Posts tagged: christianity

Tell Me About Your Church

July 24, 2009, by 2 comments

Most of my recent experience as a follower of Jesus has been learning about the Church: what it is, is not, should be, and eventually will be.
I have worked to get a church started, worked to get a church established, worked with pay and without pay…
And this is still a topic that Steph and I spend a lot of time discussing and praying about.

And with all that in mind, I’m curious about your thoughts and experiences.

Whether you go to church or not, whether you’re a christian or not, I’d love to have your thoughts!

(I’m playing with Google forms, so I’ll see what kind of cool ways it gives me to share the results w/ everyone!)

If the embedded form doesn’t appear below (after the break), then please use this link

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Religion Saves: Intro

June 23, 2009, by 3 comments

Look what came in the mail yesterday!

The awesome folks at Crossway and RE:LIT were kind enough to select our dinky little blog here for a free copy of Mark Driscoll’s newest book, Religion Saves – And Nine Other Misconceptions.

One condition: I have to review it here and tell you what I think.

This is a lot like telling a kid that he can have a piece of candy, but only if he promises to eat it, so I’m quite happy to oblige.

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True Evangelism

May 20, 2009, by 6 comments

I was home sick this Sunday morning, so while the family was at church, I was on the couch watching the church service from Wave Church in Virginia Beach. I had never heard of the church, but happened to click past a very fired-up dude with a cool Australian accent. I was honestly mostly just watching to see how far off-base his teaching would be, since most of the dudes on TV are not preaching the Gospel you’ll find in the Bible.

Anyways, the message ended up being pretty solid, and at one point, he used this video as an illustration.

The video is a 5-minute “Penn Speaks” bit, where ‘Penn’ of ‘Penn and Teller’ fame, describes an encounter he has with a Christian after a show.

Check it out:

What do you think? Don’t we need more dudes like this?

What if this was the reputation that Christians shared all over our country and our world?

Let’s talk about it here. Why isn’t this the case? What needs to change?

(I’ll keep this post at the top of the blog for a little while)

Satan Is Cool With Your Christian Values

May 13, 2009, by 2 comments

I just read this summary of this message, by Russell Moore, titled “The Devil Votes Christian Values: Why We’re Tempted to be Glorified Satanists Rather than Crucified Followers“.

I can’t wait to listen to the whole thing.

Listen to how he articulates some really powerful truths about how slippery the slope of idolatry can be:

Satan does not mind family values–as long as what you ultimately value is the family.

Satan does not mind social justice–as long as you see justice as most importantly social.

Satan does not tremble at a Christian worldview. He will let you have a Christian worldview as long as your ultimate goal is viewing the world.

He goes on to challenge pastors:

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Bono The Evangelist?

April 24, 2009, by 3 comments

Yesterday I saw this post over at Zack’s blog (yes, another Zack).

It describes an article based on a section of the book Bono In Conversation, where Bono essentially witnesses to an interviewer.

I love this because it’s such a classic scenario, capturing the stereotypes and assumptions that so often blur our communication about the Gospel. This interviewer is working on the assumption that Christianity is for the feeble-minded, and that anyone who would accept the idea that God came into the world as a man and died for the sins of the human race must be a fool who hasn’t thought it out all the way.

And here’s Bono, the iconoclast of ‘cool’, explaining grace! And what’s more, he gently calls this dude onto the carpet and basically explains to him C.S. Lewis’ argument from Mere Christianity: you can’t be luke warm about Jesus. He is either The Messiah, or he was nuts and should be dismissed as a lunatic.

For all my friends who have wondered what it looks like to share the message of Jesus effectively and contextually, just have a look at this!

Check it out and then tell me what you think:

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