First off, ChurchMarketingSucks.com got the ball rolling on a network of local church marketing labs, one of which is located in Tulsa. The first meeting is Monday the 7th. If you’re interested in marketing, communications, graphics, or web design for your church, meet us at Panera Bread at 71st and Garnett at 6.

I’ve started reading Tim Keller’s The Reason for God. In the early chapters he makes some statements about faith and doubt, and it occurred to me that, at least in recent history, the church has done a terrible job communicating the limits of faith and the benefits of doubt. (continue reading…)

I recently met Mike Todd, sole proprietor of Waving or Drowning, in the comments to my post Mark Driscoll and the Progressive Double Standard. We had a hearty disagreement, but Mike seemed to be interested in actually talking to me, rather than just tell me my modern theology is worthless in the postmodern world, then scurry off into the night. We went back and forth a couple of times, and I thought that it might be worth it for us to talk more, and on more subject. So, today we are launching our semi-official semi-dialogue.

It’s semi-official because we want to see if it will work before we go full-bore. It’s a semi-dialogue because at first it won’t be a “dialogue” at all. We’re going to start with dual monologues; we’ll each answer the question, and the other will offer no response. This will be building a basis for our conversation so that we can understand each other. Then we’ll get to the back-and-forth.

The monologue questions will be in the vein of our prompt today; they are simply setting the table for the deep discourse that will happen later. I hope you enjoy this discussion and return for our future interactions. (continue reading…)

I don’t think we spend enough time thinking about that little gem at the end of Romans 3 - “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” At least, not while considering this at the end of 1 John 1: “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.”

Today I came across an AP religion column about Donald Miller, author of Blue Like Jazz. Kelli Kennedy wants us all to know that “Donald Miller still loves God and Jesus…His problem is with Christianity, at least how it’s often practiced.” To him Christianity seems to be about “conservative politics, suburban consumerism and an ‘insensitivity to people who aren’t like us.’”

The column goes on to paint this image of traditional Christians as ultraconservative, totally intolerant, and shallow in their spirituality. I don’t want to critique the article here; I just want to lament the truth in this image of Christianity in America. (continue reading…)

Here’s an incomplete list of mindsets that I don’t understand:

1.) Christians who believe the Bible is totally metaphoric. One such person said he chooses to believe this because the alternative is ugly. But ugly doesn’t equal untrue. This seems to spill out from a materialistic worldview, and the belief that since we’ve made many scientific advances since that time, we know that those things weren’t possible. One side says the Bible was never meant to be taken literally, that it’s all myth; the other says that the writers truly believed it, but were wrong. Both say a metaphoric reading has more meaning than a “literal” reading.

2.) Women who are willing to be accomplices in their own objectification. They dress to get men to lust after them. The only reason to show it, is because you want people to look. It would seem to me that this is a bad way to get attention, or at least it is bad attention to get. The looks (leers is more like it) women will receive from men when they wear revealing clothes are not the type that lead to thoughts like, “She seems smart,” or, “She’s the type of girl I could settle down with.” Maybe those aren’t the kind of responses you’re looking for, but that’s a whole other issue. If you are hoping to meet someone and settle down, perhaps you shouldn’t be out fishing for a lustful response from the men in your vicinity.

3.) Christians who believe that we have to choose between social justice and evangelism/discipleship (Beliefnet has a good thread on this…here). Why can’t both sides agree that the two are equally important? Sure, Jesus said in Matthew 25:31ff that those who care for “the least of these” will enter the Kingdom. But he said in verses 1-13 that those who horde their goods and refuse to share will enter. Not too many people preaching that message today. Then he said in 14-30 that those who make money will enter, and those who merely save it will be thrown “outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” I haven’t heard that sermon yet. What’s really strange is that these people, many of whom are of the liberal/progressive/emergent stripe that values a metaphorical reading as superior, take a surprisingly literal reading of the parable of the sheep and the goats…one unbecoming to their exegetical skill.

More to come, I’m sure…

One of the hardest things about being on the conservative/traditional side of a Christian theological debate is dealing with statements like this:

Rather, I see the grand statements about Jesus – that he is the Son of God, the Light of the World, and so forth - as the testimony of the early Christian movement. These are neither objectively true statements about Jesus nor, for example in this season, about his conception and birth. To speak of him as the Son of God does not mean that he was conceived by God and had no biological human father. Rather, this is the post-Easter conviction of his followers.

In this paragraph Marcus Borg, of the Jesus Seminar, states these things as fact: Jesus did not say he was the Son of God or the Light of the World and the statements about Jesus’ divinity are not true. He states this as fact and it’s accepted as fact by many. The problem? It can’t be substantiated. (continue reading…)

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