thoughts on our reputation

Posted by Nathan on Oct 11th, 2007
2007
Oct 11

Let’s say that you are stuck in an apartment with someone for a week.  During that time, the person never engages in conversation or relationship with you, but instead hurls insults towards you on a daily basis.  They get their friends together and berate you behind your back (but you are still within ear’s shot).  Then the person creates impersonal websites and propaganda to pass that explains God hates you and that you are destined for hell.

Let’s say that after all of that, they come up to you and say, “I know the living God, Jesus Christ.  I love you with his love, because His everlasting love lives in me, and I want to share Him with you today.”  No apology, no recognition of what they had done, and definately no relationship.

This has been the relationship with homosexuals over the last year.  This article says alot about how CRN deals with the subject.  I think it speaks for itself.  However, Ken Silva writes

Stanley also errs if indeed he thinks it is the mission of the Body of Christ to “rewrite the script for the reputation of Christianity.” Obviously our glorious and majestic, great and mighty, Christ told us to love God and our fellow man–in that order.

While I believe that the gospel is our ultimate message, we must have a right to share that gosple with people.  We cannot expect someone to listen to us after we have abused them for a few centuries.  It really has nothing to do with being seeker-sensitive or anything else.  It has everything to do with the act that we blew our reputation years ago, and our voice has little to no credibility now.  I am sad that these guys cannot see that.

6 Responses

  1. Chris L Says:
    October 11th, 2007 at 9:52 am

    I guess, with Catalyst 2007 just completed last week, it was finally time that Ken would try to set his sights on Andy Stanley. After all, his church is on of the Top 100 (in terms of size) and has a great deal of quiet influence in evangelical circles.

    The focus of this year’s conference was on being the Body of Christ to the world, centered on the greatest commandments - love God, love your neighbor. In particular, there was emphasis put on ‘love your neighbor’, which the church in recent history has boiled down to (as Warren put it) being a mouth without hands and feet.

    Since the very basis of Ken and other ODM’s ministry has boiled down “love your neighbor” as being Jesus mouth (though much more obnoxiously than is biblical), it is no mystery that they would cry out with wailing and gnashing of teeth from the hell on earth of their own creation.

  2. Matt B Says:
    October 11th, 2007 at 10:21 am

    It is interesting that the emerging postmodern church Imago Dei (home of Donald Miller) just got through a series on sharing the gospel. Rick McKinley says in the first sermon in the series that we should be converting people.

    http://www.imagodeicommunity.com/series/1000-conversations

  3. Matt B Says:
    October 11th, 2007 at 10:22 am

    From the USA Today piece Study: Youth See Christians As Judgemental, Anti-Gay we get a good look at the inward focused on the self new evangelicalism espoused by one of its “stars,” which also happens to be just as evident in the emerging church through men like Rob Bell:

    And what does Rob Bell have to do with Andy Stanely? Me thinks Ken was writing a hit piece.

  4. Chris L Says:
    October 11th, 2007 at 10:52 am

    And what does Rob Bell have to do with Andy Stanely?

    Nothing, but it adds Google hits and allows Ken to spread the (slanderous) wealth.

  5. Joe Martino Says:
    October 11th, 2007 at 12:48 pm

    My favorite quote from that article is his conclusion where he says he can say strongly that Andy has never seen 3000 converts in one day. I guess that is to attack Andy’s cred’s. So that begs the question, “Has Ken ever seen 3K converts in one day?”

  6. Chris L Says:
    October 11th, 2007 at 3:06 pm

    Part of what is going on in culture is not a ‘postmodern’ thing, so much as it is a ’skeptic’ thing. The overuse of marketing for everything from cars to toothpast to water, including religion, has led modern society to not take things at face value anymore.

    As a result, simple modernist rhetoric concerning the gospel - that it makes any difference whatsoever - will generally be disbelieved as marketing unless a true difference is seen in the person giving the gospel. This is why I still contend that most street preaching today falls into the category of ‘clanging cymbals’, and that sharing the gospel requires laying down our lives - heart, soul, mind and strength - which takes a bit more time than doing a pamphlet throw-down of the Roman Road…