Depending on who you are, this either makes not sense at all, or it’s freakin’ hillarious…

So… first, a quick recap:

I don’t like the church I went to in high school.

In college I got plugged in to a much better fit, but I was so busy doing Campus Crusade stuff that it wasn’t a huge concern. I had almost all of my spiritual needs met through the many facets of the Campus Crusade for Christ ministry at North Carolina State University.

As soon as I graduated, I went overseas for about a year, and there I got a totally different ‘church’ experience: it was about 8 of us. We met in our PJs, drank coffee, worshiped under the leadership of the CD player, and then taught each other what God had been teaching each of us. This was a very good experience.

Then I came home and began working at a small, non-denominational church fellowship that attracted me because of some of the similarities to my overseas experience…. There was lots of freedom given ‘for the spirit to move’, including a time of open sharing, and a time of open prayer. I enjoyed this at first, but I also took note of a lot of drawbacks…

So, about five months ago, I sat in the office of a great pastor/friend and told him all this stuff, along with a lot of other stuff about how being newly married affected my ‘church experience’, and instead of really giving me any advice at all, he challenged me to write a 2-page paper on ‘my ideal church’ (or ‘church fellowship’ for those of you who can’t stand to hear the word ‘church’ unless it’s in reference to every believer in the whole world).

Fast-forward to today. I still haven’t written the first line. It’s not because I don’t want to. I just realized that I was way unqualified to answer the question.

Which is powerful if you think about it.

How can I pray for my church if I don’t know what I want it to be?

So I’ve been studying and praying and thinking, and although that’s still true that I’m not really qualified to answer the question, I think I want to take a crack at it this week, especially as our body is in a very transitional state right now.

But first, what’s your input?

I don’t need you to write a whole essay. But I would love to hear your thoughts!

WordPress says that there are about 100 folks who look at this site every day, but I usually only get 1-2 comments a day. PLEASE ENGAGE ON THIS ONE!

I look forward to hearing what you think…

So, if you know me personally, or if you even read this blog very regularly, you know that I have somewhat of a love-hate relationship with Rob Bell.

And right off the bat, let me tell you that I hate that, because self-righteous ‘christians’ who think it’s their goal in life to tear down everything their brothers build in the name of ‘constructive criticism’ drive me insane.

And to be totally honest, I’m somewhat of a hypocrite when it comes to this matter…

About a year ago, I read “Velvit Elvis”, and I like it so much that I read it again and then bought the audio from iTunes so I could make Stephanie listen to it :0)

(I wrote this about a year ago when I was thinking through the book)

The whole concept of interpreting what Jesus said through the grid of first century Judaism was amazing to me. And Rob really shed some light on some passages of scripture that never quite made sense.

I started listening to the Mars Hill Bible Church podcast. And for my birthday, I asked for the book ‘Sex God’, which I got and eagerly read…

This whole time, I had some questions I was holding out to find the answers to. But I felt like the good outweighed the bad, and I really wanted to give the guy the benefit of the doubt.

Then came the ‘Convergent’ conference at Southeastern seminary, and Mark Driscoll used his teaching time to speak about the ‘Emerging Church’, which I found really interesting. He singled out Rob along with a couple other teachers as ‘dangerous’. His explanation on why was fair and it caught my attention: It seems like the dude NEVER actually teaches the Gospel. And I got to thinking about it. And I started listening to Rob’s podcasts more carefully. And it’s my conclusion that after listening to a year’s worth of sermons, I still haven’t heard him teach about the cross one time! I have never been to Grand Rapids, and I don’t know what kind of systems/groups/processes they have in place there. But based solely on the Sunday morning teaching, it seems like you could have gone to Mars Hill Bible church for a whole year, been involved, paid attention, and never heard the Gospel articulated… (and I fully aknowledge that I’m really not qualified to make that assessment based on some podcasts…)

Hmmmm….

So, having said all that, there’s an article in Time magazine this week titled “The Hipper-Than-Thou Pastor”.

Some quotes from the article:

Polling by the evangelically oriented Barna research group shows that at least half of regular churchgoers ages 16 to 29 think their church is too judgmental, too political and too negative about homosexuality…

“He could be one of the most important 21st century Christian leaders,” says Bible professor and evangelical blogger Ben Witherington…

His stagecraft is legendary. To illustrate a passage from Leviticus on sacrifice, Bell brought on a live goat, which he released–underlining Jesus’ role as the last and greatest sin offering–intoning, “The goat has left the building.”

Hmmm… that last quote seems to come from a sermon that I missed…

Justin Taylor pointed to this story a couple days ago, and as of this morning, there are 44 comments, but the conversation there is awkward, because it seems like a couple of self-righteous religious people must be poised at their computers, waiting to explain to every Bell supported why they’re wrong….

The truth is, folks, that 11,000 people come to hear Rob preach every week. And even though I have my questions, I think I would much rather be a part of the community he’s helping to build that 99% of the churches within 30 miles of my house…

So what do we do with all this?

Thoughts?

Having some fun with the title there :0)

For anyone visiting, this is my response to the discussion from a previous post. Read the comments there, and the title will make sense too…

So, first, I’m sure this response will be fairly long. So wait ’till you have 10 minutes to read it.

Second, I am LOVING this discussion. I really, really don’t see it as a couple of cocky 20-something theologians arguing about something they don’t understand amounting to morons… This is an amazingly important discussion right now, especially in light of the world we live in. The so called ‘prosperity gospel’ is more popular than ever. A couple days ago, Steph and I were in the gym, and there was a special on the morning news about how a US senator is trying to audit the 6 main ‘prosperity’ teachers to figure out how they spend their money. It pointed out how Creflo Dollar has TWO Rolls Royces, Joyce Meyer bought a $23,000 toilet bowl, and an $18,000 kitchen table, etc… It made christianity look like a bunch of crap. Half of me wanted to cry, and the other half wanted to throw up.

And the whole emerging/emergent ‘conversation’ is incredibly relevant. You have a movement of people who are asking really good questions, but mingled in there are some really unorthodox suggestions. And one of the key questions is ‘what is heaven all about?’. I heard an interview with Doug Pagitt a couple weeks ago where he very clearly argued that heaven is not a place where you go. He said maybe it’s a state of consciousness, maybe it’s something that gets established here on earth… but he was adamant that you can’t think of it as a place (I’ll send the link to the interview if you’re interested, but it was a terrible interview. The host was just a jerk. He made me ashamed to agree with him, and made Doug look pretty smart)

And that leads to the third reason why this is a good conversation to have: Mark Driscoll jokes a lot about geeks with blogs who live with their parents and just criticize everything all day. And it’s funny, but it’s true, and very serious if you ask me.

I love to read blogs and listen to sermons. Probably listen to 15 or so sermons a week. I listen to Rob Bell, Mark Driscoll, John Piper, Stephen Furtick, JD Greear… a list that includes a wide range of folks. And I read a lot of pastor’s blogs and seminary students’ blogs… and I’d say at least 50% of what people write about is criticizing other BELIEVERS. We — the Church — paint a picture to the world around us that we can’t even agree about what we believe, and that we’re really not so interested in building the Kingdom as we are in building our portion of the Kingdom bigger than our neighbor’s. I sincerely believe that the vast majority of pastors in America are going to get to heaven and realize that most of their life’s labor did not store up any treasure in heaven because their heart’s motives were mostly prideful… and this makes sense to me because I am the chief of sinners.

And yet this is a double-edged sword, because even right now, by identifying this issue, I am somewhat of a hypocrite, because now I’m drawing negative attention to the Church.

So, all that to say, this is a great conversation to have, and I am excited about it.

So much so, that I think I’ve decided to break this down into chunks, so as not to deter anyone from reading along. So here’s part one. Hopefully part two won’t be long coming…

In the meantime, point your friends this way… let’s have some fun!