Recent thoughts

I don't know if anybody will respond to this, but I just have just been having some thoughts and observations that I wanted to put out there and see what others are thinking . I have been thinking more about "The Emerging Church", and "The Modern Church".
I recently observed a church out here that associates with the Emergent Church movement. I was astounded at the diversity of the people that came to worship. I realize being a youth director now that I am dealing with an "emerging" generation. As postmodernity influences our culture, I see the many challenges the church is facing. I see the challenge before me of communicating the unchanging message of Jesus to emerging generations...and it's tough. I have found myself asking the question a lot.. Should living in an increasingly post Christian culture, effect current and future ministry methodologies in our modern church? I can't help but recognize when I see what these churches are doing and that they are reaching a generation of people who otherwise would be turned off to the "modern church". Or am I missing something? I see more and more of an emerging generation out here that is being raised in a post Christian atmosphere, and it has me asking a lot of questions about reaching them effectively and engaging them. I'm seeing that as ministry continues to go on, this can't be ignored, which brings me to the realization that America is a missionary frontier. I think as pastors and youth leaders, it's important to realize that we are missionaries working with post Christian generations. I guess my big question is what do you think about reaching a post modern generation, who doesn't attend church ?

Sometimes I feel that church is more consumer and less missional. Basically I see people coming to be fed, and having their needs met by hired "professionals" who are going to teach their kids about God. The church almost becomes a dispenser of religious goods and services. I've always seen the church as a body of people who are on a mission and who gather together for community and worship and teaching IN ADDITION to what they are feeding themselves with spiritually throughout the week.

I can see that an Emerging Church and Modern Church definitely have different values. I'm not one to think there is a right or wrong or better between the two, but I see them as different values for different mindsets. Laying it out like that helps me to put it in perspective. It also puts me in a position to really think about how I do ministry to be effective.

I'm not ready to go and jump on the Emerging Church bandwagon, however this movement recently has me pondering a lot of different stuff, and I just wanted to put some of it out there and see what anybody thought.

PLAY

So I got casted in this community theatre out here..they're doing the play "Harvey". It's based off of an old Jimmy Stewert movie...I play "Wilson"...the male nurse from Brooklyn..ish..should be interesting..

God's doin HIS THANG

Remember the old DC TALK CD.."NU THANG". I do..I liked it..still do, and it came to mind this past week as things start to materialize. Recently, an exciting opportunity has opened up with a group of students from the community and a new friend about twice my age named "Tony". Tony is looking to plug kids he is familiar with in the community into a church, and it looks like we're going to be working together. His kids will be joining mine and we are going to start a separate Saturday night gathering for Sr. High students. It's all in the process right now of starting, so I have no clue how it's going to look. We're going to get together a leadership team, I know that, and go from there. We'll see how things "flo".

In other news life on the shore is great....as soon as I get my nerd stick, I will put pictures up..( if anybody is still following this due to lack of posts and pictures).

Tim Keller from Redeemer PCA in NYC

This guy is great...

Tim Keller on the Gospel

The gospel is: you are more sinful and flawed than you ever dared believe yet you can be more accepted and loved than you ever dared hope at the same time because Jesus Christ lived and died in your place. . . .

“True faith saith not: ‘What have I done? . . . What do I deserve?’ But it saith: ‘what hath Christ done? What doth he deserve?’ . . . Therefore he that apprehendeth Christ by faith . . . may be bold to glory that he is righteous. How? Even by that precious jewel, Christ Jesus, which he possesseth by faith.” (Martin Luther, Commentary on Galatians)

Irreligious people seek to be their own saviors and lords through irreligion, “worldly” pride. (“No one tells me how to live or what to do, so I determine what is right and wrong for me!”) But moral and religious people seek to be their own saviors and lords through religion, “religious” pride. . . . Both irreligion and religion are forms of self salvation.
To “get the gospel” is to turn from self-justification and rely on Jesus’ record for a relationship with God. The irreligious don’t repent at all, and the religious only repent of sins. But Christians also repent of their righteousness. That is the distinction between the three groups—Christians, moralists (religious), and pragmatists (irreligious).

“Lay your deadly doing down, down at Jesus’ feet.Stand in Him, in Him alone—gloriously complete.” (Unknown)

Confessing

I've really been hit recently with my sin. Not that i've commited horrible acts of sin in the past few weeks, and i'm really feeling the brunt of that, but just "sin" in general, and how when we confess our sins to God, we see ourselves laid bare in the light of God's word. When we confess our sins, it involves viewing ourselves from the outside and seeing ourselves as we truly are. It involves examining ourselves, uncovering the hidden secrets in the deepest parts of our heart and then finding it stained with sin. That's what i've been dealing with. I'm a sinner, whoever reading this is a sinner, and knowing that, the next step before our Lord is confession.

I'm finding confession to be hard recently, but i'm daily realizing that only the grace of God can bring us to admit our true character. Confession is so hard, because it is so disgusting to the human heart. As finite humans, a lot of times i'm seeing how we'd rather focus on an ideal image of ourselves, and what we would LIKE to think we are. In doing so, we gloss over what we truly are.

When we are faced with our sin, or when somebody confronts us with it, we are so apt to deny it in some way. We either dismiss it and say to ourselves, "it won't happen next time", or we put it in our "Sins I know I have to confess and deal with, but I don't want to worry about it now" part of our brains. However, the teaching of scripture is so contrary to that. This is why John warns us in scripture not to deny that we have sinned. The more we deny parts of our sin nature, no matter how little the sin is we won't confess, the further we get from God. When we take a minute to examine who Jesus directed some of his hardest words to, it wasn't the prostitutes or tax collectors who were looked upon then as "real sinners of the world". That wasn't the case at all. His sharpest words were for those who considered themselves BETTER then the sinners, but who were really "greedy wolves" as he describes inside their hearts.

We don't have to dig around in the muck of society to find those without God. You'll find these people in your local country clubs and respectable churches as much as you'll find them in porn shops and gay bars. "Respectable" sins may be more disgusting to our Lord than those sins of social outcasts. Have you been confessing what you see as your "respectable" sins.?I havn't been as much as I need to. Those of us who call ourselves "righteous" will not make it into the kingdom of God. Only those who CONFESS their sins will be admitted. ( That may sound scary, but take it up with the Lord...I didn't come up with it.)

Another thing that has been made known to me recently is that instead of confessing our sins, we would rather talk about those of others. When we disgregard our sinfulness it only goes to show that we may think we have the truth, but we really dont. Who are we kidding ? John chapter 1 vs 8 says " If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us". We all have sinned and we all have fallen short of God's glory (Rom 3:23), when we really know this, we have the truth. We sin, and we fall short, but God's grace abounds to us that confess our sins.

I'm not calling anybody out in particular about this, i'm examining myself here, and sharing it with you the reader. I don't want to use this blog to spill the deepest longings of my heart. However in my relationship with the Lord, the Holy Spirit will tweek my heart sometimes, and spur me on to share what he's telling me with others who need encouragement. Maybe you do, maybe you don't. What i'm dealing with isn't really deep and personal, but I believe it is something every Christian can relate to. So if you are a Christian and you are reading this, hopefully you can relate to it, and what the Lord has laid on my heart will also touch yours as well. If you're not a Christian and you're reading this, it's my prayer that the Lord would speak to your heart and bring you into a relationship with Him.

It's one thing to be aware of our sin, it is another thing to DO SOMETHING about it. We can take pleasure in our sin, we can fret about it all we want...OR..we can CONFESS IT. And as we read in God's love story to His people "if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness". ( 1 John 1:9) Which will you choose ?