Friday, October 07, 2005
Evangelism Continued
The second basis for worldview evangelism is the idea of relevance which I would love to see churches latch onto. Salvation language, no matter how you try, is foreign to unchurched or non-Christian ears. As I mentioned, sin is so lost as anything remotely recognizable today, thanks to severe relativistic brainwashing, people have no idea why or what they need to be saved from. Language of living is what people can hear: Family issues, education, political ideas, art, music, science, law, the media, movies, leisure, Christmas! The murmuring has increased drastically in recent years, to almost a shout. Many Christian men and women are addressing life matters; they have gone beyond spiritual dialogue and are reaching right into people's personal space (Focus on the Family), and their schools (Bill Bennett), courtrooms (ADF, ACLJ), TV's (Faith Under Fire), science (ID, Pearcey, Johnson, Behe).
If I had not gotten involved in the battle for our children, and heard James Dobson saying, if we have no Bible as the foundation for morality, then we have NO BASIS for morality so we will have to make it up as we go! There it was! I had never heard anything so powerful from any pulpit in my thirty years of church going! In other words, I came back to Christ and my faith because worldview evangels were driving it into my heart...and my home. My children meant more to me than whether "God loves me", the disconnected-from-life chatter from church! Someone is going to comment on how God's love is totally important. Of course it is, but what does that Love mean for me and my family, in this life? I began to connect more and more with brothers and sisters of the universal church who seemed to really get it...relevance of the spiritual message in all realms of living. Will we vacation at the ocean or the Grand Canyon where we can revel in God's grandeur or do we do Disney World where materialism and gay parades are the soup du jour? Will we send our kids to a secular school for politically correct indoctrination? Spend thousands of dollars to further the world's cause? Or shall we put our money into a school which closer resembles God's cultural mandate? "Drain the swamp"...yes, by all means.
This is why South Carolina's Exodus makes sense to a worldview evangelical like me. Pulling out of a culture we no longer want to support yet still engaging the world in relevant dialogue. Christ came to redeem His Church and expand His Kingdom...the Body of Christ is to resurrect, and complete the work which He finished! We will not get very far with our heads in the clouds and feet in the pews. You don't get it? For starters, this year, say Merry Christmas when the world wishes you Happy Holiday!
If I had not gotten involved in the battle for our children, and heard James Dobson saying, if we have no Bible as the foundation for morality, then we have NO BASIS for morality so we will have to make it up as we go! There it was! I had never heard anything so powerful from any pulpit in my thirty years of church going! In other words, I came back to Christ and my faith because worldview evangels were driving it into my heart...and my home. My children meant more to me than whether "God loves me", the disconnected-from-life chatter from church! Someone is going to comment on how God's love is totally important. Of course it is, but what does that Love mean for me and my family, in this life? I began to connect more and more with brothers and sisters of the universal church who seemed to really get it...relevance of the spiritual message in all realms of living. Will we vacation at the ocean or the Grand Canyon where we can revel in God's grandeur or do we do Disney World where materialism and gay parades are the soup du jour? Will we send our kids to a secular school for politically correct indoctrination? Spend thousands of dollars to further the world's cause? Or shall we put our money into a school which closer resembles God's cultural mandate? "Drain the swamp"...yes, by all means.
This is why South Carolina's Exodus makes sense to a worldview evangelical like me. Pulling out of a culture we no longer want to support yet still engaging the world in relevant dialogue. Christ came to redeem His Church and expand His Kingdom...the Body of Christ is to resurrect, and complete the work which He finished! We will not get very far with our heads in the clouds and feet in the pews. You don't get it? For starters, this year, say Merry Christmas when the world wishes you Happy Holiday!
