3 Responses to “August 28, 2009”

1. Michael
   August 30th, 2009 @ 1:15 pm

   Speaking of holiness, I saw amazing things at my church this morning! Money that totaled $5,000 was available for anyone to come and take as anyone had need in their lives. Although there were needy people who came to take and there was plenty of money to go around afterwards, there were people who came and GAVE even more in the money plate! God’s incredible love through His people was greatly shown today!

2. Jabez H.
   September 13th, 2009 @ 1:26 am

   Beyond ‘Jesus and Me’
   Making Disciples 
   September 11, 2009

   For many years, Willow Creek Community Church outside Chicago was the model that many evangelical churches sought to copy. Its growth, facilities and programs seemed to scream “success.”
   That is, until Willow Creek took a closer look.
   The “look” was in the form of two-year comprehensive study that sought to determine which of its programs were helping it members to mature spiritually. The shocking answer was “not many.”
   As pastor Bill Hybels courageously put it, some of their highest profile and best-funded programs didn’t do much, if any, good. On the contrary, the things that people were “crying out for” went under-funded and starved of resources.
   Hybels called the result of the study a “wake-up call.” In his words, “We made a mistake.” In place of the “seeker friendly” program-centric model, Willow Creek seeks to instill in its members a desire to discover “what God is doing and how he’s asking us to transform this planet.”
   Christian Smith of the University of North Carolina wouldn’t be surprised at all at what Hybels and others have learned. Smith, a sociologist, has studied American Christianity in depth. In his book Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Life of American Teenagers, Smith writes that the “de facto dominant religion” among American teenagers is what he calls “moral therapeutic deism.”
   According to this “religion,” God created and watches over the world but otherwise is only to be called upon to solve problems. All He requires is that people be nice and fair to each other, “as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.” Not surprisingly, “the central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.”
   Smith notes that moral therapeutic deism is “more than a little visible” among conservative protestant teenagers. And it’s not only teenagers. As theologian Albert Mohler has pointed out, what Smith describes is a belief “held by a large percentage of Americans.”
   This kind of pablum is the logical outcome of reducing the entirety of the Christian faith to “Jesus and me.” This Jesus does not challenge the way we see the world, much less how we live in it because He wants us to be happy; so He sanctions our desires.  
                This is the postmodern paradigm for ineffective religion, and the religious culture’s self massage substituting for holiness.

3. Jabez H.
   September 13th, 2009 @ 1:27 am

   The above is from Chuck Colson, posted on Sept. 11th.

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