sometimes blogs happen
We sang this song called "To The God Of Victory" in church a few weeks ago and for some reason the lyrics have stuck with me. They're good ones so I thought I would share them with you.
O God have mercy, reveal to me my sin,I tweeted this yesterday. "It seems that certain Christian groups are more willing to tolerate theological weakness than any methodological flexibility."
I felt I should follow it up with some brief explanation and expansion here on the blog I believe this mentality is dangerous to the cause of the gospel because it robs churches of a willingness to contextualize and use effective methodology. It happens most often when we elevate methods to the level of theology. When that happens it weakens our theology at it's core. When we say non-absolutes are as important or authoritative as absolutes - we are shooting ourselves in the proverbial foot.
When we make statements like "God never changes so we should not" we are saying "let's park right here methodologically" never mind how we got here or whether we plan to stay in the business of spreading the gospel to the next generation who are not in the same place spiritually as previous generations were. The implication for the next generation of Christians is usually as follows... when this type of stagnation is signaled by an older generation it prompts younger generations to look elsewhere for gospel centered, contextualized partnerships. I will not name any particular group or denomination because it happens all across the board in seminaries, churches and denominations.
In my brief experience - often times those who say that methods do not change would rather be friendly and in partnership with those who are stylistically and methodologically similar, even if the second party has weird theological quirks or strange interpretations of scripture in some instances. It doesn't make sense to me and doesn't jive with a large part of my generation and the next.
My hope is to be part of cooperation that finds it's theological center in Scripture and derives it's methodological diversity from the context in which we minister. We expect no less of international missionaries. But what about us? Aren't we all missionaries... put here by our missionary God to share the gospel! I hope to base my gospel partnerships on something much deeper and scriptural than ministry style or whether a dude wears the same pants as me. That's what I think! But what do you think?
Ministry Tip: When methodology becomes THE WAY instead of Jesus being "THE WAY" your methodology might be methodIDOLTRY (via @bubbajennings)
Church planting in the US gets a lot of press time and is obviously very needed. The question I pose is have we considered planting in churches in London, Paris and other European urban centers? What does your church planting strategy look like? Does it include the under-evangelized portions of Western Europe? I believe that just as there is a need for more church planting here in the US the need is even more monumental in Western Europe.
This was a very pithy cartoon that I found online here: http://ow.ly/i/1swJ. Many times this is too close to reality. However it is humorous look at the way some people behave. I think any further commentary is not really needed.
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