All posts filed under: Church & Culture

Dear Pastor: A Letter from a Humble Church Member

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Dear Pastor, I don’t think I need to apologize for anything but here it is… I sincerely apologize for anything, or apparently the many things I have said and/or done to offend you and/or made you feel defensive towards me and my efforts to do what I have felt was serving the Lord with all the blessings He had provided. I truly respect your spiritual leadership. I feel that we are all purposefully imperfectly made with strengths and weaknesses. I definitely have a need for a spiritual leader. I am thankful that He has put you in my life. I have pride issues but I think you do too I realize that I have to fight the battle of pride and perhaps that is also why God has put you in my life. On the other hand, perhaps in this pride I felt you had been blessed for me to be put here to help YOU make our church even more successful than you have already made it. Pastor, I have often been successful and consider …

1 Reason Nations come to ruin

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They cast off all restraints… One of the most dangerous things any people, society, culture or nation can do to itself is to cast off all restraint and do whatever seems right in their own eyes. We find this phrase in the dark days of Israel’s history. A period when “everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” Judges 17:6 In our day and time, the absence of restraint is celebrated and applauded. In the words of a song writer, “we exult our rights over and above the one who makes us righteous,” and we use that to justify our behavior or lifestyle. Unfortunately, we fail to realize that this kind of moral, spiritual, and social anarchy brings nothing but destruction. Israel cast off all restraints and they were brought to ruin. Sodom and Gomorrah cast off all restraints and they were brought to ruin. The Roman Empire cast off all restraints and they were brought to ruin. Ephesus, the city where the church was warned to return to its first love, cast off all restraints and they too …

Holy Worldliness

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The church has a double calling: on the one hand to live in the world, and on the other not to conform to the world. The first is a call to worldliness, as opposed to other worldliness—getting involved in the life of the world around us. The second calling is the call to holiness. We have no liberty to respond to one call without the other. Indeed, we may neither preserve our holiness by escaping from the world, nor may we sacrifice our holiness by conforming to the world. Escapism, on the one hand, and conformism, on the other, are equally forbidden to Christian men and women. Instead we are to combine both callings to involvement and to separation. We are to develop what Dr. Alec Vidler, an Anglican scholar of the former generation, in his book “Essays in Liberality called “holy worldliness.” Ezekiel 11:12? “You have not followed my decrees. You have not kept my laws. But you have conformed to the standards of the nations around you.” 2 Kings 17:15: “They imitated the …

How to resist and defeat Cultural Pressures

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We are exposed on every side to cultural pressures. Between the two temptations of escapism and conformism, the latter is more common—that is, accommodation to the prevailing culture. We are exposed to cultural pressures incompatible with the Lordship of Jesus Christ, which, nevertheless, are demanding from us a capitulation that we are not prepared to give. And if we do capitulate to the pressures of society around us, then we compromise our integrity, we blunt our testimony, and we suffocate our spiritual life. What are the pressures of our culture to which we are forbidden to conform? What are the contemporary trends which threaten to envelop and engulf the church and against which we need to be on guard? I have selected three. I’m sure there are many more we could discuss, but these three are very important. First there is the challenge of pluralism: the church is called to be a community of truth. Second there is the challenge of materialism: the church is called to be a community of pilgrimage. Third there is the challenge of moral relativism: the …

The “Coca-Cola-nization” of the world

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And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. 2 Corinthian 3:18 There is a quest for transcendence, a recognition that the human spirit will never be satisfied by the material order. It’s the main reason for the collapse of Euro-Marxism. Marxism was offered as an ideological substitute for religion, and Marx confidently predicted that religion would wither away and die. But the human spirit cannot be satisfied with the material. As Jesus said, quoting Deuteronomy, “The human being doesn’t live by bread only but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Theodore Roszak, although he lived and wrote before the New Age began, wrote about this. He couldn’t bear what he called the “Coca-Cola-nization” of the world. He hated the pseudoscience that claims to explain everything, and he couldn’t bear the undoing of the mysteries. When science gets its hand on something, there are …

10 things self-absorbed, super-spiritual preachers say in the pulpit

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My purpose here is to argue that sometimes sensitivity, tact and cleverness in the way we communicate pays off greatly as we seek to deliver a difficult to swallow kind of message, convey a rebuke, or bring correction to a person who really needs it. For me, sometime our so-called speaking truth to power or motivating others for a greater good can come across as vicious, rude and simply disrespectful. Here are some of those things I think could be better, if not, more effectively communicated: 1. We would like to welcome all of you C&E Folks to our Special Easter/Christmas Service. All our C&E folks? It means those who only show up in church for an Easter or Christmas service. In some circles they are called Christers or Onecers. 2. Back in the day we used to go for hours way past the time for us to dismiss service when the Holy Ghost began to move 3. God is not impress with the one hour you give to him at the Sunday morning service 4. …

Give me a treat or I will play a trick on you

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How it all started 2,000 years ago, the Celts started the holiday, calling it Samhain (pronounced: “Sow-in”). The Celts celebrated the New Year on November 1 and believed that the night before was a transitional period from a time of harvest, light and warmth (summer/fall) into a period of death, darkness and cold (winter). They believed that the spiritual and physical realms overlapped during that night and that spirits could then walk the earth. They put on scary masks and lit bonfires to scare away evil spirits. To guide the spirits of their dead relatives home, they put candles in their windows. In 43 A.D. the Romans conquered the Celts, and Samhain became combined with two Roman holidays. The first holiday, Feralia, was a day to honor the dead, and the other was to celebrate Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees (some think this is where “bobbing for apples” comes from). By the seventh century, Pope Boniface the IV declared November 1 as “All Saints Day” or “All Hallows.” This is why October …

Cultivating Growth: what church leaders are saying

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Six leaders describe how they foster spiritual transformation in others Article Via Leadership Journal There are many ways Christians grow: Bible study, fellowship, service, prayer, even hardship. Of course all transformation is ultimately the result of God’s work in a person’s heart. But we were curious: what can a leader do to facilitate this mysterious change in those he or she leads? We asked six church leaders to share one way in which they foster spiritual growth. We trust their responses will contribute to your growth, too. Discover the Story Together Scripture is best encountered in community. Sean Gladding For a decade my wife and I have been leading a study called “The Story of God.” Basically, we retell familiar biblical narratives in plain, … Disciplinarians Needed A firm word can lead to spiritual growth. Merrill Powers For the past 11 years, my wife and I have had the privilege of working with individuals who suffer from substance abuse issues. Nearly 600 men … Feed Yourself First If we’re not growing, we have little to …

Why I love Jefferson Bethke’s Poem: Why I hate religion but love Jesus

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If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations- “Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” (referring to things that all perish as they are used)-according to human precepts and teachings? These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.Colossians 2:20-23 On January 10, 2012 a young man named Jefferson Bethke posted this video on YouTube and within a matter of hour it went viral. When I took a listen for the first time I said to myself – “This poem is epic.” Matter of fact I still do. Within a few days of the release of this YouTube video, it came under attack from some Christian Bloggers with major following. All of a sudden, a beautiful poem became overshadowed with un-necessary noise. The noise was so loud that I think it missed …