Tag: christianity

Cultural Christianity

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment
 
 
            It is usually a dubious action to place adjectives in front of the noun “Christianity.”  The actual word can stand alone quite well on its own without any modifiers in place.  But sometimes it might be appropriate to do so, for no other reason than to point out the oxymoronic nature of some of Christianity’s adherents.  “Cultural Christianity” ends up being something like “Grape Nuts” which, in reality, is neither grapes nor nuts.
 
            Which gets us to the heart of the issue:  cultural Christianity is not really Christianity at all, and isn’t even distinctively Christian in its actual culture.  Okay, some of you are getting impatient and want me to say it plainly.  So here it is:  just because someone shows up as a church attender doesn’t make them a Christian, any more than standing in a garage makes a person a car.  A nice person isn’t necessarily a Christian just because he/she is pleasant to be around.  An atheist isn’t necessarily unethical or immoral just because he/she is an atheist. 
 
            One of the parables of Jesus that was a complete head-scratcher for his disciples was the one about the sower who went out to sow seed.  They just did not get what the heck Christ was saying because the disciples were too steeped in a cultural understanding of their religious practice and belief.  So, Jesus made the meaning of the parable of the sower scattering seed a bit more understandable for them: 
 
“The seed is the word of God.  Those along the path are the ones who hear, and then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved.  Those on the rock are the ones who receive the word with joy when they hear it, but they have no root.  They believe for a while, but in the time of testing they fall away.  The seed that fell among thorns stands for those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by life’s worries, riches and pleasures, and they do not mature.  But the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering, produce a crop” (Luke 8:11-15).
 
All four scenarios of the seed involve hearing the word of God.  But, here is the scandal that brought Jesus some derision:  only the seed that retained what it heard and produced a crop is real true genuine authentic belief.  This is not a parable from Jesus about differing levels of maturity among Christians.  Nope, this is declaration from Jesus that out of the four who heard, only one proved to be the real deal.  To put it another way:  three out of the four people were cultural Christians, which really meant they were not Christians at all.  They looked and acted like Christians enough to slide by as identified believers for a while, but the message never really took; it didn’t stick.
 
            At this point we could become cynical and pessimistic about the current Christian climate in the West.  If only three out of four people are really Christians, then what hope is there?  Am I in or out?  Are you questioning others’ salvation?  Instead, we need to look at this from a different angle.  If three out of four times the seed doesn’t take root and grow into genuine belief, then we keep scattering the seed!  A person who hears but doesn’t actually believe doesn’t mean that it is a one-and-done situation.  In fact, the average person needs to hear the gospel of grace proclaimed anywhere from five to twenty-five times from several different people before the word of God sticks, they take root in the true soil of belief, and end up growing up into mature faith.
 
            The real aim of Christ’s parable was to not only unmask the cultural religion that was rampant, but to encourage the disciples to scatter the seed, to keep proclaiming the word of God over and over and over again in all kinds of places, all over the world.  They were not to give up because the continual proclamation of good news will eventually result in a massive harvest.
 

 

            So, be patient.  Keep embodying the message of Christ.  Continue speaking of Jesus everywhere to everyone.  Persevere in praying for those within and without the church who need the redeeming work of Jesus Christ.  Do not give up.

Living by Faith

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment
            Biblical Christianity is real, historic, personal, supernatural, redemptive, authoritative, relevant, dynamic, and demanding.  It’s all that and much more.  People, as created by God, were meant to have God firmly and lovingly at the central core of their lives.  But in humanity’s great fall into sin, God was replaced at the center of people’s lives with self.  Yet, the good news of Christianity is that Jesus has redeemed us back to God.  Through faith in Christ and a complete surrendering to him, we embark on a path toward spiritual growth and maturity that seats God back on the center throne of our lives.
 
 
 
            It’s not enough for the Christian to mentally know this stuff; the believer must understand how to put this knowledge into daily practice through faith (Hebrews 11:6).  Faith is the response of the entire person to God in loving trust, submission, and obedience through the person of Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit.
 
            Faith is neither a warm-fuzzy designed to make us feel good, nor a judgmental feeling of guilt that leaves us wishing our lives were better.  No, faith is a decision to take God at his Word and act upon it (Hebrews 11:24-28).  Now the kicker to all this is learning to make actual decisions of faith in practical daily experience.
 
            For example, let’s take a look at some decisions of faith based on 1 John 1:9 – “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to purify us from all unrighteousness.” All of us have a need to exercise faith in regard to some specific problem that dogs us.  The following steps illustrate the kinds of decisions we must make:
Ø  Confess the thing as sin.
Ø  Forsake it as a sin.
Ø  Believe that God will forgive and deliver you.
Ø  Receive Jesus as the specific need you have to deal with the sin.
Ø  Believe God’s Word that you are purified from sin, and live like it.
 
Faith is how we allow God to do what God wants to do:  be at the inner central core of our lives so that he can exert his power, influence, and grace in every single area of our lives.  Only then can we live in such a way where we don’t have this weird sacred/secular life where we divide ourselves according to spiritual things and non-spiritual things.  The truth is that it’s all spiritual and all belongs to God.  Therefore, the greater sin is to keep Jesus out of the center of everything we do.  God is a jealous God; he wants all of us, not part of us.
 

 

      The essence of living by faith is taking God at his Word.  The provision that God has given for us to walk by faith is the person and work of Jesus Christ.  When we choose to apply this good news to our lives through decisions of faith, hope, and love we experience success in the Christian life.  It is very difficult to express faith when a person is out of fellowship with God.  So, a primary decision to make every day is to engage in spiritual practices that cultivate a basic relationship with God.  Disciplines of Bible reading; prayer; and, weekly Sabbath observance; these all are necessary to developing our muscle of faith into a strong robust belief that is able to take on the rigors of life in this world.  

The Enlightenment Hangover

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment
 
 
            The Enlightenment project, begun centuries ago and coming to full flower in the 17thwith the primacy of reason and the scientific method, still exerts a potent hangover effect even in these post-Enlightenment or postmodern times.  Without going into a complete history lesson (which I will tackle another time) we can say that the church bought into much of this project in the 19th century.  We are still experiencing its effects today.  Just as the factory system with its focus on efficiency and specialization was the fruit of applying certainty and objective principles to manufacturing, so the church has this continuing and nasty tendency to operate as though people ought to move through the teaching and ministry of the church and come out the other end as products ready for shipping to heaven.  Whenever we focus on certainty in process, confidence in a particular project, and the expectation of people’s production as the highest of goals in the church then we are allowing Enlightenment philosophy and not biblical Christianity to shape our lives.
 
The essence of biblical Christianity revolves completely around the person and work of Jesus Christ.  The most profound theological and practical statement I could make is that God the Father loves us through God the Son by means of the presence of the Holy Spirit.  The work of Jesus has made deliverance from sin real, the restoration of the world possible, and it is the Spirit’s work to apply Christ’s redemption to us.
 
            Ideally, therefore, church ministry teaches us this good news of Jesus, and everything is done in order to worship and exalt the Son and bless the world.  But a warning must be given here because Christianity may be perverted into a form of Enlightenment-type idolatry through substituting the Church, the Bible, Christian service, spiritual experiences, or a list of do’s and don’ts for the person of Jesus Christ.
 
            The Church is an idol when we miss the truth that Jesus is the Head of Church (Ephesians 1:22).  The Bible is an idol when we neglect the truth that Jesus is the Living Word (John 1:14).  Our Christian ministry and service is an idol when do not acknowledge the truth that Jesus is Lord of all, including the harvest (Matthew 9:38).  Pursuing a spiritual experience or certain emotions are idols when we pass over the truth that Jesus is our sanctification, the one who sets us apart as holy (1 Corinthians 1:30).  Living ethically and morally is an idol when we avoid the truth that Jesus is Messiah who has delivered us from the power of sin (Luke 6:46).
 
            All of these ways put the onus on process and production, thus eroding the true foundation of Christianity, which is the person and work of Jesus.  The source, content, authority, and provision in Christianity are all found in the Holy Trinity, made available to us through the work of Christ and revealed to us in the Word of God.
 
            So, any church ministry that is worth its salt is continually seeking, submitting, and obeying the Word of God and responding to God with faith, hope, and love.  It is to be a dynamic relationship and not a spiritual factory making expected people products.  Sometimes we might get so discouraged over the lack of results, church conflict, apathetic people, or the paucity of spiritual growth within Christians that we end up unwittingly substituting some idol in the place of Jesus.  Adding more bells and whistles to existing programs or starting new ministries because we think the objective factory system needs tinkering are not good options for church work.  Instead, try reading through the Gospels again to get a fresh perspective on Jesus – who he is and what he did.  Let the re-invigoration of the church, Christian organizations, and the Christian life be centered in Christ, and not in a curriculum or strategic plan, as if the assembly line has broken down.
 

 

            We must return to Christianity and church ministry as the incredible relational and spiritual interaction between God and his people through worship, fellowship, and personable outreach.  This is not a cerebral emphasis on reason in order to make the church factory run more efficiently, but a plea for fostering relationship with Jesus the Son, exaltation of God the Father, and being filled with the Holy Spirit.  We serve and glorify a God who transcends Enlightenment reason and is not limited to the scientific method.  Let us, therefore, live like it.

Why We Christians Do What We Do

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment
 
 
This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins (1 John 4:10).  When is the last time you have sat with this verse of Holy Scripture and let its truth wash over you?  Notice that this use of the term propitiation (atoning sacrifice), which means to satisfy God’s wrath, comes in the middle of a discussion of God’s love.  In other words, sin arouses the wrath of God because God is love (by the way, Scripture says clearly that God is love, and never says that God is wrath).  God stands against everything that damages and destroys and hurts others.  God is just, and seeks to overthrow injustice.  His great love is why his anger is kindled – he has no toleration for things that separate him from people, and which separates people from each other.
 
The wrath of God does not mean that God ‘flies off the handle.’  What it does mean is that God is steady, unrelenting, and uncompromising in his antagonism toward evil in all its forms and manifestations.  I am often asked the question, “where is God?” when a tragedy or calamity occurs.  But God is not found in the calamity; He is found in the remedy.  He is found in the thousands of people who risk their lives to rescue others in the rubble of an earthquake or in a blazing inferno; God is in the giving of supplies and money to tornado victims; God is always in the solution to the tragedy.  But we often look for God in the wrong place.  God provided the ultimate remedy in sending Jesus Christ as a propitiation, an atoning sacrifice, for our sin.
 
What is amazing about sacrifice is that God himself makes the propitiation – the satisfaction for appeasing God’s wrath does not come from us.  God is offended by sin, and nothing we can do can overcome the offense simply because our sin is so evil and heinous.  We cannot talk our way, or work our way, out of trouble.  God himself presented Jesus as the solution to the sin problem once for all.  Because of God’s love, Jesus came to die for us; he took our place on the cross.
 
People are alienated from God by sin and God is alienated from people by wrath.  It is in the substitutionary death of Christ that sin is overcome and wrath averted, so that God can look on people without displeasure and people can look on God without fear.  Sin is done away with, and God is satisfied.
 

 

It is this love of God which is the basis for our own love toward others, and the solution to the dark places of our own hearts.  Because I am able to love at all tells me that there is a God who lives in me.  As we live and minister and love, it is necessary to never lose sight of why we do what we do as pastors, church leaders, and committed laypersons.  It is all about the person and work of Jesus – and at the center of it all is the cross, the atoning cleansing blood-soaked cross.  Here is the life that is truly life.