My friend sent me this quote by author and president of Acts 29, Steve Timmis:
A tendency for Christians can be to move from being counter-cultural to creating a Christian subculture, disconnected from the culture we live in and yet subtly influenced by it. This is what has happened in the West. Poor Bible teaching has reduced the Bible to a list of principles by which to live: we are not engaging the culture by telling people the story of the Bible and helping people to see how they fit into it. Mirroring our culture, we have reduced our relationship with God to a pietistic, privatised spirituality that has nothing to say to engage those around us. Just like the world we live in, relationships within churches are often disconnected, making Christianity into a one-on-one direct-line experience between the individual and God. Churches often resemble the self-interested clubs of the world around them, which people join in order to service their personal, individualistic needs. As communities of God’s people, we need desperately to rediscover what it means to engage the culture in which we live. We need to know its stories and to speak its language, while living counter-cultural lives and telling a counter-cultural story that point to something better: the gracious, in-breaking rule of King Jesus.
Ministering in the Bay Area, I know how true Steve Timmis' words are. I have found the greatest opposing force against the church in the Bay Area, and perhaps the whole West, not the outside world that opposes Christ, but the slow bleed of consumerism inside the church that also opposes Christ. It really is nothing more than works-righteousness in modern dress. When I think about those whom Jesus encountered, the so-called "sinners" who consisted of the tax collectors and prostitutes and the so-called "righteous" of the religious elite, it was the sinners who opened their hearts to Him. Why didn't the Pharisees do the same? They believed their own righteousness by their works and merit made them acceptable and pleasing to God. They didn't need a Savior, regardless of the language they used which sounded religious enough. It isn't much different in the church today.
The church is a mixed church. It consists of those whose hearts are transformed by the gospel, sinners who know they are sinners, who have been rescued, who have been saved by gracious mercy. Such people do not find following Jesus a part of their lives, He is their whole life. To have Jesus is to ALREADY have everything. All else is grace upon grace. But in this mixture are also people who profess to trust in Christ and yet, Jesus is simply another activity in their lives. He is one of many items on the checklist. It is Jesus and soccer and SAT class and pilates and vacations to Europe. In this, relationships are continually dichotomized. There are "church friends" and "other friends."
I had someone in the church once tell me, "I don't ever mix my faith with where I work. Work is work and home is home." For this person, also church is church as well. Jesus didn't belong in certain areas of his life and he let me know this was his mantra. So, the church is not where I come to remember who I am in Christ and how I must live, but rather, the church is the place where I can spend time with my Christian friends, drinking beers, talk about my favorite baseball team, watch our kids swim in the pool, oh, and every once in a while talk about the church, and very very rarely do we discuss Jesus and the implications of knowing Him.
The greatest danger for the church today is not theological liberalism, but a lukewarm, works-righteousness that actually believes a person can be a follower of Jesus through the culture of western Christianity. This is a deadly and most effective scheme of the Enemy and unless more people actually deny themselves, take up the cross daily, and follow Him in the church, there won't be a church in the West for future generations worth attending. The landscape will be littered with mere self-interest clubs.
The church is a mixed church. It consists of those whose hearts are transformed by the gospel, sinners who know they are sinners, who have been rescued, who have been saved by gracious mercy. Such people do not find following Jesus a part of their lives, He is their whole life. To have Jesus is to ALREADY have everything. All else is grace upon grace. But in this mixture are also people who profess to trust in Christ and yet, Jesus is simply another activity in their lives. He is one of many items on the checklist. It is Jesus and soccer and SAT class and pilates and vacations to Europe. In this, relationships are continually dichotomized. There are "church friends" and "other friends."
I had someone in the church once tell me, "I don't ever mix my faith with where I work. Work is work and home is home." For this person, also church is church as well. Jesus didn't belong in certain areas of his life and he let me know this was his mantra. So, the church is not where I come to remember who I am in Christ and how I must live, but rather, the church is the place where I can spend time with my Christian friends, drinking beers, talk about my favorite baseball team, watch our kids swim in the pool, oh, and every once in a while talk about the church, and very very rarely do we discuss Jesus and the implications of knowing Him.
The greatest danger for the church today is not theological liberalism, but a lukewarm, works-righteousness that actually believes a person can be a follower of Jesus through the culture of western Christianity. This is a deadly and most effective scheme of the Enemy and unless more people actually deny themselves, take up the cross daily, and follow Him in the church, there won't be a church in the West for future generations worth attending. The landscape will be littered with mere self-interest clubs.