Category: Christianity (Page 16 of 23)

I am for you

March 30, 2015 / / 0 Comments

You, Me, WeWith Indiana passing the Religious Restoration Act into law, there’s been a lot of debate over it. I even joined the conversation. Even though the law doesn’t specify this, many Christians are looking to these types of laws to allow them to refuse service to people based on their own religious convictions; specifically providing services to gay couples that they determine would communicate an agreement with their lifestyle. My stance, like a handful of other Christians, is that Christians should not look to use this law as a means to usurp Jesus’ command to love their neighbor and to serve others. As I read through various articles, from both sides, I started to question what I’m trying to communicate through #ApproachGod.

I started to wonder if I had crossed a line and turned #ApproachGod into a vehicle for calling out all the things I didn’t agree with that Christians do; basically a “shaming” page for Christians. I also started to think about how unfair it must seem to expect Christians to behave a certain way and essentially let everyone else “off the hook.” Why should Christians be expected to be loving and welcoming and then not expect that from others? It just doesn’t seem fair on a lot of different levels. But that’s just how it is and it has to be that way. It’s what Jesus calls us to. It’s what sets us apart as His followers. The bible was written for Christians. Jesus was teaching His followers, us, to live and love a specific way. None of it was pointed toward or given to those that don’t believe in who Jesus is.

Jesus said, “…deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” Self denial, carrying a cross and following aren’t easy tasks. Jesus never said it’d be easy. But, He also didn’t force us to pick up the cross. He actually gives you a choice and not everyone chooses Him; the rich young ruler didn’t. That’s the beauty of Jesus; He never forces Himself on you. Everyone of His followers are followers because they said yes; you chose to follow. He chose you, made an offer and you said yes. There’s so much more to that “yes,” but that requires a whole other blog, maybe 20, to cover that. But, regardless, YOU chose to surrender, which means you were accepting His command to love and serve others. There’s no way around that.

All that to say this, I’m for you. If you’re a Christians and you’re genuinely seeking to follow after Christ, I’m for you. If you’re not a Christian, and I’m for you also, just in a different way. No blog that I write is ever intended to call out Christians. They’re my people and I genuinely love them. I have friends at all different levels of maturity in Christianity and all different areas of conviction for various things, and I genuinely love them all. #ApproachGod is never intended to call Christians out, but it’s always intended to call them up. Every letter that an apostle wrote, that is now what we call the New Testament, was written with the intention of helping its recipients grow deeper and wider in Christ. My desire is that #ApproachGod will a dialogue within our faith communities that help others realize their ability, through Christ, to approach God and to help bring others into His presence. Jesus said, “…all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” I love you guys and I’m always open to dialogue.

I’ll end with Paul’s word to the Ephesian church,

“I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call…“

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Luckily, Indiana Passed a Law to Ensure the Sanctity of Christianity

March 27, 2015 / / 2 Comments

I'm Just a BillI actually don’t even know what to write about this. I’m jaw-drop dumbfounded by the support that this bill garnered from people that claim to follow Jesus. I’m not naïve or stupid, so I knew it would, but I’m still in awe by it. If you’ve followed #ApproachGod over the last couple years you know that I’ve written articles related to Christianity and the LBGT community on a number of occasions. You can read those articles HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE. I almost feel like writing anything, at this point, is useless, but I’m going to anyway.

If you can’t tell, I’m not actually glad that Indiana Governor Mike Pence signed that bill into law. I’m actually saddened and angered by it. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, Gov. Pence just signed state Senate Bill 101, or the Religious Freedom Restoration Act into law. To be fair, I couldn’t find anything in the law that outright says a person can be denied service based on the business owner’s religious belief. The issue with the bill is that it uses such vague language, that business owner’s will be able to use the law to refuse service and discriminate, lets call it what it is, against people based on their sexual orientation (because regardless of what you want to pretend this is about, it’s really about not baking cakes for gay couples).

This isn’t the same issue as the same gender marriage debate. I understand why people, on both sides, are so passionate about that issue. Quick tangent: Although I understand why Christians felt the need to rally against same gender marriage, and I do (full disclosure) believe that marriage is one man and one woman, I disagree that there should be laws banning it. Other people redefining marriage ultimately doesn’t effect the definition of marriage for Christians. Banning same gender marriage isn’t going to stop people from being gay and it definitely does NOT communicate the love of Jesus. Also, and I’ve said this before, the standard of living laid out in the bible and by Jesus wasn’t intended for unbelievers anymore than the laws in the UK are intended to govern people living in America. That standard of living is given to The Church, not the world.

I know some will argue that these types of laws are necessary because of the Hobby Lobby case. This isn’t even that issue and I’m not even going to touch that. But, can we all agree that if this was about protecting companies from having to fork out money to pay for certain kinds of contraception then the bill could have used language that addressed that issue, but it doesn’t. Even if those were the main driving ideas behind this law, that isn’t the only way people are going to use it.

My issue is that Christians supported this law because they want to legally have the right to refuse service to people based on their religious beliefs. Let me say that again, to refuse SERVICE to people. SERVICE. Jesus said, “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” So I’m curious where Christians are let off the hook here. Nowhere in the bible do I see Jesus saying, “I came to serve, unless you’re a prostitute, thief, leper, gay. If you’re any of those, I have the right to refuse service.” It’s ludicrous that Christians, in the name of “religious freedom” are trying to shirk their responsibility to serve others. At no point did Jesus make a distinction for who got to experience or benefit from His love and service. We, as a church, ought to be ashamed and saddened by such a law. The worse part is that if you’re a shop owner and some one wants to purchase a service from you, you aren’t doing them some big favor; they’re paying for it. But, providing flowers for a gay couple’s wedding, although they’re paying for it, can still be a great way to love them. Refusing to treat a gay couple’s child is a great way to show them exactly the opposite of what Jesus would have done and actually did do. He was a healer and served the needs of those who needed healing. 

What has happened to The Church that it would demand and supports a law that gets us off the hook for doing what Jesus told us to do? How did we get it so wrong? You wanna talk about the twisted Gospel? It isn’t “the left” that’s doing it; it’s laws like this that run straight past twisting the Gospel and shred it to pieces. Laws like this go against the very fiber of Jesus’ command to “Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.” The intention of this law might have been meant to protect certain religious convictions, but I’m afraid that it’ll be Christians that use it to ignore Christ’s call.

It doesn’t matter what other religions will use it for, we’re not them and they aren’t called to what we are, which is loving and serving others, even loving our enemies. Following Jesus isn’t easy; He said it wasn’t. It demands us stepping out into areas that we may not agree with and even those that scare us. Unfortunately this type of law is one more layer that western culture will use to mold Christianity into the “about me” religion it was never meant to be. Our main religious conviction ought to be to love and serve others, not finding a way to refuse and turn them away. We’re called to better. We’re called to Jesus and to be like Him.

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Our Church Service Isn’t For You

March 20, 2015 / / 0 Comments

bannerimageThis is probably going to rub some people the wrong way and some aren’t going to agree with my take on this, but I’m ok with that. My hope is that it will spark thought and conversation on why we gather as a body of believers.

I’ve long thought that the best place to bring people to experience Jesus and “get saved” was church on Sunday morning. It seemed like a great place for that to happen. There’s a ton of other believers, there’s great worship music (depending on where you attend), great biblical teaching (again, dependent on where you go), both of which evoke an emotional response and set an ideal environment to respond to the Holy Spirit. That’s how I met Jesus and how so many of my friends also met Him. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this process. Jesus did say, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.” So on the surface it makes sense. It’s only been in the last few years that I started to rethink that process.

It started when I was leading a college ministry. We met every Sunday evening, on campus, and had great teaching and discussion. We fully considered ourselves a church in the way that we operated, even though we were actually a ministry inside of a larger church, and because a number of people who attended our group didn’t attend any other church. One of THE most common denominators between all the hundreds of variations and denominations of Christian church is something called an alter call. This is a process whereby the Pastor, after delivering his sermon, offers the opportunity for those attending to confess Jesus as Savior and ask Him into their heart. We didn’t do it in our college ministry. Again, nothing inherently wrong with that, I answered one of those calls and here I sit. At that time we decided and felt that personal discussions made for a more informed decision. Instead of counting hands of those answering an alter call, in order to determine our “success” as a church, we opted to measure someone’s dedication and allegiance to Jesus by their willingness to serve others and in long-measured apparent transformation in their daily living. It was a more difficult metric to use and there were a lot of missteps, but we still see the fruit of that today, three years later.

As the years passed one of the things God really started to press into my heart was that He was calling me to “do” church differently, not better, than I had done it in the past. At the time I was finishing seminary and fully intended to start a traditional model institutional church and pastor as my vocation. But, God wanted something different. Without getting too deep into the model, because I plan to write a post on that soon, I felt like God was calling me to a model that sat in the middle ground between institutional church and organic house church. Some of the main elements of that were things like our homes being our front door, an all volunteer staff, and each member of the community taking responsibility for discipling others. As God developed this model in mine, and a number of my friends’, hearts, He began to change the way I saw the corporate church gathering. The model He moved us to doesn’t eliminate a large corporate gathering like an organic home church model does, but it doesn’t place all of the focus on it as a traditional institutional service would.

As I’ve read through the New Testament, over the last few years, I’ve began to realize that all of the letters the Apostles wrote were not directed at unbelievers. Everything written, after the Gospels, was written to specific Christians or to churches. The purpose was for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. It was for those that had already confessed Christ. Christians were gathering together, devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. They were attending the temple together. I started to realize that the gathering of believer’s wasn’t necessarily intended to get people “saved.” Not that it can’t or didn’t happen; I know it happens today, which helps me believe that it happened then. But I’m convinced the purpose of the corporate gathering was and is to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.

This isn’t a call to change the way that others do church. Instead, it’s a prompt to spark thought and consideration for what it would mean to gather as a body of believers, really dig deep into God’s word, to worship, pray and praise God together so that we are equipped for the work of ministry and for every good work. What if we gathered weekly and were prepared to take Christ into the rest of our week and the rest of the world? What would happen if the depth of our corporate gathering so engulfed our life that we couldn’t have a shallow faith? What if gathering together was focused on the believer, not the unbeliever, and we were prepared to introduce people to Christ in our home or their home, then invite them into our celebration?

My church service may not be for you, but my home is.

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