Another Student Council Video
I don’t know where Dave comes up with his ideas, but they sure are funny:
This entry was written by , posted on November 22, 2008 at 12:36 am, filed under Humour and tagged Christmas, Student Council, Tyndale. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
Witness.
I’ve never really gotten this whole evangelism thing.
Now, I don’t mean that I don’t think it’s imperative for the kingdom, nor do I mean that I think everyone does it wrong (that’s another post entirely); It’s just that I don’t find myself in situations to do this. At least not the level that I’ve been on the periphery of these last 6 months.
I seem to find myself in situations where I’m either amongst Christians who already have the good word, or I’m among people who couldn’t care less about Jesus (seriously, I tried – it did not go well). I’ve always said that unless the Lord was giving big opportunities or the conversation was steering in that direction, I would keep my mouth shut. Nothing says crazy like, “Do you have a personal relationship with our Lord and Saviour, the Son of God Jesus Christ the Messiah???” Sure, I’d love for those people to have a relationship with the Creator that makes them whole and brings them eternal hope and joy, but I’ve been given very few opportunities to speak of the Good News.
Christine, my wife, on the other hand, gets enough for 5 people.
It’s amazing that Christine has found her way humbly into the faith journeys of people across the spectrum (lapsed, atheist, agnostic, theist, weird heresies, etc. ) and has clearly been an impact on these people’s lives. And for Christine, she just feels like she’s telling her story. And people hear a story of creation, fall, redemption, kingdom, and love without the judgement that sadly has pervaded these peoples’ views of Christianity. I get kind of jealous sometimes, but mostly I just feel really lucky to know someone who is expanding the kingdom on the frontiers for those of us back on the homefront.
So here’s the thing: to be a witness – to testify in court – isn’t to prove one’s case, like a lawyer, or pass judgement, like a judge; it’s to simply tell your story. If you tell your story, then how will judgement enter the arena? How does condemnation of others fall into your story? It doesn’t, because it is about you, and your story. That’s it.
That’s probably the greatest gift our culture of individualism and postmodernity has done for us. No more proofs, no more join the crowd. It’s all about telling a story and letting God sort out the rest.
Tell a story.
WK
This entry was written by , posted on at 12:32 am, filed under Christianity and tagged Christianity, evangelism, witness. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
If LOST was a Drug, I’d be the Pusher Man.
I absolutely love the television show, LOST. J.J. Abrams may well be the greatest producer of all time. Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cruz are the greatest writers to every fall upon the television and film industry, combined. I’m that involved with this show. Every off-season, LOST puts on what is called an ‘Alternative Reality Game’ (ARG); I played last year’s (which dropped some great clues about the coming season), so I played this year’s, which was all about joining The Dharma Initiative. In the interest of non-spoilerisms, I’m only showing my recruitment assessment off to those who are into the show.
Wish me luck, I
Psychologist, peoples! Anyone surprised? It’s not like I was going to get into the construction field.
Bee Tee Double Yew, I’m also going to use this as a debriefing platform after every week when we start Jan 21, 2009, season 5!
WK
This entry was written by , posted on November 18, 2008 at 4:41 pm, filed under Life and tagged Dharma, LOST, Television. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
Advent is a-coming
I really love Christmas. Unlike many of my Christmas-loving friends, however, I try to be really strict on when I start decorating/celebrating – I like to start with Advent, the first event of the Church’s liturgical Calendar.
Liturgical calendar?
We have one of those?
For those of us outside of the mainline churches (which is most of you who read this), the liturgical calendar is the ordering of the holidays, big and small, important to the Church that happen throughout the year. It starts in December with Advent. The Church starts then, and as a (albeit small) measure of discipline, I’m not starting to celebrate or blog about it til then. But, like in years of steady-blogging past, I will be commenting on Christmas steadily throughout the season.
As a preview, here’s something I picked up off of Jeff Smyth’s blog, Paradox of Living, about something I seriously think about every year:
This entry was written by , posted on November 17, 2008 at 6:38 pm, filed under Activism, Christianity and tagged Advent, Christmas, Conspiracy, Liturgy. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
Evangelicalism Then and Now: Conversionism
Someone clearly in touch with their roots.
The third point of the quadrilateral is “conversionism, the belief that human beings need to be converted,” and if there is one major emphasis in North-American Evanglelical Christianity, it’s evangelism. And evangelism is great, and needed, in our world. How can we reconcile our love for our neighbours (both commanded to us and dwelling within us through the fruits of the spirit) by not telling them about the Kingdom of God and all that entails?
But of course, that’s the problem: instead of an emphasis on conversion to the Christian faith, it’s the conversion to a particular denomination with the wonderful, ecumenical umbrella. Like our tradition-embracing friends pictured above, it seems Evangelicals will do as much as they can to make sure a) you know they are the ‘true vine’ and b)everyone else is at best, wrong, and at worst, apostate heretics. While this may sound like hyperbole, even a cursory view of the internet will present you with people in every denomination who thinks that everyone else are complete and utter idiots, not worth the time to blog about them (apparently they are).
Now, you may come out and say that this is no longer the case, but if you look at the comments on these blogs and websites, you’ll see overwhelming agreement, generally. With all this in-fighting, it’s a wonder anyone ever wants to be a part of Jesus’ KOG, unless you’re the kind of person who just loves finding who’s right and sticking to that. This is what the Pharisees were really about.
Ditch all the legalism stuff that people bring to the table, because that’s not the point behind the sin of the pharisees: it was their need to be right and their separation of the ‘in’s and ‘out’s in society. Evangelicals do this abundantly these days, in the form of proclaiming heresy or apostacy against Roman Catholics, Reformers, Baptists, the English, Charismatics, Wesleyans, etc. Did I miss someone? I’m sure a Christian somewhere thinks you are a heretic/apostate/fool too.
Solution: I know this one sounds strange, but don’t get rid of denominations. Denominations give structure and accountability against true heresy and apostacy, and their networks greatly help push the cause of Christ into the world. The solution is to open our minds and our hearts to all of our Christian family, and learn to accept our different faith traditions as outpourings of the same spirit. Evangelicals simply need to cease having to be right about everything. For more about being right, see what my friend Tim has to say.
WK
This entry was written by , posted on at 12:47 am, filed under Christianity, Church and tagged Bebbington, denominations, Evangelicalism, Pharisees. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.