Sorry it’s been such a long time since I’ve posted anything on Guerilla Church… turns out it’s a full-time job pastoring a non-religious bunch of barbaric followers of Jesus! Lol…
It’s not the same kinds of things I blogged about here… but if you need a little inspiration here and there you can check out my weekly Emmaus blog!
Much love, Michael
I attended Catalyst in Atlanta this past weekend, and let me just say… “Challenging” doesn’t begin to describe it. There has been this conversation that has been going on for a few weeks around the Emmaus Community. It’s not the conversation you hear, the conversation you hear is kind of a by-product of the silent one that going on at the same time.
The conversation you hear goes a little something like this, “How much do we really want to be like the Early Church? How much do we really want to commit to the Kingdom of God? Do we really want what God wants for us, even if it looks nothing like what we want for ourselves?”
The silent conversation, the one going on in our heads, sounds a little something like this, “Can we really be like the Early Church? Can I really completely commit to the Kingdom? Can I really live the adventure God has created for me? How much of an adventure do I want really want to live?”
I’m reading a book called, “The Dust Off Their Feet.” It’s a “retelling” of the book of Acts and was written and revised by a team of over a hundred theologians, pastors, poets, artists and historians. I read something a few nights ago that just about knocked me out of my chair.
The Apostles and the thousands of people who comprised the Early Church (the first church we read about in scripture) were freakin’ communists!
Long time no post I know, but really… it’s your fault. I started this blog to dialogue the tough questions about faith and culture, and while I consistently have anywhere from 20 to 40 readers a day, very few of you are joining the conversation… It’s not a conversation if it’s just me, so jump in there… weigh in on the issue… put your 2 cents in… I’m out of clever phrases, but you get the point. Now on to the new topic…
Alcohol and the Church… mortal enemies, right? Maybe not. When i was in my early twenties I taught a Sunday School class for High School students. I used to get in trouble for responding to questions about “drinking” by saying that Biblically I couldn’t find anything wrong with it, and that I even felt like it was encouraged. So let’s settle the issue once and for all… lemme know what you think about the following issues:
Issue 1: Was the wine in the days of Jesus’ earthly ministry and the early church fermented?
Last night several friends and I went to “The Great Porn Debate” in Indianapolis. Evidentally a couple of other venues had decided they didn’t want the debate at their location and so they cancelled, and the event ended up in a rundown, “artsy” old building on the old North side of Indy. There was no air conditioning in the entire building, and yesterday was the hottest day of the year in Indy, yeah… it was hot!
I was half expecting the debate to be at least a little extraneous on both sides; that Ron Jeremy would be a nasty old pervert who just loves porn and was on this tour simply for a little publicity, and that Craig Gross would say some stupid things in the heat of the moment and make us look like uninteligent, fantatical idiots. Neither was the case.
Is it just me, or is anybody else sick to death of the cute little messages that just about every little church on a rural route puts on their church sign?
Not only are the overwhelming majority of these messages completely irrelevant and altogether retarded, but they may just be the catalyst of the demise of the temperament and atmosphere of the Christian church in Western culture. Okay, so maybe that’s a little far, but maybe not as far as you might think.
I’m sure you’ve heard the expression before, I’ve said it about various people and situations… I’m sure it’s been said about me. In fact, I remember an occasion when I overheard it said about me. Two people were “summing up” the message I had just delivered during some revival services and one said to the other, “Jeff Arnold he ain’t, but he did make me think.” I took it as more of a compliment than anything else, even tho Jeff Arnold was and is one of my favorite preachers.
I know I haven’t blogged in a couple of weeks, I’ve been crazy busy at work and with Emmaus and just life. I’ll get back to the “unfiltered dialogue and debate about changes that are imperative if the church is going to survive” next week, but right now, if you’ll allow me, I just wanna unwind a little…
Building the Emmaus Church has been, hands down, the most profound experience of my life. It has also been, hands down, the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
The tough part wasn’t finding a place to meet, that was and continues to be a complete “God thing.” The hard part hasn’t been finding money to fund ministry with, God has lead a lot of people to support us with a little here and there, and a few people to support us in some really big ways… again, a complete “God thing” for us.
I’m sure you’ve heard it said before, “America is never more segregated than it is at 10 o’clock on any given Sunday morning,” and how true it is, right? So, why is it true? Are we really a bunch of Christ-following racists? The argument could be made that we’re not really practicing what we’re preaching, the argument could be made that we really don’t love each other the way we claim to.
But if there is a problem, how do we fix it?
So many people try and define what the Bible is, including me. But where does the Bible talk about itself and clearly define for us what it is? In 2 Timothy 3:16 it says, “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness” (NASB). That word, “inspiration,” is pivotal. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that the Bible is without contradiction and error. I personally believe that we find the voice of God and human beings in scripture. I believe the key is discerning which is which. John Calvin and other Reformers believed that the inner witness of the Holy Spirit is the key in discerning the Word of God.
You may ask how one can make the current translations of Bible less than perfect and yet then believe some of its claims? The answer is simple. Faith. By the way, we all do the same thing. How can you select scriptures and interpretations that support your position on a subject while interpretively explaining away other scriptures that challenge your position? I am talking about scriptures that impact positions like: gifts of the Holy Spirit, women’s roles, sex, tithing, doctrine of the Trinity, baptism, end times, predestination, free will, alcohol consumption, child discipline, musical instruments in church, environmentalism, politics, racism, etc.
There is no end of topics we can divide over and have divided over. It is so ironic that we divide over the Bible when the Bible was made to unite us. And I believe this is conclusive to our misunderstanding of scripture’s place within our traditions. Scripture is not relative, but it is elastic; its truths fit all cultures and all people. God by His Spirit uses the Bible to guide and direct us and reveal His love and purposes, but ultimately it is God’s people that must discern what God is saying today from the text just as Jesus did in His day.
I read this in an article at relevantmagazine.com last night, and I have to say, it makes me nervous. The Bible is inerrant, right? Not the translations we read, I understand that there could’ve been (and probably were) mistakes made when translating the original texts to (insert the name of your version of choice here), but the original texts are inerrant, right?
