No one is arrested for serving in the name of Jesus.

No one dies for preaching Jesus.

No one is ridiculed for holding fast to Jesus.

Believing that America is a reflection of the rest of the world leads to the belief that persecution doesn’t exist.

Tags: Why Europe, Missions, Culture

In light of the recent Climategate email leaks, the Sunday Times Online ran an article about the Hollywood elite lecturing the world about their carbon footprints, lifting the lid to expose the Pharisees of Green. In true Sunday Times form, they left no stone unturned, no jet manifest unscrutinized, no hypocritical detail interned to expose the eco-hypocrites.

“There was Sheryl Crow, who had called upon the public to refrain from using more than one square of toilet paper per visit... It was revealed that while Crow travelled in a biodiesel tour bus, her 30-person entourage followed in a fleet of 13 gas-guzzling vehicles.”

“John Travolta notoriously encouraged the British public to do its bit to fight global warming — after flying into London on one of his five, yes, five private jets (one of which is a Boeing 707). In 2006 his piloting hobby produced an estimated 800 tons of carbon emissions, more than a hundred times the output of the average Briton, according to the Carbon Trust.”

“Jennifer Aniston told reporters that to save the Earth’s precious water resources she brushes her teeth while in the shower. But she also flew a hairdresser to Europe to accompany her on a recent publicity tour for the film Marley & Me.”

As I was reading the article it reminded me of Jesus’ words to the religious hypocrites during his earthly ministry:

“The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat. So you must obey them and do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy loads and put them on men's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them. Everything they do is done for men to see: They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long; they love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues; they love to be greeted in the marketplaces and to have men call them ‘Rabbi.’”

The sad irony is, in one way or another we’re all hypocrites desperate for God’s grace through Jesus Christ. As Christians however that doesn’t give us a pass on hypocrisy. As Jesus taught, it is our job to first squeeze out the hypocrisy in our lives so that we can speak into the lives of others. A lesson apparently our Hollywood schoolmarms have not learned:

"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.”

Thank you Jesus for your continual, living reminder to first rid ourselves of hypocrisy before speaking to others. It just looks bad when we don’t.

Tags: Culture

I was struck by the depth of my need for Jesus this week.

As one who claims to love people and culture I sure enjoy laughing at people at their worst. The conviction struck me while I was imbibing in a very funny website at work, laughing it up with co-workers and ridiculing the people portrayed on it. "Is this becoming for a Christian?" I thought.

If you work in the technology industry or spend a lot of time around the internet as I do, you'll know the kind of website I'm talking about. In the last few years, the internet has created a humor sub-culture which collects the worst of human behavior, mistakes, flubs, tricks, and pranks and lays them out for everyone to see. This humor-mill has turned into a full on media cash bonanza with start-ups raking in wads of cash and expanding their reach farther and farther afield. Make no mistake, some of these sites are extremely funny, especially those that capture people in their most failed moments.

However, as I read that site this week, the thought occurred to me that I was not laughing with people, I was laughing at people. People made in the image of God. People for whom Christ died. People who needed to hear the message of Jesus from a missionary, not the laughter and scorn of an anonymous prankster. My call to maturity meant putting away the juvenile, to stop wasting time. It was a gentle reminder from the one who showed us what it means to really love people that he didn't laugh at me when I was at my worst. I'm just glad there's no video evidence of me.

Tags: Culture, Missionary Life, Technology

Dan Walker writes a very interesting article about why the observance of the Lord’s day is an important aspect to his life and career:

“‘You will not get anywhere with an attitude like that!’ Those are the words that were ringing in my ears as I left the offices of a major radio station in London back in 2000. The interviewers were under the impression that what I had written in my CV about not working on a Sunday was a joke. When I explained that I was a Christian, and why I felt the way I did, one of them just sat there with his mouth wide open for about ten seconds. It was a great job and they fully expected me to give up everything to work for them.”

I think it is interesting that for many who claim Christ in America, more time is spent at the restaurant table and shopping than relaxing and enjoying the restful day that God has blessed us with. What message are we sending to the world with our non-stop busy Sundays? Certainly food for thought. Read the rest here. (Via Challies.com)

Tags: Christian Life, Culture

Jared over at Gospel Driven Church alerted me to a Microsoft ad that was pushed out but pulled so fast I didn’t have a chance to see it. During the advertising campaign for their new Internet Explorer 8 internet browser they let one ad slip that tarnished the rest of the ad campaign as well as the company image. The ad is below and it is extremely offensive, watch it at your own risk:



Microsoft has since pulled
the ad but they got what they wanted from it, buzz. However, the fact that this ad was made in the first place, that someone thought it was funny, cute, novel, or helpful in any way demonstrates yet again how right Jesus was when he spoke about the human heart. Jesus said in Matthew 5:28:

“But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

To Jesus the problem wasn’t just the lustful look (behavior) but the heart behind it (character). The fact that Microsoft (or any other company) thinks it funny to laugh about degrading women, or husbands abusing their wives through viewing horrific material online demonstrates how sick this world really is. And the fact that they are highlighting inPrivate a feature who’s sole purpose (according to their ad) is to hide one’s internet tracks from their spouse is even worse. Mark Driscoll spoke to Christian men about this subject a few months ago:



If you’re a Christian man sinning in this area I understand but I won’t excuse you. It’s time to get help and let God heal you and the relationships you’re in. It’s time to put an end to the continual cycle. It’s time to let the “you” on the outside, match the “you” on the inside. It’s time to be a real man. Don’t let Microsoft define you with their warped, twisted, immature sense of reality. Let Jesus define you as the man God wants you to be. By the way, let me recommend an internet filter to help keep the trash out, Netnanny on the right under technology links and a different, more superior internet browser, Firefox.

Tags: Culture

People really are different. As a missionary you’ll learn this the first time you realize you’re a foreigner living in a strange land. There was a period of time when we first moved to Ireland where I didn’t get this. You see, my name and my family’s heritage is Irish. If you flip open the Dublin phone book you will find about 2 full pages with different spellings (including mine) of my last name on the pages. It was an odd feeling for once in my life being a “Smith.” For a while I lived under the odd assumption that I was “home” and that I simply fit in among the Irish population. After all, my name was Irish and my looks are Irish and my family had sailed from Ireland to America only a few generations prior; I blended in like a chameleon... until I opened my mouth. The second I said anything I was immediately discovered to be out of place and the startled looks on people’s faces was priceless. They had been under the same impression, as me, that I was Irish and local until my American accent gave it away that I was a foreigner. After a while the newness wore off and the realization of being different set in.

People deal with being “the odd man out” in different ways. Some blend in trying to be cool and in with the culture they find themselves in; some forcibly stand out becoming so different as to be labeled weird. There is a danger in either extreme because while wanting to be attractive for the sake of the Gospel to those around us we must not become like those around us. It is a very difficult balance to strike but it is the obligation of the Christian, “in the world but not of.” Bottom line, be who you were redeemed to be. As Christians we are always going to be different in many ways and that’s not a bad place to be.

Below is an article by Mike McKinley about the desire to be cool to a fault. Hopefully this doesn’t describe anyone reading...if so, please shave.

Contemplating Cool

By Mike McKinley
Show me a grown man with a goatee and I’ll show you a major league baseball player. Show me a grown man with a goatee wearing sandals and I’ll show you a youth pastor.

When I was a kid, I remember that the youth pastor at our church was totally different than any other pastor I’d ever seen. He quoted rock bands and wore blue jeans to church. He was cool in a way that the other adults in my life were not. I was proud to invite my friends to church and see their negative stereotypes of Christians get blown up. The youth group thrived and “unchurched” kids were reached. The one thing that distinguished our group from others was that our pastor was cool.

As the youth pastors and youth of the 1990s become the head pastors and congregants of the 2000s, it seems like the phenomenon has only grown. It is now an unexamined assumption in many quarters: the best way to reach people is to be like them. In order to reach our culture, we must embody what the culture defines as acceptable and valuable. We must be as “cool” as we can possibly be while still retaining the gospel. That way, people will see us and not be turned off by us. Maybe they’ll even want to be us.

This shows up in both the private lives of pastors (you missional guys, I’m talking about you and your emo eyeglasses) and in the church’s corporate worship, where we seek to remove everything that might seem foreign to the unchurched visitor.

In some ways, I think being connected to the culture around us is helpful. But there are ways in which a commitment to being cool can ultimately conflict with the call of a pastor. As the resident cool guy on the 9Marks docket (which is roughly like being the ladies’ man at a Star Trek convention—damning with faint praise), here are a few thoughts:

1. Being connected to the culture is a double-edged sword.
In a sense, we all carry a set of unique interests, talents, characteristics, and strengths around with us. These can both serve the proclamation of the gospel and hinder it. So, for example, yesterday the copier repairman stopped by the church which I serve. He is a young guy who is into cage-fighting. We built a connection over that fact (one of the guys in our church also does MMA—mixed martial arts), and he was pleasantly surprised to find that a pastor could be heavily tattooed.* I shared Christ with him, and he asked for a Bible. Score one for enculturation.

But there are other ways that my appearance might be a hindrance to the gospel. I have been sharing Christ with a strict Muslim man that I see in the sauna at the gym once or twice a week. We have built a friendship and talked about spiritual matters quite often. I have little doubt that the fact that I have a large weasel tattooed on my bicep does not make him more attracted to the faith. Score one for not having tattoos. This is why I wear sleeves on Sunday mornings. In one situation my ink serves me well; in another it can make things more difficult.

2. We must always be on guard against pride.
How much of a pastor’s desire to be perceived as cool or connected to the culture is motivated by vanity or pride? Knowing the depth of our depravity and self-deception and pride, we must examine ourselves. Am I motivated to dress a certain way or listen to certain music for good reasons? Or does part of me at least want to avoid being the butt of Ned Flanders jokes? We must beware that our quest for cool doesn’t feed the vanity and pride which we need to be choking to death every day.

In fact, I fear (and here I am speaking from what I see in my own heart) that oftentimes we are at least partially motivated to reach people by pride. How much of our desire to be cool is a desire to reach people, not only for the gospel, but also for our own glory? Here’s a diagnostic question for everyone who is a pastor: if the Lord called you to shepherd sixty uncool saints until they were safely home, with no spectacular revival or ministry explosion, would you consider that beneath you? Would it seem unworthy of your gifts and a waste of your life? If so, you are being motivated by pride.

3. Much pastoral ministry is profoundly uncool.
Don’t sign up to be a pastor if you want to sound reasonable to most people or if you want to affect a cool detachment from people and ideas. The preaching of the cross is foolishness and a stumbling block to your average art community hipster. We must love the Savior more than we love the respect of others.

Also, the ironic detachment that cool requires finds little place in the work of a pastor. At times, you must be embarrassingly earnest and enthusiastic. You must love difficult and extremely mockable people with a real and true love that never seeks a laugh at their expense. You need to cry with people when they suffer unspeakable tragedy. Much of being a pastor is profoundly uncool.

4. We must never despise our brothers and sisters.
There is a real danger in becoming so puffed-up over our freedom in Christ to wear black t-shirts that we begin to look down on the Ned Flanders-style Christians who love the Lord and have served him faithfully for years. In fact, it may be that the Lord is more pleased with their humble walk (though not as sophisticated) than he is with yours. The fact is, love for other Christians is a hallmark of a true believer (1 John 2:10). Even more it must be the mark of a pastor. We have more in common with a believer in Myanmar and a believer in Duluth (even if they don’t know a pilsner from a stout or Operation Ivy from Crimpshine) than we do with the people we’re trying to reach for Christ.

The fact is, we can’t choose who will be in our flock, nor should we try. Should churches go after the “manly man” with gimmicks and mocking disdain for the average wussy church going guy? If I read Ephesians properly, the church should consist of all kinds of people: cool and square, macho and sensitive, punk rock and emo. Frankly, in my experience a sensitive guy who is not trying to be cool is about ten times more likely to fit the biblical profile of a man, even if he doesn’t ride a Harley and watch contact sports on television. Pastor your people, thank God for the diversity in the body, and love people who aren’t like you.

5. With a few exceptions, Christians who try to be cool are terrible at it.
When I was in middle school, a well meaning youth worker attempted to perform what came to be known infamously in Radnor Junior High School lore as “the Jesus rap.” These were the earlier days of hip-hop, and the genre was still trying to find its sound. Well, this youth worker, a slightly pudgy white guy of about 28 years, put the effort back ten years in five excruciating minutes. I later came to find that this well-meaning man hadn’t written this material himself (thank heavens!) but that it was later recorded as part of a song called “Addicted to Love” by a man named Carman.

The point is this: not many Christians can pull it off. A few can, but you probably can’t. Seriously, ask your wife. She’ll tell you the truth. Don’t try to be something that you’re not for the sake of impressing unbelievers. It’s bad theology and it will fool no one. It’s this kind of thinking that has gotten us Christian rock music. Please, stop it. No, really. Now. I insist.

6. Being like the culture can make it hard to see the gospel.
The more we understand the world (and its definition of what is compelling and cool), the less attractive we should find it. In fact, in a society that is increasingly morally and spiritually bankrupt, it may be our incongruity with the culture that serves to highlight the gospel. David Wells says this much better than I could in his book God in the Wasteland:

By this late date, evangelicals should be hungering for a genuine revival of the church, aching to see it once again become a place of seriousness where a vivid otherworldliness is cultivated because the world is understood in deeper and truer ways, where worship is stripped of everything extraneous, where God’s Word is heard afresh, where the desolate and broken can find sanctuary [emphasis mine].

Let’s pray that our churches recover that quality of vivid otherworldliness, even if it is not cool.

The conclusion of the matter is this: be who God made you to be. If you lean hipster, run with it. Be a hipster to the glory of God. If you lean in another direction, that’s great too. But Christ must be central to all who will pursue the calling of a pastor. That means putting to death our pride and scorn for others who are not like us. That means evangelizing across the boundaries of taste and preference. In the long run, it might even mean that we’re not cool.

Michael McKinley is the pastor of Guilford Baptist Church in Sterling, Virginia, and the 9Marks lead writer on church membership.

Tags: Culture

Caitlin Flanagan, a woman familiar with controversy, wrote a new article in the latest Time Magazine about the importance of marriage and the importance of what we’re losing in Western society as we continually chip way at the institution. It is a well written piece worth your time reading. While not without her critics, she does make some very strong points.

“The one thing both men refused to admit was that, back in the heyday of these affairs, they must have been having a blast. These were two middle-aged, conservative Republican men who had said, To hell with being part of the Cialis generation (midlife sexuality depicted as an aging husband and wife reclining in ... side-by-side bathtubs? What is the drugmaker worried about — that randy Pa might jump in Ma's bath and break her hip?). Their actions were so willful and blatantly self-centered that the two of them could have credibly fashioned themselves as rebels, possibly even as heroes, if they could have just stopped crying. They weren't a couple of tools stuck in sexless marriages and making up for it with Internet porn. These guys had embarked on dangerously erotic rampages with real-life, unencumbered women, women who decidedly weren't ... Jenny and Darlene. The long-suffering wives, Fun Busters in Chief.”

Marriage is something I have written about in the past, something that we will live to regret losing once the last vestiges of the societal glue are removed. Western society cannot afford to lose this institution and anyone willing to fight for it is someone to keep nearby.

Tags: Culture

Have we found a friend in the Hollywood wasteland? Reading today’s Lonewolf Diary got me thinking that someone, somewhere out there in tinseltown might actually like us Christians. I don’t follow many Hollywood blogs but this one was passed to me by a friend and it was an intriguing read. Here is a man who actually, publicly wrote that Hollywood’s fascination with destroying Christianity must end! Now I’m not sure of Steven Crowder’s spiritual affiliation but I have to say that it was nice of him to step up to the plate to “defend” us, even if he did so in his very sarcastic way. Why hasn’t anyone else done the same, especially those who bear the name of Jesus? Why haven’t we marched, protested, agonized, boycotted, and condemned Hollywood’s treatment of us? For one, those in Hollywood who relentlessly beat the drum of persecution are a passing vapor, a mist that appears today and is gone tomorrow. (I’m talking about their careers...) They will stand before Jesus to answer the one question he demands of them, “who did you say I am?” But here is the bottom line, boycotting Hollywood or rioting to change the cultural perception of Christians is not our job and it would be fool-hardy to be distracted by it. Our job is to preach Jesus and plant churches that change lives and cultures. Jesus told us two very important things:

“And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’” Matthew 28:18-19

and

“I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.” John 17:14-18

Thanks Steven for your support, we’ll take it from here.

Tags: Culture