Remember Christian life tapes and books?

Good insights here, just don’t be a Ken and Barbie pastor.

Dude, if you are ever in Jax, please call me I would love to buy you some Starbucks or lunch to talk with you about your journey. Kevin kevinsoffice@aol.com

I was shocked to read this post, because my mom told me yesterday that she was really impacted (and she doesn’t always share what she thinks about Sunday services)
She went on about how your sermon grabbed her hard and how she is applying it in her own life.

As an artist, I share your feelings about being your own worst critic. People tell me how awesome my work is, when all I can see are the mistakes.

As a fellow minister, my experience has been that more people have been impacted by what I would consider a “fair” delivery. How ironic.

Anyway, be encouraged, my parents are really impacted by your church and tell me often about how much richer and beautiful thier lives are becoming.

God is going to build his Church not because the projector runs smoothly, not because the Pastor has it all together, not because you have the best guitar slinger, not because production is on it’s “A” game, the lighting scheme is perfect. God is going to build his Church because a broken humble man LEAVES HIMSELF and preaches the BIBLE unashamedly under the conviction and power of the Holy Spirit.

The Church is not a game. It’s not something WE should measure. Let Jesus do the math.

Our Youth Pastor preached today. He’s a guy I really like and I agreed with the most of his message. BUT, he got on a jag about how the Church and “Christians” have turned SO many people away from Jesus. This segment of course got a whole lot of AMENS.

That makes a dangerous and MAJOR assumption that which is that the Church today actually represents Jesus Christ in the first place. Before anyone thinks I’m about to go on some kind of emergent rant hear me out. I believe MOST of todays Churches, at least the fastest growing ones, are bent towards evangelism. A whole lot of those aren’t actually pastored as evangelists serve the role of Pastor. Here are the two main things so many new mainline churches have in common… that everyone else in Christendom is scrambling to keep up with…

1) The structure is flawed. People aren’t being rooted in the word, trained to become evangelists themselves. Instead they come to church for “life change” much like lost souls go to motivational seminars for “life change”. Now the “pastor” is who we are supposed to bring our friends and neighbors to hear because he has some supposed “super gifting”. Usually, to be blunt, this means he has a super cool hairstyle, and excellent talent for speaking and puts people turned off by “stomping” frothing at the mouth preachers at ease. On top of that he is usually VERY YOUNG and so are his elders and he planted the church himself so if you question anything you are set outside the ring or turned away completely as there is an implied sense of “ownership” that is implied.

2) The Gospel message IS NOT the Gospel message. Sin is a taboo subject. Repentance or the concept of it and our fleshly rottenness is, as a concept, often completely mothballed. As much as 80% of the attendees/members believe they are “saved” because they “said a prayer”. Their doubt is pacified by routine opportunities to serve in social justice projects or on a parking team or something in which by doing good works they find security or at least temporary fulfillment. That’s basically the message I hear from a lot of people in the emergent/emerging corner, “Christians are failing the culture because we don’t INFLUENCE THE CULTURE by “behaving” like Jesus.

I contend that many/most people in church today ARE NOT CHRISTIANS thus NOT filled with the HOLY SPIRIT. I used to have a difficult with the parts of the Bible that dealt with the last days and a GREAT falling away… How could that be? Would God take away his gift of salvation… no, now I get it. The GREAT falling away is made up of the false shepherds and false sheep.

I’m heart broken. The CHURCH itself needs to be evangelized, then it needs to be Discipled.

The Church isn’t representing Jesus Christ… but not because we are out of touch with culture… we are out of touch with God’s Word and having it proclaimed with the POWER of the HOLY SPIRIT.

I appreciate your Heart Chris.

I’m done.