Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Thought for the Day-The Gospel
I have been coming back to this thought a lot lately and think it is so pertinent to who we are as a church. The church is not called to be a part of the culture. We are called to be anti-cultural. We are called to be different than what is happening around us. Instead of making our focus to be seeker friendly, or our building cool we should really be focused on preaching the message of Christ and "being" the church (as opposed to "doing" church). We plant the seed, and God will provide the growth. I think there is a definite need to be relevant to our culture but we don't have to be like our culture. If the church isn't offending someone, we probably aren't doing our job.
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Agreed. And yet at times I have a hard time delineating those things that we're/I'm doing that are inline with culture vs those that are anti-cultural. This is a good discussion for us to be having... what does is it really mean for us to be Christ's church for the world today? I can't remember the last time anyone was offended by anything I did, thought, or believed in relation to following Jesus.
ReplyDeleteDid you know that "gospel" was a political term in the first century? There is at least one Roman monument constructed prior to Jesus' ministry with an inscription that describes the emperor's taking control of a region as "good news" (gospel). My instructor in the origins of Christianity class i just took said this was a common use of the term with reference to imperial rule. it was "good news" that Caesar was taking over your town to "save" you. This strongly suggests that the early Christian use of the word was blatantly counter-cultural and counter-imperial. It doesn't appear that early Christians apologized or belittled or explained-away-by-spiritualization their claim that Jesus really was their King.
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