CRN.Info and Analysis

Much has been said here about the misuse of logic, vitriol, over the top hyperbole, and downright misinformation of the ODM’s.  Quite frankly it has been well deserved and accurate.

Many times a post or comment has been written that makes comparisons between ODM’s and clanging cymbals, pharisees, legalists, and blockers of doors.  Again well deserved and accurate.

A little while back Joe Martino wrote a post about “Fruit”and said that this is the litmus test for whether or not he’s going to believe what you are saying.  He essentially said that all the bible verses in the world aren’t going to convince him if you don’t have the evidence of “fruit” in your life.  Predictabley the ODM’s swooped in and accused Joe of denying the Bible.  Which, quite honestly, only reinforced the point Joe was making.

So as a new contributor here I wanted to deal with a question that I have been rolling around in my mind for months.

Do the watch-doggies have Joy?

I mean this as a serious question. My first encounter with an ODM, and what eventually led me to .info, was when Ken Silva commented on a friends blog.  The furthest thing from my mind was”That guy has the joy of the Lord”. This was further reinforced when I was introduced to Ingrid, Team Pyro, Dwayna, and a whole slew of commenter’s.  Where is the Joy?

side note: Before the ol’ “You do it too” is thrown out I would encourage anyone to visit the personal blogs of the contributors of this site. We have it. I promise you!

Again this is a serious question. When the world visits your blogs is the Joy you have in the Lord evident? Furthermore; I would ask that in your passion to defend the Lord have you considered what your representation of the Lord looks like to the world? 

Joyful?  Maybe! But I certainly don’t see it.

In the recent post The Sexuality Obsession, there has been a heated debate over the issue of a Christian’s role in legislating morality. Ingrid wrote

I’m amazed at those who make the statement that you can’t legislate morality. Someone’s morality is always legislated, the question is always, whose? Right now the morality of the child-killers has been codified into law. We have 50 million dead babies because of this. Chattel slavery was the morality codified into law here in the United States and in Great Britain. It took a William Wilberforce, a Christian, to spearheaded moral opposition that changed the law (politics, Henry) to free blacks in England and a civil war to end it here in America where Christians had made peace with slavery.

All I want to say is that fighting for basic rights that all humanity should have (life, freedom, food, etc.) is one thing. Fighting for all humanity to act as we would like them to is a whole other ballgame. Calling for humans to not be sold as property is not the same as calling for everyone to have sex as we would like them to. Ending the genocide in Europe is not the same as fighting for our morals to be made laws in America. We Christians in the United States fight so hard for our moral freedom. But, as soon as someone else wants to exercise their moral freedom, not even asking for us to curb our beliefs, we react with vicious words and actions.

Look, I believe the scriptures. I believe that homosexuality is a destructive and ultimately godless lifestyle. I believe that having sex inside the context of heterosexual marriage is the only acceptable context for it. I believe that God longs for people to honor His instructions for sexual practices. However, I also believe that adultery is biblically wrong. I believe that marriage is exclusively between one man and one woman for life. I also know that more people commit adultery in America (14-22%) than live homosexual lifestyles (1-3%). If we are so concerned about legislating our sexual morality, why are we not strengthening the marriage contract? Why are we not fighting for making adultery illegal? Of course, we can’t stop there in being the moral majority. We will have to make it illegal to not attend church. We will have to enforce coveting with the law enforcement. We can force people to give 10% of their income to the church.

If we are going to be the group who controls everyone’s morality thru the government, we have to think thru the long term ramifications. Are we really called to do this? Or, are we just picking and choosing our battles to keep our comfort levels at their peak?

Made of fail!

A reader of the Hope In Laodicea (HeIL) site has addressed a question, by all appearances, to the readers/writers of this site. In a recent article, HeIL (incorrectly) identified our site as an “attack site”, and one of the commenters, Faye, asked the following question.

I have wondered about what the emergents say about the Bible not being clear, not being understandable. They profess to love God’s Word but turn around and almost totally discount His Word by saying no one can truely understand it. They seem to be O.K. with all the “love thy neighboor, golden rule” scriptures, but get real fuzzy in their understanding about repentance, submission to God and the wrath of God for rebels (sinners). Haven’t they ever heard of the Holy Spirit and that He will teach us and help us to recall the Truths of scripture when it is needed? Just my observation and I do have an opinion about those who claim that the Bible can not be understand and who still claim to be a christian. We need to pray for those whom God has chosen to be His own to come out from among them.

For those of you new to this conversation, pretty much anyone/everyone in disagreement with the methodology (primarily) and theology (at times) of CR?N/AM/HeIL/OT/Pyro/etc. is labelled “emergent” (which describes, in reality, about 20% of our writers, if you count ‘emerging’ as part of the ‘emergent’ movement). Since no answer of substance from the writers/readers here would be allowed on HeIL, perhaps some of our writers/readers could help Faye understand whether a) she understands who she’s asking a question to; and b) what our response would be to her query/observation.

Pretend, for a moment that you hear two people discussing a third person who was rudely treated at a grocery store check out. The first says:

“How about just asking the courtesy clerk, ‘Hon, I’m so sorry you’re having a bad day! What can I do for you to make it better?”

Try it, it WORKS. Then say a prayer for them when you leave, AFTER you tell them, “I’ll be praying for you today. I sure hope your day gets better”.

The second says:

When I have spent thousands of dollars a year supporting a retail establishment, I see absolutely nothing wrong with requesting courtesy from the staff. Rudeness and lack of service is endemic today because customers put up with it. This young woman Mrs. Pilgrim referred to was in serious need of a reality check. Not only did she do a favor to the young woman who was in sore need of basic teaching, but she did a favor to the store in helping them retain customers. Further, she did a favor to future customers who are often weary and at wits end trying to accomplish the day’s responsibilties and who don’t need an insensitive, boorish individual making them feel badly for shopping in the store.

So which of these two people in this discussion are Christians?

Well you might be surprised to find out that they both are.

Perhaps a better question would be the question posed in the title: Which of these two responses are Christ-like? Because its only one of them.

Anyone else find it hilarious when people complain about the narcissism of the present generation base their complaint on being deprived of their proper titles? Perhaps if they didn’t think quite so much of themselves they’d be a bit more tolerant of the trend of dropping sir, ma’am, Mr and Mrs.

All this reminds me of this verse:

5″Everything they do is done for men to see: They make their phylacteries[a] wide and the tassels on their garments long; 6they love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues; 7they love to be greeted in the marketplaces and to have men call them ‘Rabbi.’

8″But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have only one Master and you are all brothers.

Matthew 23.5-8

As long as we’re discussing irony I have to drop this quote from King of Queens, just because it makes me laugh:
“Douglas I must apologize, I thought irony meant made entirely of iron. Your story was ironic.”

A recent letter from a Slice Reader was posted at the site today. He attended the festival that Luis Palau was sponsoring in Nebraska. I knew it was a bit slanted when the author wrote that he told his son only these three types of people would be there

#1 True Christians who didn’t realize what was missing in this festival and what was wrong with the philosophy behind it.

#2 Professing Christians who would someday hear, “Depart, I never knew you” unless they could be awakened and truly converted.

#3 The Un-religious who simply came for the world class carnival atmosphere and who, as Ingrid says, “… Don’t mind if a little Jesus is drizzled on top.”

I will definitely give him the benefit of a doubt that he forgot the fourth and fifth types of people that were more than likely there

#4 True Christians who probably spent hours in prayer and hard work on the event so that they could attract an audience to share the gospel with. Their ultimate goal is not to entertain, but to see people saved

#5 The lost and broken who have yet to find an answer for their life. People that are in need of a savior and will probably encounter an opportunity to find it there.

after all, the Luis Palau festival website says

Luis Palau gives multiple presentations of the Good News and calls to commitment to Jesus Christ. The Gospel is proclaimed throughout the festival grounds, through action sport and children’s evangelists, as well as through thousands of local Christians in attendance. More than 71,000 Americans have made public decisions for Jesus Christ at our U.S. festivals.

The man and his son were removed from the grounds for passing out tracts that read

not only is God good, but He is Holy. Yes, God loves them, but they are condemned already because of sin. Jesus died for them, but even the devil “believes” and is not saved, they must therefore examine themselves by the law to see their great need, then, “repent toward God, and put faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.”

and objecting to remove his sandwich board sign (after being asked to simply take it down) that read:

Jesus said: Go and Sin No More

Conditional forgiveness

Limited time offer

Read the Bible

www.consumingfirefellowship.org

The love and grace of God

Will either make you holy

Or cast you into hell.

Fear God- Jesus

www.consumingfirefellowship.org

He says this in his letter

Within a minute or two, a bicycle mounted policeman arrived (I don’t know if the 3 arrived together or first one and then the other two) and without either asking my name, what I was doing, ordering me to leave, or reading me my rights, he began to handcuff me as if he himself worked for Palau’s goons and took orders from them. He wouldn’t answer any questions, but ordered me to lace my fingers together behind my back and then asked where my I.D. was and whether “anything sharp” was in my pocket with my wallet. (sure officer, I always keep a blowfish and a porcupine in there to thwart pickpockets) (I didn’t actually say that but would have if I’d thought of it)

I think his letter made enough commentary for this article. It is sad what these guys are willing to do to make their point.

The Church Report recently gave its annual list of the the top 50 Most Influential Churches in America.  The top two were Willow Creek, followed by Saddleback.  Among the top 15 were North Point (Andy Stanley), Fellowship Church (Ed Young), Mars Hill (Mark Driscoll), The Potter’s house (T.D. Jakes), Mosaic (Erwin McManus) and Mars Hill (Rob Bell).  Of course the list was packed with those the watch doggie blogs absolutely love to hate.

Slice of Laodicea recently received a press release from Willow Creek, letting others know about the good news.  It was also fascinating that 29 of the 50 churches are Willow Creek Association members.  “The WCA is a growing multi-denominational worldwide network of more than 12,000 churches from 90 denominations and 35 countries that equips churches and church leaders with strategic vision, training, and resources.”  It really is pretty impressive, all the work they have done.  But here are a few thoughts one the subject presented by Slice commentors

Well, if they’d included the Catholics, Mormons, and rabbis, Saddleback would’ve won hands-down.

But how many synagogues can Willow Creek boast about? I mean we know for a fact that Rick Warren suggested to unbelieving Jews on how to grow their congregations.

“Churches should be small,” he said (I’m paraphrasing.) “Once they get too big, they can’t look after everyone.”  Preach justification by faith alone and all the other doctrines that depend on that. Keep that up and your church will prosper.

Apparently number counting and notches on the belt exceeds spiritual maturity, any of the fruits of the Spirit, and “pillar and ground of the truth” as vital areas of church life. How sad that they’d rather puff themselves up over their influence than give God glory and follow his command to flee the world. I wish they’d stop counting goats and leave the numbers to God, who “gives the increase”.

Meanwhile, a group of young Christians from S. Korea are being held captive by the Taliban in Afghanistan. The threats of death are with them daily. This kind of garbage from Willow Creek is sickening!

I’m sure that God is terribly impressed. Do you think He is on their e-mail list, or did He have to get this second hand?  Sometimes you wish you could tell these clowns to crawl back into their hole and play with whatever makes them happy.

I wonder what would happen if Grace Community Church was on the list and John MacArthur put out this press release.  Would their numerical growth be “sickening”?  It’s sad that so many people cannot rejoice in what is happening all over the world.  And who ever said that numbers are not a good thing?  I know we should not judge a church solely on numbers, but it does say a lot.  If a church is growing numerically, it means that new people are coming (which normally means they are coming to Christ).  And it doesn’t mean you have to have thousands coming, but steady church growth is usually a sign of health.

I fear for churches that have no numerical growth, but say something like “well, we may not be growing with people, but our members are all well versed and growing in the word.”  If there isn’t growth, then new people are not coming.  And if new people aren’t coming, then the chances that people are finding Christ in that community are slim to none.

Tim already wrote an article on the subject, so I will keep this brief.  The Willow Creek Arts Conference video clips that Slice is up in arms over are short commentary about a 90 minute talk that the speakers gave at the event.  To make statements about the small amount of content in the clips is akin to walking in on the last 5 minutes of a 90 minute conversation and feeling you have a handle on the while thing.  From someone who was actually at the event, Donald Miller’s content was hardly controversial and, in my opinion, timely and very biblical.

In closing and responding to many of the comments at Slice, many people have questioned the whole reason for having an arts conference.  Let’s not forget that once upon a time, the church was known for its art.  In fact, the church was the artist center for the culture.  Everything from the Sistine Chapel to the David statue, the artists communicated biblical truth thru their work.  And, it was from this art culture we received many of the hymns that more believers hold as holy and sacred.

After reading this comment from “Carol A” over at Slice about a church meeting in a bar on Sundays, my heart was pretty saddened again. This just confirmed my earlier thoughts in the original post. It says all too much about the theology of Ken, Ingrid, Slice and C?N.

Oh, Lord, how long must we witness these blasphemous abominations?

First of all, “unsaved” or “unchurched” people don’t believe in God, they don’t believe in Jesus as their Savior and Lord. Why would they want to go to a “church” to worship someone who they don’t believe in? I don’t get the reasoning for these people even going.

Second point, why do these “leaders” want to attract goats to a place where sheep are worshiping their Creator? How can they think this crazy “synthesis” of goats and sheep is going to bring about anything?

That last line killed me. Why would we want to attract “goats” to church? Wow. That’s all I have to say.

And for the record, my post asking Ingrid for scriptures backing up her claims was not approved or published.