Category: Engaging Our Culture

The Dangers of Church Bashing – Part 1

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For some reason it has become popular among many Christian writers to make critical statements about the Christian church as a whole, either the present church or the historical church. My question is whether these statements are fair and good. If I took the time I could come up with endless examples of sweeping criticisms. I will give one example from a very well-known spiritual formation author. He wrote “We’ve been at this for two thousand years now…Clearly, the church is not making much headway in eliminating what is wrong in the world and making everything right.” Is this historically fair? The Roman empire was a brutal empire ruled by brutal and often grossly immoral and hedonistic emperors. After Christianity was legally accepted in the 4th century the morality and humanitarianism in the empire greatly improved. Unwanted babies weren’t left to die on hillsides. Bishops like Ambrose had the influence Continue Reading →

How To Love Your “Neighbor” Through Conversations

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Today I am posting a post from Michael Hyatt, former Christian publishing CEO about conversations. This is especially important during this holiday season when we have the opportunity to connect with our friends and family and establish deeper relationships. Hyatt’s post contains excellent advice about conversations, communication and valuing people in a truly Christian way. He doesn’t mention scripture or Jesus but for me it goes to the heart of the second great commandment established by Jesus: love your neighbor as yourself. Learning to love others is the essential sign of a Christian and learning how to communicate love and friendship are essential to loving others. Jesus was a master of loving communication and we can be too. Paul said our speech should be “seasoned”, in other words it should taste good. Whether we are talking with believers or unbelievers we can craft our speech to communicate the fruits of Continue Reading →

When Our Society Declines: Being Missionaries Everywhere

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It’s not really fair to expect unbelievers to act like believers. We are in this world as lights, not as adversaries to the world. We love our enemies as well those who are not our enemies (which I think covers everyone). If we change our mindset then we won’t be so discouraged when our culture becomes destructive. Instead of thinking we have a right to live in the kind of place we want, it might help to think of ourselves as missionaries in our community and our world. As missionaries we need to understand the culture around us. Since there is such a diversity of views wherever we go, our lives are a constant cross-cultural experience. Even talking to our neighbor is often a cross-cultural experience. We can think of our lives as a challenge to finding the right words and actions that will draw people to God. This is Continue Reading →

Key Facts from the Huge Pew Religion Study

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The huge Pew Forum Religious Landscape Study was just released. The study was conducted in 2014 and the same study was also conducted in 2007 which allows us to see important trends in religious affiliations and beliefs. The full report can be found here: http://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/ The study groups people into the following categories (in order of affiliation rank): Evangelical (25.4%), unaffiliated (22.8%), Catholic (20.8%), Mainline Protestant (14.7%), and Non-Christian faiths (5.9%). The biggest headline is that the Christian share of the population has fallen from 78.4% in 2007 to 70.6% of the U.S. population. Most of the losses have come for Catholics and Mainline Protestants. Christianity is still by far the most dominant religion in America and more Christians live in America than any other country in the world. It’s interesting that Evangelicals have only lost 0.9 percentage points since 2007, but this means a gain of about 2 million Continue Reading →

Part 1-When We Explain Our Faith What Is Our Central Theme? The Union of Love.

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When we think or talk about our faith do we focus on our union of love with God or do we focus on lesser matters? Do our hearers understand that God is the author of ultimate relationship or do they feel like we are trying to prove the faith? How do we speak to ourselves about what our faith is about? I believe our union of love with God in Christ is the grand unifying theme of biblical theology and spirituality. Every element of the gospel is best understood in the context of His desire to be in a strong and loving relationship with us and His desire for us to live in community with fellow believers. He wants to be our Father, our teacher, our lover, and our friend. Jesus summed this up in Matthew 22:37 by saying that the greatest commandment was to love God with all your Continue Reading →