thought I would repeat this comment from prophet Silva on a recent article about his language

“No, I have nothing to apologize for. If that language Jesus prompted me to use offends, then let it offend.”

Enough said.

I’ve posted a partial transcript of a recent Q&A with Rob Bell at Mars Hill.  There were three Q&A sessions with some overlapping content, which I’ve tried to weave together into a (partial) view of some of the overarching themes over on my blog, Fishing the Abyss.

A couple Q&A’s that may be of interest here:

Q: How would you respond to people who say ‘Will we be sacrificing a message of salvation by serving?’ or ‘what if this is just the pendulum swinging too far the other way?’ or ’If we try to end poverty, will we be leaving Jesus behind?’

A: Those are the questions of someone who is in exile and they don’t even know it.  It’s the kind of question you’re left with when you’ve missed God’s purposes in the world.

Bill Gates is giving millions and millions of dollars to relieve AIDS in Africa, and billions of dollars to great causes around the world because the church didn’t beat him to it.  We are ALWAYS telling people about Jesus.  We are telling them about Jesus with our action and we are telling people about Jesus with our inaction.  So we are always evangelizing.  We are always announcing who we believe Jesus is.  We are always indicating – through everything we do – whether we believe the tomb is empty or not.

I think the term ‘evangelism’ can be very destructive, because it gives people the message ‘I’m supposed to be doing this thing over here’.  But if you’re a grandma and I meet up with you and you have grandkids, it will be within 10 minutes that you will whip out of your purse your wallet with the pictures of your grandkids.  You naturally and instincitively tell people what you love.

If you love golf, I will know in several moments that you love golf, because we naturally talk about what we love.  My experience is that if you are trusting Jesus more and more each day, then your relationship with Jesus and your walk with Jesus… You will naturally witness to this.  How could you stay silent?

So when people say ‘what are you doing for evangelism training?’ I say ‘introducing people to Jesus.  Churches have been giving people artificial – ‘well, there’s three questions I am supposed to ask’, or ‘there’s four points on this pamphlet’ instead of something that is supposed to be this natural, free-flowing ‘I can’t NOT tell you my story’.

The Kingdom of God is wherever God’s rule and reign are expanding, whether that’s your heart, your past, or…  We’ve been inviting people for the past 8 years to trust Jesus.  Jesus can be trusted.  Trust Jesus with your past, with your sins, with your doubts, with your anxieties, with your suicidal thoughts, with your checkbook, with your relationships, with someone who’s hurt you and you need to forgive them.  For eight years we’ve simply said ‘You can trust Jesus wherever you are on your journey.’

And the Kingdom of God is holistic in nature.  It’s everything from the right words spoken at the right time to a glass of water brought to somebody who doesn’t have water.  The Kingdom of God is ANYWHERE things are the way that God intends them to be.

West Michigan is a sick religious culture.  It’s sick.  It’s got all the marks of the Pharisees that can’t encounter something without trying to shove it into a box and labelling it.  he Kingdom of God transcends whatever petty, shallow religious labelling systems we’ve made up.  It’s simply bigger than wider than that.

Q: What would you attribute to some of the criticisms about Velvet Elvis or Sex God, or our view of salvation or heaven and the view that it is here and now and a physical place we go to when we die?  How does Mars Hill decide “what we believe”?

A: First off, I have never, ever, tried to create controversy.  That’s lame.  We’ll leave that to whoever’s on TV right now creating something.  The issue for us has always been truth.

I think some people, when they say ‘well, that’s questionable theology’, they should be honest and say ‘actually, I’ve just never heard that before.’  When people masquerade their ignorance as somebody else’s improper theology, that’s just arrogance and it’s wrong.  We take this very seriously here, and everything is with the elders and leaders here – and lots of leaders within our community.  I will often take a teaching to the elders and have them review a version of the teaching and ask them ‘what do you think?’ and to poke holes in it.  We have lots of friends around the world – great Christians – writers, thinkers, theologians, [and we ask them] ‘what do you think about this’?

I have no interest in having long, boring discussions about what the Bible is.  I would much rather us try to do what it says to do.  There are certain people who, until you say certain things about the Bible – they want to discuss over and over and over again what the Bible is, and we’ll never keep them happy.  I don’t think the point of the Bible is to argue endlessly about what it is, I think the point is to study it and to then do what it says to do.

And our commitment to the Bible?  Every week we gather here and we open the Bible and we study it.  Is there something more?

I also think that with some other folks, it isn’t enough to trust Jesus.  They also want to make sure that everyone else is going to hell.  And so they say it’s faith, but it’s actually fear.  And the scriptures say that perfect love casts out fear.   It is not our job to go around deciding who’s going to hell and who’s going to heaven.  Jesus would have said ‘that is your job’ if that was our job.

Obviously, you can resist grace and the love of God.  We see it around us all the time.  Obviously, people can resist.  But this odd religious impulse – that it’s not enough to trust Jesus, but I need to condemn everybody who’s not like me to hell – is a sick, twisted thing that comes from – I would argue – from a deep despair and a fear that simply has no part in the Kingdom of God. 

Our job is to invite everybody to trust Jesus, and I will never back down from that.

The rest is here.

This is just going to be an ongoing article here at CRN.info.  The elusive “editor” at C?N has once again not given his opinion on Rick Warren’s ministry.  And, once again they have dug deep for this one.

Let me first say that not all of the ideas in the article entitled 40 Ways to Increase Baptism were life changing.  Some are a bit superficial, but are good ideas for making baptisms special and prolific nonetheless.  The “editor” over at C?N made this unbiased statement about the article:

note that none include preaching the Word of God or repentance…

However here were some ideas presented from Rick Warren:

1. Mention the value, purpose and benefits of baptism regularly in sermons.

7. Have a required membership class that explains the meaning or baptism in detail.

15. Print a “Why Be Baptized?” brochure. Use scriptures and lots of testimonies.

26. Have a corporate prayer of celebration at the end of each service to thank God for those baptized.

27. Sing a great hymn about the power of God to change someone’s life.

It doesn’t exactly sound like Warren is trying to take the scripture out of Baptism.  Looks like the “editor” had a bad case of digging deep for this one.