Storyville Live Freedom Tour

My friends Bryce and Amy Lathrop are putting on a Storyville Concert in their home both August 25th and August 28th. I highly recommend that you attend. Not only will you hear great music and drink great coffee, but you'll be helping out a great cause in the meantime.

To see the invitation, click here: Storyville Live

If you have questions, you can visit Bryce's facebook page here: Bryce Lathrop

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Liberal Christians Are Far Superior to Us in Loving Muslims

One of the hardest things I have to deal with, along with my close friends who have Muslim friends, is the backlash we receive from the conservative Christian community. You would not believe what sorts of emails we receive, lies that are spread and just plain ignorance that is put forth in Christian circles about our Muslim friends and our friendships and dialogues that we have with them. What saddens me is that there are almost no voices from the conservative Christian (speaking conservative in theological terms) crowd who are seeking to establish relationships with Muslim communities. What we DO see is many relationships being formed between Muslims and liberal Christianity, whether it be from someone like Brian McLaren, or local Unitarian churches in our area. But, when you think of it, how can our Muslim friends have any idea what the Bible really teaches about Jesus if those they are able to interact with and befriend have very little faith in the words that are spoken in the Bible? What we do see is that because we are conservative in our theology and "run in those circles" we get smashed for even thinking of walking in a Mosque to make friendships with our Muslim neighbors.

People, speaking local leaders/pastors love to throw stones at us from their ivory towers but won't even think about actually meeting with Muslims themselves to reach out in the name of loving our neighbors for the sake of Christ. Why? I really don't understand this. I don't understand why people don't want to reach out to seek reconciliation with those many conceive to be our enemies (which I do not believe...every Muslim I have met has turned into a friend). These same people preach week in and week out, yet show nothing but hatred for their enemies/neighbors. Now, what they do like to say is they are speaking the truth in love. But, just because you say that is what you are doing, doesn't make it true. How does drawing up straw men and spreading fear and lies about another count as love?

What is even more amazing is that if you talk to Muslims, they desire to speak to those who love and follow Jesus and have hard lines about their faiths. They are growing tired of just meeting up with those who don't believe in the virgin birth, the atonement of Jesus and the word of God. They want to meet with people who actually believe that they are correct, but are willing to discuss. I'm getting tired of this kind of Christianity. The attacking of another's belief system for the sake of word play and headlines. One of my favorite pastors recently called Muhammad a "pedophile" just for the sake of saying it. Honestly, what the hell was that for? How does this help? Especially when it isn't true both historically and culturally. Why don't these pastors actually get off their asses and start engaging those they "speak the truth in love about" instead of reaching for local headlines? What if I were to call their next door neighbor out by name a whore, just for the headlines, because I heard something from someone else about them? That would be unloving and unnecessary, but when you say it about Muhammad you are a hero and "standing for the faith." Give me a break.

Let me give you some food for thought: Sometimes, pagans don't hate you because of your holiness, they hate you because you hate them and you have only shown hatred. This post came about because of watching this video below and realizing, again, that most of the time Muslims can only quote liberal Christians, because frankly, those are the only ones who are actually following Jesus in understanding how to love your neighbor. Sad. Those of us who are conservative in theology and trying to live out this understanding only get yelled at from our brothers for doing so. Again, sad.

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Giving to the Poor is Cross and Christ Centered

I was listening to a sermon by Tim Keller called, Blueprint for Survival: Social Concern, and he quoted the great Scottish pastor, Robert Murray McCheyne on giving to the poor and the needy. It is quite Christ and cross centered and I thought I would share it here.

Dear Christians:

Some of you pray night and day to be branches of the true vine; you pray to be made all over in the image of Christ

If so, you must be like him in giving. Though he was rich yet for our sakes he became poor.

Objection: My money is my own.

Answer: Hmmm, well, Christ might have said: My blood is my own, my life is my own. Then where should you have been?

Objection: The poor are undeserving

Answer: Well, Christ might have said these are wicked rebels, shall I lay down my life for these? I will give to the good angels, the deserving poor. But no, he left the 99 and came after the lost; he gave his blood for the undeserving.

Objection: Well, but, If I give my charity the poor may abuse it!

Answer: Christ might have said the same thing, yea, with far greater truth. Christ knew that thousands would trample his blood under their feet, that most would despise it, that many would make it an excuse for sinning more and yet he gave his own blood.

My dear Christians, if you would be like Christ: give much, give often, give freely to the vile and the poor, the thankless and the undeserving. Christ is glorious and happy and so will you be. It is not your money I want, but your happiness. Remember his own word; it’s more happy, it’s more blessed to give than to receive.

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Evangelism for Today: Physical Aid

Sometimes this form of the gospel goes by its more known name, "the social gospel." I figured I would try and title it as specifically as I could, because the social gospel comes packaged in many ways. Many adhere to this today, and rightly so, or so it seems. With the founding of the internet by Al Gore and the mass media that is available at our every turn, Christians can now see how badly we are being beaten in regards to loving our neighbor compared to our non-Christian competition for souls. Because of this noticeable lack of physical love for the world, many people are converting to the social gospel in trying to live out the biblical mandate to love our neighbors.

To know what I am talking about one only has to look around to see what local congregations and people are doing. It could be in the form of feeding the homeless, serving at soup kitchens, tutoring for free, supporting ministries like Living Water International or World Vision, etc. When one reads these things the first thing that will come is "What is wrong with any of these things?" The answer is, "nothing." But, I do believe that there is some positives and actually some negatives about the social gospel.

The Positives

This almost seems retarded to have to state the positives, but to be honest, there are a lot of people that call themselves Christians who never do any of these things. Instead, they hand out tracts and scream through bullhorns letting the starving people listening to them know that they are headed to hell. The problem is that if the dude yelling like an auctioneer for Satan's hellhouse doesn't feed the people in front of them, the people listening might die before they have the chance to repent.

The positive aspects of the social gospel is it does try and serve those people around them for what they need physically. So, if it is school supplies for their kids, the church buys them. If it is food to feed their families, the church supplies food. If it is new coats, then a trip to Burlington Coat Factory it is. This is good to do. It actually lives up to the billing we see in Christ's ministry as Christ continually supplied the needs of those who followed him around. He fed the 5000...twice and he healed many people. Jesus tells us to love our neighbor as we do ourselves, James and John (James 2:15-16; 1 John 3:17) both tell us that if we see a brother in need and do not help them we do not have the love of God abiding in us.

The social gospel definitely allows people to see our good works to glorify our God and it is easy for the secular world to see our good works if they are providing for the physical needs of those around us. The social gospel shows those people around us that we, in actuality, care about them specifically and desire their well being and see that they are truly image bearers of God. These aren't all the good things associated with the social gospel but these hit most of the high points.

The Negative Aspects

The negative aspects of the social gospel is if it comes packaged only in the ways we see above. If the gospel is never preached, never entered into the conversation, then it is not evangelism, it is only part of evangelism. Now, there will be times we just help people for the sake of helping them. But, if that is all we ever do, aid people physically, we are not being faithful to the Christ who bought us. When Christ fed the 5000 (really around 15000), it was after he was done preaching and teaching to them. Most of the time that Christ healed people it was in the midst of him teaching and preaching salvation to them. This is the whole of Christ's ministry. He both aided physically and preached to them spiritually. This is how you love someone like yourself, if you are a Christian. Love is not merely physical.

If the social gospel is your sole way of sharing the gospel, you have to ask yourself, "What makes you different than Gandhi?" "What makes you different than any other non-Christian who shows compassion to his fellow man?" Without the Gospel, the answer is nothing. If you only aid people physically and never tell them of the glory of Christ and that the provision is not from your hands, but His, then you have missed the point of helping people physically. What good is it to keep a man from dying in this life and allowing him to die in the next? This life is temporary, but the life to come is eternal. So, you might say that you are doing the work of Christ, but without the Word being made manifest to the people through words, you are just a philanthropist, not an evangelist.

I hate to say it but you might be one of the ones that Christ mentions in Matthew 7:21-23

“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. “Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ “And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.’
Matthew 7:21-23

Notice the focus in this passage is what the person says they did, not what Christ did. The very next thing mentioned in Matthew is the parable of the house built on the rock. The question has to come, "Is your evangelism built on Jesus, or merely social action?" Another way to ask this is, "Would those you are helping know that you are a Christian and the gospel message or could they mistake you for just another person helping them for the sake of karma?" If you continually help people without telling them the gospel message, you are not evangelizing.

The absence of the name of Christ and the proclamation of His Gospel to those who are perishing is a very grave sin indeed. But, so it proclaiming the gospel to those who are starving without providing them with the bread that fills their stomachs.

As we see the work of Christ and his apostles, we must marry both physical and spiritual aid together to truly help those who are perishing physically and spiritually.

Is the social gospel totally wrong? No. But it is missing the central reason to do it: The message of the glory of Jesus Christ.

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Evangelism for Today: Part I

I have been around the church for my whole life. My dad was a lay pastor for the SBC all around southern Oklahoma until I was 12 years old. Then we moved up to Seattle where my dad, again, was called to be a lay pastor. I have done so many different kinds of evangelism it is close to ridiculous and very overwhelming. I also own an investment firm and have been an investment advisor for the past 10 years. It is easy to see the crossover in marketing my business and marketing Jesus. I know that sounds weird and crass, but it is true. The way some of us evangelize is simply by marketing Christ, hoping our clientele will buy Jesus instead of Mohammad or Gandhi. The saying in my business is that whether you do seminars, direct mailers, cold calling, etc. they are all equally ineffective, so just pick one and put all your might into it.

Sometimes I feel like this with evangelism. We are fighting a fight that seems impossible, and truly is without the Holy Spirit. We see the battle and it looks like we are losing, our evangelism, like marketing, seems to all be equally ineffective. The issue here though, is that evangelism and marketing are not equals. We cannot just look at results and deem one to be better than another. Although I know a lot of people do this within Christendom, this is not a godly way to go about ensuring the faithful proclamation of God's gospel.

Now, do we simply throw out looking at numbers of conversion altogether and ignore it? I would say no. But, my point is that numbers cannot be our end all to what makes a faithful proclamation.

What me must do is be faithful in our contextualization of the Gospel message to those around us. We must balance our culture with how we proclaim. Will this change the message? Not with a faithful proclamation. We have to know that although we might change how we tell the message, the message itself is still the same. We are sinners in need of a Saviour who came, lived among us, died for us and rose for us so that he might bring us to God. How to get this across to some might prove to be a difficult one and one that requires some thought by the one delivering the message. The problem today is less thought is going on and more and more people are just buying into other's marketing techniques without looking at the culture Christ has called them. Just because it works in Florida, doesn't mean that it will work in Seattle, or in Nampula, Mozambique.

How I tell the gospel to one of my 60 year old clients is going to be very different than how I tell the gospel to one of my buddies who hangs out with me watching football and smoking stogies. Notice the way I tell them is different, but not the actual message. The way that I go about telling the message to someone who is homeless and starving will also be quite different. I would say that if you are telling/showing the gospel in the same way to each of these groups, you are being careless with your gospel proclamation.

What I want to explore in the next few posts is in what ways people are currently sharing the Gospel and then give you my conclusion on some ways that are faithful to the word of God in how the message is presented.

I will be upfront. I have been involved in a lot of different ways in sharing. I have gone door to door, I have handed out tracts, gone to and participated in tent revivals, I have done The Way of the Master Method, I have fed the homeless, I have done some missions work and I have also done the "smile and hope they notice I am a Christian" method. I am hoping to get some discussion while we go through these different methods and try to show a good biblical understanding of what it means to be a faithful minister of the Gospel of Christ.

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