I was having a conversation with someone who was saying that the church needs to be more relevant to the culture. Shouldn't we be more relevant to the Spirit? Culture doesn't need a christian fusion to flavor it. In fact, that has been the problems since the first basilica.
I don't think we need apologetics for the church, we need disciplemakers of Christ.
If we are following JESUS, we will walk in the Way, Truth, and Life.
We spend a lot of time defining and battling what should be in a "worship" service, while many outside the doors don't know the love that Jesus offers them.
There is a huge difference between institutional survival and survival of the Kingdom. The gates of hell will not prevail against the Kingdom, but as the UK has demonstrated, the church can "lose it flavor on the bedpost overnight."
8 comments:
"I don't think we need apologetics for the church, we need disciplemakers of Christ."
Why not both?
Why?
Are you asking why anyone should ever defend the church, or counter falsehoods about it?
I don't think I know the banana thing nor do I know about the robust defense of the resurrection. I do know that many come to faith and life in Christ without caring.
Please note, my argument is not whether we should have church, the question is when will the church leave the building and the arguments about insignificant things like bananas and care more about the fruit of Spirit?
The world views the church as a joke and some in the church views the world as an enemy. We have the Truth, and we are holding it ransom instead of being displays of the glory of God in our lives (See John 9 1-3) so that they would even be interested in the love of Jesus.
Arguments don't lead people to Christ, but arguments (note, NOT quarreling) can remove mental barriers that people use to push Christ away.
Charles Colson gave his heart to Christ in part because God used Lewis's Mere Christianity, and Lewis became a Christian in part because God used the apologetics of GK Chesterton. Colson's work in prisons with the least among us has I'm sure been used by God to introduce many to Jesus as well as improve their physical condition.
The world I live in, the academy, views the Church as a joke IN PART because one of the largest streams of Christianity in the US treated thinking and philosophy as unworthy of those bound for glory, and thus those who think for a living, and act as the professional gatekeepers for the entire culture, find it that much easier to see the Church as an entity not worth taking seriously.
Now that we have raised the intellectual level of the church through the evangelical wing, is there an onslaught of intellectuals coming to faith? I agree with you Micah, there was a lot of disservice done to the gospel by the hot air buffoonery of the early movements of 1900s. But does Christ make anymore sense when we can intellectually win an argument? Does the message of the cross make any intellectual sense at all. As Bonhoeffer said, "When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die." And do we mistaken intellectual training for discipleship? (I do realize there is the intellectual side of discipleship.)
I find it most disturbing that some people are equating evangelicals with fundamentalists, not because of their intellect but because of their hearts.
Good questions, and I suspect we are in heated agreement (or at least warmed agreement).
I don't see a lot of intellectuals coming to faith necessarily. But I do see young college students buoyed in their faith by the increasing, though still small, numbers of Christian intellectuals in the academy. College can be a lonely and hostile place for faith, and the Christian professor who combines both theory and practice in a genuine walk with Christ can be a life-saver for the young Christian away from home and church for the first time and encountering very gentile and sophisticated people who neverthleless think their faith is moronic (non-Christian students can also be exposed to the faith too).
But ultimately, no, I'm not sure that winning an argument makes complete "sense". I think an over-rationalism does as much damage as an over-reliance on emotion and neglect of thinking. Growing up in the Central Valley evangelical PCUSA milieu I was exposed, like many others, to both 1) the notion that my faith is strong to the extent I can feel or experience God and 2) the Bible has the answer for everything and apologetics can prove the faith beyond a shadow of a doubt.
When young people growing up with both of those influences run into the bits of life where the feelings seem gone and there are intellectual problems that don't seem solvable through apologetics, well, than that's a double whammy that leads many into despair or apathy. And we know this not just as an abstract thought . . .
Sensing God's presence is crucial to our faith, and learning and studying God's word and His world is too, but sometimes we go through dry spots emotionally/spiritually (my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?), and not every problem has a neat answer.
I agree Bonhoeffer is a great example of someone who thought and lived out this tension or balance. Who else put such learning and eloquence into the service of practical Christian life and discipleship? (and I might add, politics).
(I also think many lump evangelicals and fundies together not just because of our hearts, but because it's useful to do so; some people will hate us not just because we don't live as we should, but because sometimes miraculously by God's grace we do).
Thanks for provoking a good discussion.
Right on, my friend. I do agree and thanks for letting me provoke.
Good to have you weigh in.
You were up early this morning.
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