Blogotional

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Ron Edmundson on "10 Attributes of a Humble Leader":

• Dangerous Trust
• Sincere Investment
• Gentle, but Strong
• Readily Admits Mistakes
• Forgives easily
• Quickly diverts attention
• Remains thankful
• Recognizes Limitations
• Shares authority
• Invites feedback

I read that list and I just think "leader." Which leads to the question, "Is a leader that is not humble really a leader?" I think I will leave the question lay....

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Greg Laurie:

To make disciples means to go out and, to the best of your ability, seek to lead people to Christ and help them to grow up spiritually. Take them under your wing. Help them grow in their faith. They will ask you questions about things you have forgotten. They will get you studying your Bible as never before. That is why older believers need newer believers. And of course, newer believers need older believers to temper them, to keep them strong, and to help them get a good foundation.

I have found that as I give out, God gives back to me. And the more I give out, the more God gives to me. Jesus said in Matthew 13:12, "To those who listen to my teaching, more understanding will be given, and they will have an abundance of knowledge. But for those who are not listening, even what little understanding they have will be taken away from them."

I grow increasingly disturbed by such appeals to maturity. Those along the line of, "No really, there is something in this FOR YOU." If you must be enticed to Christian maturity out of self-interest, you will not gain Christian maturity. Christian maturity is the stuff of setting aside self-interest for the sake of God and the other. One matures in the faith out of obedience, or desire to help others.

Maturity out of self-interest is not maturity at all.
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Chaplain Mike:

Case in point this weekend: a CP interview with Ken Myers, called “Is the ‘Culture’ Really the Church’s Problem?”. Myers wrote one of my all-time favorite books on Christianity and its relationship to American culture: All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes, now available in a new edition.

Myers, a former NPR reporter, is the founder and host of Mars Hill Audio journal, a bimonthly audio magazine featuring interviews with some of today’s foremost Christian thought leaders in academics, politics, and the arts.

In this current interview, Myers contends that Christians are spending an inordinate amount of attention on the failings and dangers of the surrounding “culture” when what we should be truly worried about is the culture in the church.
This starts, he says, with an insufficient understanding of the Gospel.

What I mean is, we have reduced the Gospel to an abstract message of salvation that can be believed without having any necessary consequences for how we live. In contrast, the redemption announced in the Bible is clearly understood as restoring human thriving in creation.
Redemption is not just a restoration of our status before God through the life and work of Jesus Christ, but a restoration of our relationship with God as well. And our relationship with God is expressed in how we live. Salvation is about God’s restoring our whole life, not just one invisible aspect of our being (our soul), but our life as lived out in the world in ways that are in keeping with how God made us. The goal of salvation is blessedness for us as human beings. In other words, we are saved so that our way of life can be fully in keeping with God’s ordering of reality.

 The pervasive, inadequate view of salvation allows me to grab hold of a word of private salvation for myself without any organic connection to the Kingdom vision of Jesus. Salvation doesn’t just make me a “new creature” (a mistranslation of 2Cor. 5:17), it brings me into a “new creation.” As J.B. Phillips paraphrases Ephesians 1:10 — “[God] purposes in his sovereign will that all human history shall be consummated in Christ, that everything that exists in Heaven or earth shall find its perfection and fulfillment in him.”

Can't disagree with that, though I do think there is a loop that needs to be closed.  If we actually build the kinds of Christians being discussed here we will in fact radically change the culture.  History has shown that to be the case time and again.  Part of what Christ's ministry demonstrates is that when it comes to engaging culture, we are not limited to the tools that culture gives us.

The transformation that Christ seeks to create in our lives is so radical and makes us so winsome that the usual rules do not apply.  It is a supernatural event, not a natural one.
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Jeff Dunn @ iMonk:

Because of this, Mohler concludes that Stanley intentionally used this story to help “normalize homosexuality” in his church. Mohler then uses this story to say that megachurches may now be preaching liberal theology. (Many megachurches I have attended preach no theology, only self-help and motivational messages; but that is for another day.)

Let’s ignore what he has to say about megachurches. If you have read this site for more than two weeks, you know that we find many of these churches to be suspect at best for failing to point people to Jesus. And let’s ignore the issue of homosexuality, which continues to baffle even the most well-meaning disciples. (And I am not defending Andy Stanley in the least. Maybe he is trying to make homosexuality normal within his church. I don’t know.) What is the real problem with Mohler’s blog post? The problem is he missed the whole point of Stanley’s message: The tension between grace and truth.

Dunn is right - Mohler misses grace, not just here but in most of what he writes. But Dunn, in the rest of his post commits the same error in stating too strongly the necessity and infiniteness of grace. There is no either/or here - there is both/and - total and overwhelming grace AND total and overwhelming morality. This is not a "tension" they are both parts of a whole. The are not irreconcilable save in the recesses of our limited minds.

They are reconcilable only in submission tot he Holy Spirit. The "whole that both grace and morality are a part of is supernatural, beyond our frame-of-reference. It is only in submission to the whole, on a completely ununderstandable level that we can begin to even have a hint of truth.
Sometimes we should quit arguing and just submit.

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Think Christian:

Editor’s note: This is an excerpt from Jonathan Merritt’s new book, A Faith of Our Own.

Some of today’s leading Christian entities and voices show new life as they support a broadening agenda. Still socially conservative on many issues, they feel called to attend to issues that most Christians haven’t championed in the past.

For example, the great majority of young Christians still believe that abortion should be illegal in most or all cases. At the same time, interest in social justice issues is growing among all Christians (especially young people). According to in-depth research by LifeWay, 66 percent of young churchgoers claim that “social action is an extremely important part of their lives.” Yet, few believe they will see “a significant contribution” from current Christian leadership in addressing these issues.

It is rare that I am as dismissive of something as I am of the book title "A Faith of Our Own." It just strikes me as so wrong I can hardly stand it. Faith in God just is not about us. I could get all Reformed here and discuss how even faith is a gift of grace, but that would, I think miss the real point. Faith in God is about God - not us.

I am struck by how doing the right thing in the wrong way always becomes a problem. Traditional worship is "staid and boring" not because it is inherently staid and boring, but because those of us that appreciate it have made it about us - not God. Feeding the poor is a great thing, except for the fact that it is usually more about the feeder feeling good about themselves than it is the feedee getting what they need and meeting God in the process.

The next generation does not need "a faith of their own," what they need to to succeed where my generation failed. They need to serve God, not try to figure out how God can serve them.
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