In today’s economy, it doesn’t really look like the last servant had done anything really bad. He was afraid that his master would have nothing, so made sure to keep at least one talent for him. It was very pragmatic. It is probably what I would do. But it is not what Jesus would expect of us. There are a number of examples in Scripture where Jesus talks about doing the opposite of what is natural for us. When the government tells you to walk a mile, you walk two. When someone hits you, you turn the other cheek. He sat and spoke with a Samaritan woman, alone. It seems like he did everything that was contrary to our nature. And to top it off, we should reflect his life in our living.

That’s really what Goodman’s series focuses on within our church structures. We have sought after pragmatism, rather than following Jesus’ nature. I highly encourage you to read this series. They are fairly short and precise, to the point, and will surely make you think.

• The Counterintuitive Church – Part 1
• The Counterintuitive Church – Part 2, The Gaps
• The Counterintuitive Church – Part 3, Distribution
• The Counterintuitive Church – Part 4, Let’s Be Clear
• The Counterintuitive Church – Part 5, What’s Wrong With Pragmatism
• The Counterintuitive Church – Part 6, Impractical Worship
• The Counterintuitive Church – Part 7, Impractical Spaces
• The Counterintuitive Church – Part 8, The Impractical Church Among Us

After reading this series, I thought to myself. Maybe instead of asking, “What Would Jesus Do?” and coming up with a practical answer… I should ask, “What Would I Do?” and then do the opposite. That would probably more closely reflect Jesus’ nature – rather than my own.

If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act; they shall surely be put to death. Their bloodguiltiness is upon them. – Leviticus 20:13

For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error. – Romans 1:26-27

I think it would be erroneous to state that these texts support homosexual acts. The author links to two books, one who believes the Bible does not condemn homosexuality as sin, Jesus, the Bible, and Homosexuality and one who does, The Bible and Homosexual Practice. But neither seem to be the point of this article, what is this authors real point is if you dismiss one author because of their view of scripture, then “enough with the Bible already.”

Cleaveland goes on to support his position of “enough with the Bible already.” I believe his concern is that as Christians we are using the Bible to discriminate against a whole class of people. This has been and continues to be a concern of mine. It wasn’t too long ago in American history where conservative Christians used their Bibles to condemn and discriminate against black people and  all women (even to this day). However, I think Cleaveland goes a little too far. He admits that he will be acused of going down a slippery slope, but that is merely a logical fallacy anyway. Rather, I believe he is committing his own logical fallacy, the “fallacy of slanting” or deliberately omitting, deemphasizing, or overemphasizing certain points to the exclusion of others in order to hide evidence that is important and relevant to the conclusion of the argument and that should be taken into account of in an argument. The reason I say this is because of a few key statements that Cleaveland makes, such as,

There are certainly plenty of books written that go into great detail concerning the very few texts in Scripture that deal with same-sex relations…. (his emphasis, not mine)

…these beliefs come from a very selective reading of a very small amount of texts from the Bible….

…Christians need to get over their infatuation with a very select few verses…

It seems to me that Cleaveland is demphasising these verses in favor of homosexuality. I think this is where he crosses the perverbial line. He’s right in many cases, if the Bible is causing you to believe that homosexual people are sub-human, or do not deserve the same rights as non-homosexual people, then perhaps your misreading the message of Christ. However, to claim that we should put aside our bibles if we believe homosexuality is wrong, is completely ignoring the evidence. I truly believe Cleaveland is swinging the pendelum to far… he has noticed an ongoing trend towards people (Christians) who hate Homosexuals and use the Bible to bash and condem them. His answer is to throw away the Bible, instead, I believe our answer should be to pray, seek the Lord’s wisdom, and consider these verses.

Do I think it should be illegal for homosexuals to marry? No, that is up to the state and its government. However, I do believe that homosexuality is sin. To be perfectly honest, the bible doesn’t really talk about the same topics very often. If we were to take Cleavelands view, there are tons of topics we could ignore because they are barely mentioned. For instance, Leviticus 18:23 reads, “Also you shall not have intercourse with any animal to be defiled with it, nor shall any woman stand before an animal to mate with it; it is a perversion.” But there are so few verses in the Bible about having sex with animals, why can’t we safely ignore this one? Perhaps this is a better example, Exodus 22:22 reads, “You shall not afflict any widow or orphan.” Since this isn’t talked about very often, then we can do whatever we want to widows and orphans.

Do you understand my point? I would say the bible rarely speak about the same sins over and over again, their frequency shouldn’t determine how we interpret scripture. Gossip, slander, lying, etc. are all sins but how often do you see them mentioned in scripture? Probably as much as homosexuality is mentioned. The pure weight given to each of these, clearly mark them as “sinful” even homosexuality. Cleaveland ends by saying,

If it is the Bible that is causing us to delay accepting and celebrating LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender/transsexual] persons as being fully human and fully created in the image of God, just as they are, then perhaps we need to say, “Enough with the Bible already…”

What are you thoughts on this subject?

Check out the interview here: In Conversation with Frank Viola

This is taken with Alan’s permission from here.

Developing a Biblical Ecclesiology Lecture
This is a lecture that I delivered concerning how my ecclesiology – my understanding of the church – has changed over the last few years.

Click here to download a pdf version of my PowerPoint presentation.

Click here to download the entire file (52 MB). Or, click the play button below to play the file online.

Click here to read Alan’s post regarding his lecture.

Anyways, the “Christian Culture” I mentioned is up in arms about this movie. Warning all parents to prevent their children from seeing it, or else they’ll turn into the devil.

Well, Michael Spencer from Internet Monk has written a response to this reaction, called, I’m Not Afraid of Atheists (or Their Movies). I am officially adopting it as my own. Thanks Michael!

Cheryl at Women in Ministry recently had a radio interview with Matt Slick about her view about 1 Timothy 2:11-15. She was unable to make concluding remarks, so she concluded on her blog in a post called The rest of the story – 1 Timothy 2:11-15 and Matt Slick. She also links to original interview in MP3 format for everyone to listen to. Her view is definitely not the most common view and I think she needs to do a little more research, but it is worth mentioning.

I encourage you to check out both of these blogs. They will challenge you in important ways.

Consider the situation where you are sitting among a group of believers, listening to someone teach. The teaching is very inspiring and challenging. You are really enjoying it. Beside you, a baby starts crying. Can the crying baby distract you from worshiping God? If we assume that you can only worship by listening to the teacher, then the baby would be a distraction. If we assume instead that the way you respond to the crying baby and the baby’s mother reveals your obedience to God, then you can continue to worship – even if you cannot hear the teacher.

This started to make me think about how we handle “distractions.” In Alan’s example, the baby becomes the distraction. Often times we remove distractions from us when we meet. We have children’s church, we have the nursery, we have contemporary services vs. traditional services, and the list could go on. None of these things are bad, or evil, or anything, but often they are created to remove distraction. We have children’s church because children get bored in real church, so we deal with the children by removing them from the situation. Babies tend to poop and cry and make all sorts of noises, so we send them to the nursery. Older people don’t really like contemporary music, so we have singing time with hymns and a separate singing time with newer music for the younger generations.

As I said, none of these things are wrong, in and of themselves. However, is it possible that these things tend to hide our sin? When your children get rambunctious, you’ll get an evil eye or two. Someone will surely gossip about how they could not hear the sermon, how misbehaved your children are, etc. By removing the children, the people do not have to deal with their sins because they can act like perfect little people. The same goes for the other examples I listed above.

As I have been contemplating these issues, I started to wonder what else we use to hide our sins. It occurred to me that legalism is the biggest thing, I think we also use doctrine to hide our sins, man-made rules and regulations, even our buildings can be used to hide our sins.

I suggest you ask yourself how you are hiding your sins.

I pray that God would reveal to us our sins and the devices we use to try to hide them from others. I pray that we would be more transparent before his Church and before Him, that we would confess our sins instead of hide them. I pray that He would strengthen us and those who we encounter to be more open to forgiving, guiding, and urging each other to love and good works. Most of all, I thank Him for all that He has done in our lives through His sons work on the cross and escape from Death.

Please read Dr. Black’s article. I think it will benefit you, even if you already agree with the point he is trying to make.

So the question is, are the Church’s current difficulties self-induced or something else?

It is a blog dedicated to sharing the abundant life that Jesus has poured on us and the journey that we are all on with him standing at our sides. I encourage you all to add it to your blog rolls, and also, please take part in the discussions. We would love to hear from you, whether you agree or disagree with what is said.

I will still post here, but when I post anything over there, I will only link to it from here.

Something that I have been meditating on a lot lately is that Jesus tells us that his burden is light (Matt. 11:30). Given the little observations I have made while a Christian, through various conversations, church visits, seminary classes, convention news, etc. It seems like we keep trying to make Jesus’ burden very heavy, even to the point that Jesus has little to do with it. It is not just the full-time vocational pastor – who in most cases takes on the full load of 100+ people – it is everyone. It is our flesh that turns God’s grace into a heavy burden. And most of the people do not even recognize the burden they are baring. In my opinion, this is part of the reason why we see people rejecting the attitude of grace – they think that their heavy burden is a litmus test for true Christianity but this is antithetical to the good news of Christ.

In 1 Corinthians, Paul tells us that he planted, Apollos watered, but it was God who gave the increase.

My wife and I have made our very first attempt at planting a garden. We tried to till the ground (best we could). We dug little holes and put the seeds in just as we were instructed. We have watered the ground just about every day. However, doing these things could have in no way guaranteed growth. But we are not required to grow the vegetables, we are only required to obey the simple instructions given to us.

This realization has changed many things for me. For instance when I teach, I go just simply teach. I have realized that it is not my duty to get peoples attention, it is not my duty to make people change, it is not my duty guilt people, etc. What then is my duty when I teach? Well, I believe the only requirement to teach is to actually teach. Of course teaching should be done in a loving, edifying, and understanding way.

If people do on consider the council of God, than that is between them and God. We have do not bear that burden for them. When Paul preached at to the Athenians some left, some wanted to hear more, and some stuck around. I do not see any evidence of Paul spicing up his sermons to get more numbers. He presented the truth and let the chips fall where they may.

This does not just apply to teaching either, it applies to all things we do as Christians. We need to realize that God is in control and we only need to worry about obeying him in what he has called us to do. Beyond what God has asked from us is a burden we put on ourselves and is not at all from God.

Well, apparently I am not the only person who has started to see connections between the Roman Catholics of Old and the Southern Baptists of New.

Ben Cole over at Baptist Blogger has written an interesting series of posts in which he discusses the “Roman Baptist Convention.” In this series, Ben reflects on Roman Catholicism and trends in Southern Baptist life. He points out some very obvious connections, of which Southern Baptists should not be too comfortable acknowledging.

Although I do not always agree with Ben’s tactics, I do recommend you read this series in particular:
The Roman Baptist Convention???
Roman Baptist Convention, Pt. 2
Roman Baptist Convention, Pt. 3
Roman Baptist Convention, Pt. 4

I highly recommend you read his post and answer for yourself the questions he ends with:

WAS THIS MAN BIBLICALLY BAPTIZED? If he was, why are we setting up standards and guidelines that go beyond what Scripture teaches about believers baptism?

No more ugly character-map-pain-in-the-rear-hard-to-do-i-cannot-stand-it Microsoft Word character mapping!

Thanks for sharing this excellent find with us Mark! My life is officially easier.

The first part of the paper has been posted, it is called Outward Signs of Inward Godliness – Part 1. He plans on putting the paper up in four installments, I highly recommend reading this paper. It is a well needed discussion on an subject that has been misused and abused throughout the centuries.

Wayne Jacobsen from Lifestream wrote a post called, When He Begins to Open Your Eyes, where he discusses an email he received from a lady who has recently started the journey.

Suddenly she’s finding that she doesn’t want to sit through all the meetings and finding them an “ugly weight” rather than a joy. But she feels guilty if she thinks about not going. She is realizing that although she goes in hopes of encountering God, it rarely happens there and yet she still has wonderful friends there.

I do not think her testimony is very different from others on this very same journey. There is definitely something scary about forsaking the comforts of religion and putting our trust in God – but as Wayne ends his post, it is God who promised us Life!

Thank you Wayne for sharing this story.