I was away from the blog for a week while serving at the 2007 Mosaic Origins Conference in Pasadena, CA.  It was an amazing experience over all!  We had over 500 pastors and leaders out who are doing some pretty amazing things all over the world.  Literally over ¼ of the conference was from oversees.  It is beautiful what God is doing here in the United States and internationally as he continues to refine his church through much of the emerging movement.

I got to thinking about a few things while there.  These men are out making a huge impact on the world.  One guy I met actually trains native pastors in a closed country in Africa.  That isn’t the amazing part though.  He takes them into remote villages via boat.  When they arrive he kills all the man-eating alligators in their river that have been eating small children and livestock.  The villagers are so overwhelmed and grateful that they allow one of his young pastors to assimilate into their village and live among them.  Oh, and he also pastors an emerging church of 5,000!

I realized that if you are on mission with God, you have little time to sit and complain.  I mean, when you are actually making a difference in the world, you don’t need to constantly attack the “opposition”.  Very few of these men spend their time writing blogs about how useless the traditional church is… they are out living and teaching what they believe.  Their lives are their apologetics.

When I look at “ministers” like Ingrid and Ken Silva and Dwayna, I can’t help but ask the question, “what impact are they having on the world?”  None of them have effective ministries.  None of them seem to be having any impact on the lost.  So what exactly are they doing with all their time?

Well, rather than take the time to do the hard work that so many in the world are doing with God, they write criticisms.  They sit back and attack others while the workers are out gathering the harvest.  It’s almost like those kids on the playground who never could play baseball very week, so they sit in the bleachers and make fun of everyone out playing.  It’s one thing to be making an impact and having a critical eye (which is why I can somewhat respect what MacArthur has done… respect, but don’t agree).  However, when you are making no impact on the world and just sit and complain, your voice isn’t valid.

Let this be a reminder to all of us.  Always live a life that is actively changing the hearts of people, but just criticizing those around you.  I have said it before, and try to live by it.  Don’t simply shout at the darkness, but always light a candle.

Just from a slightly more in-depth perusal of Slice 2.0 as I enjoy my afternoon carbonated beverage, I am positing that perhaps CR?N was not focusing enough on legalistic externals (like dress, worship, sermon topics, etc.), due to its focus on slandering the internals.  Or, Ingrid was growing weary of the lack of proof-by-assertion, which was so much easier with a ‘comments’ section.

Regardless, the articles on the “new” Slice appear to primarily be externals-oriented, and just as legalistic as we’ve come to expect from Ingrid.  Case in point, one of her first potshots is taken at Christianity Today’s article on some of the Christian themes within the Spiderman movies, and a sermon which touched on this subject, as well.

Her “insightful” comments on the subject?

When I was a child, the vast number of biblical characters provided the meat of our messages in Sunday School and church. Who needs heroes of the Bible anymore when you have Spiderman, Batman, Superman, and so forth? When the only sin railed against in church is boredom, this is what you get.

Let’s see…  Jesus lived in an agrarian society, and he told parables that pulled from… (wait for it) … life in an agrarian society.  When he was in Jerusalem, Jesus adapted a line from Greek playwright Euripides’ play “The Trojan Women” (Matt 23:37; Luke 13:34).  When Jesus was in Capernaum, he spoke of millstones where millstones were made.  When Paul was in Crete, he quoted a Cretan prophet.  When he was in Athens, speaking on Mars Hill, Paul used the altar to “an unknown god” to make his point.

Througout scripture, the surroundings and culture of the people are used to make a point to them – to reveal God’s truth as given by His prophets and apostles.  This is not to say that every Christian message should be given thusly, but I somehow doubt that the sum-total of Tapestry church’s preaching is on the subject of superheroes.

Apparently the old peanut gallery/amen chorus at CR?N/Slice 2.0 has been itching for an outlet, because the first comment on this article is so indicitave of the legalism and myopia evident in Slice 1.0’s comment section:

I have a neat idea. Instead of using Hollywood movies written by unregenearate, unsaved persons…why not use illustrations about the Biblical Christ from say…oh…the BIBLE!!!

Heartening, though, is that frequent CRN.Info commenter Russ N’s comment was published:

Or lets consider that a majority of people in the US are not familiar with the figures from the Bible. They see it as dated and irrelevant. Taking snippets of a popular movie and then bringing it back to the Bible can help people see the relevance of the Bible in their lives (where they previously thought it irrelevant).

God’s word will not return void.

We’ll see how long this lasts, though, and how many comments ACTUALLY get through.  As for any change in tone between Slice 1.0 and Slice 2.0, Ingrid leaves no room for doubt that nothing has changed.  She finishes her diatribe with a scolding of the author of the Christianity Today article:

P.S. to Mark Moring at Christianity Today: Grow up.

His sin?  He writes about entertainment issues, and doesn’t kowtow to Ingrid’s, not God’s, sense of propriety.  Fortunately, there is a big difference between the two…

Slice 2.0 takes this video and applies Romans 8:6 – “For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.”  I suppose dancing for the Lord is carnal?  Thanks Slice, for a great example of how not to apply Scripture properly.

So, as I sat down to lunch today, I opened up my CR?N/Slice 2.0 link, and what did I find?  Slice has been reborn, separate from CR?N!  Why?  Who really knows…

I then realized that perhaps we had been given a bit of prescience in calling the ChristianResearch?Network “CR?N/Slice 2.0″ before it actually happened!  And then I thought to myself – what kind of dog picture do we get to recognize this new cancerous lesion attempting to attack the body of Christ?  It’s kind of like a three-headed (three = AM, CR?N, Slice 2.0) dog that’s all part of the same body (Ken, Ingrid & Company).

So, I did a search on three-headed dogs and came up with this (at the top of the list):

Cerberus

From the wikipedia entry:

In Greek mythology, Cerberus or Kerberos (Greek Κέρβερος, Kerberos, “demon of the pit”) was the hound of Hades, a monstrous three-headed dog (sometimes said to have 50 or 100 heads) with a snake for a tail.

100% appropriate for this ‘new’ entity of AM + CR?N + SoL 2.0 with the same old body of Ken, Ingrid & Co.  100%.

Regardless, we will remain faithful in responding to one more pharisaical outlet, with the same view as Christ had to those of his day:

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cummin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness.

Hazak hazak venit-hazek!

Greetings, all! Today, I ran (actually, walked, mostly) with my 15-year-old son in the Indianapolis 500 Festival Mini-Marathon with 34,999 other people (don’t worry, though, yoga-patrol members – it was not a full marathon, and Pan wasn’t mentioned…)

There was a very interesting object lesson within the race that we talked about afterward…

All along the race route there were a number of individuals, business and churches with bands, speakers, water and other items for the runners.

About a mile into the race, there was a guy with a sound-system shouting about hellfire and damnation at the top of his voice as the runners went by (though he didn’t have an actual bullhorn with him…)

A little ways further, there were 2 or 3 evangelical church groups and a Pentecostal church with live bands, music that helped us keep up a good pace, making the race a little bit more enjoyable.  Additionally, they had members lined up along the road cheering the weary runners on.  One of the churches, in particular, was just before the mid-way point, where doubt about the race and thoughts about sitting down and waiting for the “bus of shame” were creeping in.  They helped give a good dose of encouragement right where it was needed.

Then, near the 12-mile marker, there was a group of young men in long-sleeved white shirts, black pants and black name badges – Mormons – handing out water and encouraging folks down the home stretch.

After the race, I told my wife about this observation, and her reaction was simply – “how typical”.

There are a number of object lessons that could be pulled from this, so I will allow the reader to supply their own, and share it, if they would like…

Those of you who know me, or are familiar with the Restoration Movement know that we are pretty adamant about eschewing systematic (read: man-made) theologies. I’m neither Calvinist, nor Arminian (nor the other paleo-’s, semi-’s, -ists, -ians, and other labels tossed about often by the folks who claim these systematic theologies.

Our (and by “our” I mean Slice 2.0’s) looney Dwayna has once again provided an object lesson on why this is so. In specific, she proves a point I made early this year on my own blog, about how election is an awful doctrine when it comes to orthopraxy, and that our concept of time and God’s are so vastly different, that our trying to explain may well be lethal to the unreached and unsaved. (Interestingly, Calvinist Frank Turk agreed that acting on the doctrine of election was impractical: “If anyone is trying to use this doctrine, for example, to determine how to do evangelism, or how to implement the ordinances/sacraments of the church, that person is tring to set drywall screws with a coffee cup”. Jim Bublitz, of OldTruth, on the other hand, demonstrated where the systems break down.)
In her article from CR?N today, she talks about “Total Depravity and the Doctrine of Election”. In this article, she makes some truly scary comments:

He will use me, or He will get another Christian to witness to the person—I am privileged to be used by God, but God does not need me in the work of salvation.

Furthermore, no one will end up in hell because of a lack of witnessing on my part. It would be arrogant of me to think that I had that much to do with anyone’s salvation!

This is the kind of thinking that gets people killed – forever.

Should Christians be “Green”?
This is a vexing question for me and other Christians I know. 

Personally, as a scientist/engineer/statistician, I find the “evidence” for Global Warming to be highly suspect, and about as convincing as the “evidence” for unguided evolution.  I also find that much of what passes for “green” today poses as many, if not more, problems than it solves.  Just look at the current debate to eliminate incandescent lightbulbs and replace them with Compact Fluorescent Lightbulbs (CFL’s) – which have as many, if not more problems, though they consume less electricity.

In Genesis, man is made to be a steward of God’s creation, which He declared “good”, yet many Christians treat environmentalism as “liberal”, lumping it in with a number of ungodly causes, and dismiss it.  Some Christians take the fatalistic view that since God will make a “new heavens and a new earth”, what we do here does not matter.  We’re riding a borrowed mule, so why should we waste the effort on caring for it when there are bigger fish to fry?

As Rob Bell recently noted, if we, as Christians, do not take the lead in stewardship of the world God made, we risk telling the world that we don’t care about it, regardless of what the book we believe tells us.  And he is right – when we ignore/reject problems with the environment, the world will take over and make us irrelevant in the debate.  What we will end up with is vividly illustrated in the sad article linked to by CRN yesterday, where the Bible has been replaced with Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”.

Where is the balance between worshipping the creation and being good stewards for the Creator?

One of our frequent commenters, Julie Neidlinger, who runs the Lone Prairie Art Works blog (which I recommend as a nice down-to-earth and often quite humorous place to visit, whether she’s talking about graduation slogans, drawing cartoons, skewering the watchdawwgies, or her own personal wall of shame) recently made this observation:

["Pastor" Ken] Silva single-handedly introduced me to Rob Bell. He can’t stand Rob Bell, and I took that as a recommendation.

I have to agree with her sentiments, as I’ve found a number of excellent Christian writers (Erwin McManus, Dan Kimball, Mark Driscoll, Bob Hyatt and others), conferences and resources that I never would have found without Ingrid, Ken and company. Their scattershot (and shoddy) approach to attacking Christians hits so many God-honoring and Christ-serving men and women (along with those who truly are questionable), that they do offer a service they probably do not intentionally provide.

Today, the mysterious “Editor” (who hypocritically hides behind anonymity, which was a key point in Ingrid’s meltdown and the disappearance of Slice 1.0 – but that’s another topic for another time) pointed out an excellent resource for artistic and production volunteers and staff – the 2007 Willow Creek Arts Conference, entitled: “Halleluhah: What’s Right With the World”. From the conference website:

The world we live in has many dark places, and artists are often more sensitive than others to the pain of our broken world. That is our burden, and our gift.

It’s easy for artists to become cynical and tired. But as men and women who also follow Jesus Christ, it’s imperative that we continue to use our gifts to open a window of hope to others.

This year’s theme, hallelujah: what’s right with the world, is a powerful reminder that artists must overcome the tendency toward cynicism and weariness; artists must choose to look through the darkness and glimpse the light, and then reflect that beauty to the world. At the Arts Conference, you’ll be surrounded by other artists who are tackling this monumental task every week, just like you.

Together, we’ll be reminded that fostering life transformation through better weekend services is worthy of our very best efforts. Come—and bring your entire worship/programming team—for an unforgettable experience that will refuel your heart and soul to accomplish that job with excellence.

Now, the implication from the “Editor” is that we shouldn’t be focusing at all with “what’s right with the world”. After all, we know there’s a lot wrong with it. Right? Granted, I expect the apoplexy level at Slice 2.0 to go up as we get closer to mid-June, as the speaker line-up is a “who’s who” of CRN’s “Most Wanted List” – including Dan Kimball, Erwin McManus and Donald Miller plus music from David Crowder.

I will not argue that there is much going wrong with the world that we, as Christians, are called to confront. However, there is a time for every season, not only a time to mourn. After all, this world is a place that God created and called “good”, and it is a place that he will “renew” or “make new” again. Paul even points to the evidence of God in His creation.

I greatly appreciate artists like Laura Story who capture this in song and verse:

From the highest of heights to the depths of the sea
Creation’s revealing Your majesty
From the colors of fall to the fragrance of spring
Every creature unique in the song that it sings
All exclaiming

Indescribable, uncontainable,
You placed the stars in the sky and You know them by name.
You are amazing God
All powerful, untameable,
Awestruck we fall to our knees as we humbly proclaim
You are amazing God

Who has told every lightning bolt where it should go
Or seen heavenly storehouses laden with snow
Who imagined the sun and gives source to its light
Yet conceals it to bring us the coolness of night
None can fathom

Ominously, Mr/Mrs “Editor” concludes the Slice 2.0 article with:

Is your church a member of the Willow Creek Association?

Mine is, and the local/state churches I see on their list for Indiana (my state) are the ones who are thriving and making a difference in individual lives and in the community and world around them. If you’re isn’t a member of the WCA, maybe it should be…

Hey Guys,

I am on the production staff for a conference taking place this week.  Alot of emerging (and emergent for that matter) leaders from around the country are here through Thursday.  I have actually met several people that read CRN.info on a daily basis!  Many here have told me that countless others look to this site for logical answers to the charges against the emerging community.  Many of these young pastor are facing the same attacks from dead and dying churches in their area that Silva throws out.  I just thought that this would be a little boost, reminding us that our work here is impacting such a greater community.  Continue to pray for the movement of Jesus Christ that is taking place all across our country and the world!