hollister – When you walk into Hollister, the place is designed and created to feel a certain way… Even from the outside, it looks like a beach house… The music that’s playing, the kind of clothes they sale, the big screen with the beach scene…
Theme Parks – They don’t just put a ride out in the middle of nowhere, they design that certain area all around the story that the ride is supposed to be about…
Ambience…
2nd Thing…
Question: What is the role of the Church in your mind? And how is it missing out?
- to introduce people who do not know Christ to Christ…
- to comfort the hurting, to help the needy…
- to train and equip believers to minister to the people they come in contact with everyday…
- to help those who do believe grow and mature in their faith…
- to provide an opportunity for corporate worship…
- to live in community with one another and in that, (encouraging, praying with and for one another, supporting one another, fellowshipping together…)
I think some churches are missing the mark as far as the purpose of the church… I also think we may be missing out on opportunities to really reach people where they are because the tendency is that at times we are slow to change our methods, and I think methods must change at times…
And if you can be creative with a message or a program, and because you built a ball field in your church to create an atmosphere (see picture) you reach someone you may not have without it, then I think we should do that… I am not saying that because a church is not creative that they aren’t serving a purpose, and are not doing what God has called them to do… I am saying however, that I believe the church has missed it in a lot of areas…
I have said often about youth ministry that a youth ministries competition is not the church down the road, they are on the same team, it’s the movie theatre, it’s the coffee house, it’s the arcade… and we can pretend it’s not but it is…
3rd Thing…
Also, when you refer to other churches “not grabbing on”, I take it that you mean this is bad, right?
I mean it can be bad… I’m not making a blanket statement that it’s always bad in every case… I am not saying you change the message of Christ, you can’t change it, it is what it is… But I am saying, the church in a lot of cases fails to reach people where they are, and they feel the church is not relevant to them… In my opinion, the church and Christians are the hope of the world… and if we are not somehow trying to take the message of Christ and the principles of the Word of God and show people how they are relevant to where they are then we are failing… I think there are churches all across America that decide each week that, “we are going to do the same old thing this week, we aren’t going to do anything different to try and reach people, to really try and engage people, we will just do the same thing we have always done and expect a different result…” That’s insane, and it isn’t working, and that’s what I mean…
I think some have the opinion that the church should be segregated from the culture or society or the world, whatever phrase you want to use, but we can’t be, we are in the world, we are in the culture, we are a part of society, I am not saying we should lower the standard of holiness or water down the truth, but we can realize that if we segregate ourselves we only make it harder to win people…
You take missionaries for example, when they go into different cultures, the missionaries don’t live the American culture, they have to adapt to the culture they are in, they don’t change the message of Christ, they adopt as many of their customs as possible without changing the foundational truths of the word… I think to a certain extent, we should do the same…
The Apostle Paul said… “To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in it’s blessings.” (1 Corinthians 9:22-23)
Again, this blog and the posts in it are my opinions not fact, not absolute truth, just opinions…
Thanks for your interest…
Wesley