Knowing and Doing

My thesis for these blogs is that the church had lost its identity. I wrote that identity crisis number 1 was the church being identified by our buildings!! This is not found in Scripture and we think building "upon a foundation" means going into a building program. As my dear friend mentioned at Bible Study last Friday, from the Field of Dreams movie with Kevin Costner, "If you build it, they will come" type attitude. Time to move on!! Identity Crisis #2: The church has allowed the unsaved to become members in it. There are people in the church who have been members for years and they are not saved and do not display the fruits of the Spirit and do not have a devotion to the Lord because they are about being seen, they come with their family and wonder during the service how long the preacher is going to preach today. It is obvious by the look on their face that they have better things to do and want to get this couple of hours over with. Hey, they will tell...

Last time, I mentioned that the church has LOST ITS IDENTITY. A living organism, the body of Christ, a fellowship of believers, God's people,...we are all these things. But our identity is lost, because of our ignorance of what the NT Church is supposed to be, not what a "traditional" church actually is. IDENTITY CRISIS #1: We are limited to our buildings ........we have a mentality today that church is a building or our "temple". When many people use the term "church", they are referring to the red brick building with the name "church" on it. When we have church, we have it in that building, no matter what it is. Every time we have an event, it is at the church. When we are so called "witnessing" to others, we don't share Christ with them, we invite them to church. Oh man, do we need to read the book of Acts and Paul's letters. Acts 16:14-15 "A woman named Lydia, from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple fabrics, a...

Let me ask you a question that requires a short answer: How do you gage the health of the church today? (I mean am I a radical for asking this question?) The emerging church is defined in wikipedia as participants who seek to live their faith in what they believe to be a " postmodern " society. Proponents of this movement call it a "conversation" to emphasize its developing and decentralized nature, its vast range of standpoints and its commitment to dialogue. In other words, the "decentralization" of the church is going against all the traditions of the established.....really a non-traditional church that does not want to be held down by too many rules or "ways" of doing things. Some Christian scholars, such as D. A. Carson , have characterized the emerging church movement as primarily a movement of protest in which participants are reacting against their more conservative heritage. These critics generally claim that emergent books and blog...