soulster October 9th, 2007
This month, friends of mine Phil and Meredith McCollum where featured in the Christian Chronicle, a newspaper for the Churches of Christ. The largest periodical for this wing of the Restoration Movement has been covering church growth issues in the year-long series “Are We Growing?”. This issue details efforts to plant churches in various regions as a strategy for evangelism.
The McCollums don’t really view themselves as “church planters”, but “Gospel planters” manifesting the presence of Jesus in one of the L.A. metro’s tougher areas. They’re more than a little uncomfortable with the idea of recruiting people to church, as if it’s too much like salesmanship. On the …
soulster September 28th, 2007
A couple of days ago I was invited to go to Harvest ‘07, a Greg Laurie evangelistic campaign in Madison Square Garden with Mercy Me and Jeremy Camp. I don’t usually go to those things since I’m not exactly their target audience, but a friend had a couple of tickets and I thought, “hey, why not?”
I met my friend and two people he was bringing on the Path train from NJ into NYC. One of these was Kimberley Setzer, Director of Communications for Niños Con Valor, a non-profit working with street kids, prostitutes, orphans, and HIV+ …
soulster September 11th, 2007
Today NYC is full of remembering. 9/11 will always be the dividing line between who we were and are now. For me it is more than a national symbol or a cry to patriotism. It’s friends who have to fight depression daily, who are locked in cycles of mental illness, who self-medicate with anything they can find just to stop the spinning that began on that day.
I also think about all that has happened since. According to some estimates, nearly 655,000 lives have been taken in retribution [source]. Or perhaps the spin doctors would say this is the cost of correcting the …
soulster September 10th, 2007
By now you might be sick of the word “serviceâ€. It’s used an awful lot in Christian circles. Sorry, but it’s a very important word. It can also be a very dangerous word depending on how it is meant. For example, those in power may speak of service and mean the subjection of other people to their will. They preach service as godly participation in their programming, but ignore the ungodly exploitation and neglect required to realize their ambitions. On the other hand, people on the bottom of the power pyramid may use the term to mean what they …
soulster September 10th, 2007
Lately I’ve been reading Jesus and the Nonviolent Revolution by André Trocmé [get it free online in PDF here]. Trocmé [wiki] was a French pastor who led his rural Parish to form a network moving and hiding over 3,500 Jews from the Nazis. After the German take over, the French government was pressured to intimidate and eventually arrest Trocmé. As rumors of his impending arrest grew, he spoke to a crowded church service about Deuteronomy 19’s injunction to give the persecuted shelter. “These people came here for help and for shelter,” he said, “I am their shepherd. A shepherd does not …
soulster September 8th, 2007
This is the third part of the “Following Jesus” series.
Up to this point, I’ve discussed the problem of following Jesus and our various possible responses in “The 500-Pound Gorilla“. In “The Starting Point“, I also pointed out a fundamental shift from Ecclesiology >> Missiology >> Christology to Christology >> Missiology >> Ecclesiology that undergirds all I am going to say about following Jesus. Now it’s time to get into some of the fundamental changes required to “unstick us” in our crisis of discipleship: Am I really following Jesus?
During the time of Jesus’ earthly mission, people lived a very rural, tribal life style. …
soulster September 7th, 2007
American Christianity is criticized so broadly and often that the phraseology is already cliché. This reinforces the sentiment that I have expressed here and elsewhere that our culture believes that at least Christendom — the culture of Christianity — and maybe Christianity itself has failed. We believe it so much so that even within the religion there is now a feverish attempt to wake a church that is assumed to be sleeping, or worse, apostate (or else, why are we declining?). Much of the objections of our culture have to do with church more than Jesus (see comments in “500 Pound Gorilla“) and so 22 million …
soulster August 24th, 2007
Yesterday my friend Hugo (pictured left filling in for the UN ambassador from Kuwait) invited my to hear Sunday Adelaja speak at The Christian Cultural Society at UN Headquarters (I was sitting in the representative’s seat for Kyrgyzstan - see pic). Pastor Sunday, as he is most often called, is the founder of one of the largest churches in Europe, the Embassy of God, boasting 20,000+ members. Speaking of boasting, the lengthy intro, complete with a “stirring” promotional video, made me want to bolt: “Pastor Sunday has done this …
soulster August 15th, 2007
Alright, I admit it. It bothered me. “Kyle” left a comment on a post calling me an “anti-Christian conformist“. Maybe it’s because it’s just so opposite of what I hope to be. I mean, if at the end of all things that’s how I turn out, then I have really failed. Maybe that’s why that name was so bothersome — because I’m afraid of it.
No, it’s not the first time I’ve been called a name. In college I was labeled “that white boy who bends the truth” by a dorm mate with darker skin than mine and what some might call a more conservative theology. I’m not sure which was worse to the …
soulster August 15th, 2007
This article is the second in a multi-part series called “Following Jesus”.
…let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us…. [HEB 21:1 NIV]
When running races, perhaps the most important thing is showing up at the correct starting line. It seems to me, that despite the decline in Christianity’s influence and effectiveness in recent times, the amount of effort put into “doing” our religion is still pretty high. It’s not that we’ve quit doing things, even many things we might categorize more-or-less under the title “following Jesus”. But …
