Thursday, October 24, 2013
Live By The Sword...
Justin Taylor quotes Marc5Solas on why youth are leaving the church:
But there is something else quite devastating about that old cliche "Live by the sword, die by the sword." If we are, in fact, "dying by the sword," that is to say being a cheap entertainment knockoff, then it implies we are living by that too. Rather than living the enriched, full, and abundant lives that are ours by virtue of God's grace, we are living cheap knockoff lives.
Before we can save the world, we need to make sure we save ourselves. We cannot proclaim that which we have not appropriated.
phony relevant youth
Our kids are smart. They picked up on the message we unwittingly taught. If church is simply a place to learn life-application principals to achieve a better life in community . . . you don’t need a crucified Jesus for that. Why would they get up early on a Sunday and watch a cheap knockoff of the entertainment venue they went to the night before? The middle-aged pastor trying desperately to be “relevant” to them would be a comical cliché if the effect weren’t so devastating....It was the phrase "cheap knockoff" that I found most devastating, and that inspired the title for this post. The fact of the matter is that when the church tires to imitate the world, we are going to lose. We lack the resources to play that game.
We’ve traded a historic, objective, faithful gospel based on God’s graciousness toward us for a modern, subjective, pragmatic gospel based upon achieving our goal by following life strategies. Rather than being faithful to the foolish simplicity of the gospel of the cross we’ve set our goal on being “successful” in growing crowds with this gospel of glory.
But there is something else quite devastating about that old cliche "Live by the sword, die by the sword." If we are, in fact, "dying by the sword," that is to say being a cheap entertainment knockoff, then it implies we are living by that too. Rather than living the enriched, full, and abundant lives that are ours by virtue of God's grace, we are living cheap knockoff lives.
Before we can save the world, we need to make sure we save ourselves. We cannot proclaim that which we have not appropriated.
phony relevant youth
