Then He said to them all, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.  For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it.  For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and is himself destroyed or lost?  Luke 9:23-25.

In no way do I want to ignore the concept of coming to Christ, but I’ve heard many conversations on “assurance of salvation” (especially through youth groups), hypothesizing about potential situations of potentially lost souls. A friend of mine started the process of shaking up my thinking on these concerns when he said his response to people asking about these things was always, “Are you following Jesus?”.

“Follow Me” is a phrase Christ repeated over and over again during his time on earth. What does it mean to follow Him? It means to do what He did, live how He lived, and be who He was, right? That’s how a rabbi and his disciples worked as I understand it. Not sitting around drawing lines in the sand about who is in an who is out. In fact, within the inner twelve disciples was His eventual betrayer, Judas. Christ, who knew all of their hearts, intentions, and futures, didn’t reject or seperate out Judas or try to label him as a non-disciple. (don’t misunderstand me as trying to reject labels of any type.)

The questions get thrown around all of the time about salvation and sin. What if someone did X unmentionable sin, could they still be saved? Really, what does asking and answering that question help? Wouldn’t Christ’s response to such a situation be to call it sin, and challenge the person to turn from it and follow Him. I’m thinking of the woman at the well, Zacheus, and several others, who were obviously in sin, and Christ isn’t afraid to confront it.

A friend who claims to be a Christian, and is doing X, doesn’t need his salvation questioned, but a true friend who will call him to follow and pursue Christ, and through that to see how his life contains things aren’t right (sin). Christ makes it clear that salvation is a necessary part of following him, and if that’s the step that my friend felt he needed to do in order to follow Christ then great. If he felt that he had already accepted Christ, then great, repent from your sin and follow him.

Please don’t get offended by what is quite possibly my mind’s oversimplification of a complex topic, I’m simply trying to help myself and others follow Him.

Becoming De-Westernized

By Don Toshach

Now that the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein’s oppressive dictatorship in Iraq have fallen like so many political/military/ cultural/spiritual dominos, the the quest to bring democracy to these peoples. After years of Islamic extremism, a transitional government structure is now in place in Afghanistan under the watchful eye of the U.S. and its allies. Iraq’s future is still being debated at roundtables both inside and outside the country.

Change is occurring on the streets of both countries. Beards are disappearing. Women’s veils are being removed. Movie houses and bookstores are again open. With positive shifts that come with these developments, there is a danger of a people losing its distinctiveness and becoming wedded to another system of bondage as it embraces the values and mores of the West in the name of freedom and enterprise. As the Who’s classic song “Won’t Get Fooled Again” says: “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”

The new/old boss is westernization. It might be defined as the “we’re right-you’re wrong” mentality. Have it our way. Be linked to the global economy and community. Use our technology, watch our television shows and movies. The influence of America and the West is infused into our political systems, music, higher learning, sports, and fashion. Look like us. Dress like us. Think like us. Be like us. Buy our stuff. Be hip, be cool. If you don’t, you’ll be behind, not with it. For those of us in the West, we don’t even recognize how westernized we’ve become because it’s so deeply ingrained within. Only when having to light a candle during a power outage or using an outhouse while camping do we catch a glimpse of how utter dependent we are upon the system and how sharply that contrasts with the rest of the world.

Westernization has permeated the church. The organic, apostolic, communal gatherings featured in the book of Acts have been replaced by ones run by suited professionals with stopwatches. Highly structured. Highly cerebral. Highly sanitized. Featuring a God who’s understandable and safe. Everything org-charted. A congregant knows what’s going to go on in this kind of church this week, next week, next month, and next year. Predictable and comfortable. What’s wrong with this picture? Welcome to the machine, Stepford children of God! Whatever happened to the Holy Spirit? The Western church bares little resemblance to anything in the Bible, but everything in our faster, better, cheaper business world. The consequence? It is largely devoid of life and power of the Spirit kind. It is as westernized as a Carl’s Jr. Western Bacon Cheeseburger.

via drewsams.com

And if you wanted to keep track of all of the new items that are being added to grocery stores this year, you’d find it to be more than 17,000 new items.

For most of the western world, we don’t live in a peaceful world that looks like this…

No, for most of us, whether we actually live in the big city of not still feel like we live in one.

And as a result of this lifestyle, which used to be location specific to the big urban and city areas has become pervasive in our entire culture.

We’ve become addicted to speed and rushing around. I remember the time during college, when after a long year of rushing around, scheduling everything (papers, tests, exams, quizes, assignments, and more) in my PDA that was always at my side, and working 15-20 hours per week, having alarms and reminders going off constantly, i finally took a much needed 2 day break from all of it. I remember how weird it felt to not be bothered what time it was, or what was due next. If you’re a techy person like I am, it’s an experiment worth trying someday and it’s extremely freeing.

But returning to the original concept of being overstimulated by marketing, media, and our lifestyles, forces us to create new boundaries in how we live with , communicate with, and deal with others. And in my mind it’s only fair to ask then, what does this mean for those of us trying to share the gospel message with others around us?

Why have they spent so much time and effort on these commercials? Because they’ve found them to be effective means of impacting the way people behave, whether it is to vote a certain way, live a certain way, go to a certain place, or buy a certain product. They are all paying money to get a moment of your time to change the way you live and behave.

They all have a message they are trying to communicate, and they’re trying to do it as effectively as possible. And guess what? They are constantly changing. An old commercial by Coca Cola and a newer commercial by Coca Cola These commercials have changed in style, but the ultimate message is the same, right? Drink Coke, buy Coke.

Why do they do this? So that they can be more effective at getting your attention and changing you, which results in greater profits for them.

American businesses realize that they can communicate the same message in different forms, but why are we so worried about doing this as Christians? Why do we get so caught on a single style or method of evangelism that might have worked well with a certain generation, in a certain place, or at a certain time, and fail to move on to new methods, as if it would be equivalent of blasphemy? Think about the way you talk about your faith or share it with others? Isn’t there other ways to share about Christ than an evangelistic campaign, street preaching, or tracts? Are there other times of the year to invite your neighbors to church and more creative ways of doing it than just before Christmas and Easter? Can’t we break out of the mold a little, and try new ways of bringing the message of Christ to people?

In the music scene it’s really cool to search for God. It’s not very cool to find him.

Now, I think this quote could be applied to the pop culture as a whole today and not just music. And it can also be applied I think to large segments of the American population. Always seeking but never finding. And those that do find, aren’t acceptable anymore. Just a quote that got my mind moving, and it might do the same for you.

*Disclosure: This is a Moody Press book, and I work for a different branch of the Moody Bible Institute which Moody Press is a part of. Additionally, I heard the author speak about this book when it was first being published when I was a student at Moody sometime in the last year. And finally, I can’t endorse this book, I’m just slowly reading it.

I’m going to start out by admitting a few biases. I don’t think change is bad. I’m a fan of understanding your audience and communicating through a means that won’t poison the message or the hearer from even starting to listening to it. I accept that the Bible is an awesome big book of truth, and that it has many different parts because there are many different situations in life that need to be addressed. So from that I gather that 1 verse is never the end all be all of sharing the message of Christ. And finally until I can come up with more, I know I will offend some of you because I might talk about evangelism and not discipleship, or I might refer to sharing the gospel more than sharing God’s love, or I might talk more about talking with people than doing. Such is life in my mind. We are pendulums swinging back and forth from one extreme to another. We never are perfectly balanced in life, so I won’t attempt to claim I am. Please if you disagree, great, comment, create your own blog, challenge my thoughts, help me keep my crazy thoughts and ideas in check.

So here I’ll end my ramblings, and move on to the topic of this post. Just another thought from a child of God who is inwardly turned upside down by Him, but still alright.

evangelistic methods after modernity

I’ve found today’s society to be marked by three general characteristics:

post-modernism…truth is absolute…or is it?
post-consumerism…I have to get the newest…but maybe I don’t?
post-interruption…look at this flashy ,cool, new…please put me on your “do not call” list.

And as I consider the emerging society that we live in, I feel that street preaching-based forms of evangelism, tract and bible distribution, confrontational and five-law based evangelism’s are defunct and useless.

Now that I’ve gotten your attention with my extreme claims, I’d like to over the next few posts explain why I believe our culture has changed, what it is becoming, why our current methods are loosing effectiveness, and begin to explore what’s to come for the future of evangelism.

But this concept of dealing with unwanted noise is similar to how our attempts to evangelize can be. We are good intentioned Christians talking about Christ as best as we can in a dark world. And often we get the same response from the people who hear us as I responded to the unwanted hangout going on in my back alley tonight. They might not notice us at first, then they may try to block us out, and finally they migr try to stop us using whatever means they can. Can I share my faith in a way that is not unwanted noise in the alley, but instead the invited friend who’s been asked to visit, or who is being visited?