Are you Reaching your Culture for Christ?

Reaching your Culture

This morning I was out for my early prayer walk. Since I live in a very diversified neighborhood I take different path all the time. Within a 10 block radius there is white, black and Hispanic families living and mixed together rather randomly as well ( perhaps the way it should be) . I live in a parsonage and probably among the nicest homes in the neighborhood, but to look at it from the outside it still seems to blend in with the overall area. After living here nine months we have gotten a feel for the neighborhood in general. Before we moved here we spend the last 9 years with just a few neighbors and among them were farms with cows and roosters. Our yard had lots of room and very different from our present home and neighborhood. Within the first few months my teens girls with a few friends got jumped in what seems to have been at the time a random weird thing. They were ok, just rattled some at the time. We use to leave our home and cars unlocked for years including when we were gone for day as well. Never anything stolen in 9 years.
Just last week after leaving our bicycles outside since moving here we had two of them stolen and a third one that was left in our yard a few months ago by who knows who ? So technically 3 bikes stolen. At first I was mad and since then I have released it to the Lord and asked the Lord to provide back a 10 speed for me when He desires. I trust he will work it out. My son's old bike got fixed so he is good to go again and now the bikes stay in the garage.

Anyway, there is reason for the backdrop as it relates to the title. So this morning I'm walking the area going through a poorer area as well as passing a security locked neighborhood. Wow interesting feelings I got as I prayed about reaching people in our area. I got thinking about how to reach people that live around us. First I thought I could go door to door requesting prayer. Then I thought maybe I could just pray over each home as I walk by and then that day send out a postcard or card to the home owners telling them that they were prayed for today. Which led me to think about who does Jesus want us to reach. While I walk and pray I listen to music and the new testament intermingled on my mp3 player. I keep hearing from scripture today the word poor.

I thought yep we got poor folks around the church, but not everyone is poor. Also, I thought we got thieves around our neighborhood, but again not everyone is a thief. I am ok now that our bikes go stolen and I am ok that there are a lot of needy people in my area. After all this is what Jesus came for. He came to help the poor and sick and broken among society. And God has planted us right in the middle of it all. If there ended up being a drive by shootings every night I might feel different, but for now I feel honored to serve Him in my very diversified neighborhood where our church is a beacon of hope.

My biggest challenge is the language barrier as several of my neighbors only speak Spanish, so recently I enrolled in a free Spanish course at the local library hoping to learn to read, speak and understand Espanol some. I know after nine months I am just getting going to reach my local culture, but I am determined to touch lives one at a time as He leads and as I learn my culture. As scripture says, To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some.1 Corinthians 9:22

Are you reaching your immediate culture? Do you know your neighbors?

Is the Emergent Church the new Worship War?

My first exposure to the emergent church or emerging church was through a seminary student who was our youth pastor a couple years ago. She went to Kansas City for a couple weeks twice a year. When she came back the second time she told us stories of strange churches of the Nazarene and how catholic like they were in some of there ritual practices. My reaction was to pass it off and I really did not give it much thought at the time.

At the time we were pastoring a church where we did things pretty simple and easy from week to week. Our church would sing unto the Lord, pray, take up an offering, have a special song sung, testimonies, announcements, sermon and altar call to pray. That is the way the church of the Nazarene has always been for me since I got saved in 1981. Sometimes the style of music or types of instruments change at times, but basically you could walk into almost any Nazarene church in North America and find a common style or format. I have found when worshipping with Nazarene’s from Russia to Africa and the Caribbean that there is so much the same with some slight cultural differences. I have always felt at home even on the mission trips I’ve taken.

Then along came the worship wars with the introduction of contemporary music. People have stood on different sides of the fence on what they wanted for music to worship God by. That war still rages in many churches and has split many asunder too. I really wish we could just worship God in spirit and truth and lay aside what we want and just worship. But of course it is just not that simple is it?

As a pastor for the past 20 years now I have come to the conclusion that church growth ultimately is not about the music either, but rather about the relationships and the discipleship. So really in the long run worship wars are another self centered plot of the enemy to divide and conquer.

Now we have this new emergent church movement with the inability to some degree to truly even define it. So in my review of this new challenge to the church let me propose several thoughts on what this movement is and how it is best defined. The best definition I have read among several is: The Emerging or Emergent Church Movement takes its name from the idea that the culture has changed, and a new church should emerge in response. According to gotquestions.org this is the answer to this question: "What is the emerging / emergent church movement?"

Answer: The emerging, or emergent, church movement takes its name from the idea that as culture changes, a new church should emerge in response. In this case, it is a response by various church leaders to the current era of post-modernism. Although post-modernism began in the 1950s, the church didn't really seek to conform to its tenets until the 1990s. Post-modernism can be thought of as dissolution of "cold, hard fact" in favor of "warm, fuzzy subjectivity." The emerging / emergent church movement can be thought of the same way.

So my question to the 1990 change in the church is: Why did we change in the 1990’s and not the 1950’s? My answer: Because we had gradually become less of praying and fasting church and were losing our growth momentum in America. Instead of getting back on our knees, we reverted to other secular means and therefore was birthed the Emergent movement to become more like our falling culture.

According to a paper printed and released within the Church of the Nazarene in May 2008 it defines emerging as: “Emerging catches into one term the global reshaping of how to ‘do church’ in postmodern culture. It has no central offices and it is as varied as evangelicalism itself.”

My response is that the church should always do Church according to the New Testament regardless of what the culture is or becomes. Church is the body of Christ and those who are born into it are to worship and experience the grace of God according to the scriptures. I do realize that culture shapes many aspects of how we live out the Word, yet there must be some common aspects across cultural and time lines that are biblical and spiritually based and consistent.

I believe there are indeed a lot of non biblical things being adopted into the church today through this movement that we do need to be aware of. We need to stick to the Word of God in these last days of great deception. Just as worship styles can digress away from solid biblical worship intentions so can many who emerge with a digressing culture if we are not careful.

I have heard Church bands who are actually playing secular rock songs as worship songs without any change of the lyrics in the attempt to attract non believing seekers and then give them a soft gospel message. For those “cutting edge churches” they are doing whatever to attract the lost and it has become in my opinion more entertainment than God ordained and prayer bathed biblical worship. Numbers of growth do not necessarily equate spiritual conversions and eternal fruit.

My concern for the emerging church is that we are allowing ourselves to become less than what we are called to be in Christ that we might become more in numbers than we currently are by way of the strategy of the flesh. We need to be a people who have a reliance on the power of God through the anointing of the Holy Spirit.

So Emergent’s beware of deception, digression and compromise is this fast falling culture in America. May the Church stand in Holiness regardless of the digressing emergent falling post modern culture of the Americas!

Move in day for my Oldest at MVNU in Ohio

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From Yellow Pages to Web Pages

Do you have an email address? If you are reading this probably so. Ok, so having an email address is no bigger now, right? Since I started blogging three years ago I have started to receive unexpected and unusual E-mail requests. At first, I was flattered with requests to come preach in Africa, India and other exotic like locations. As I later found out, all these wonderful sincere e-mail requests were ministries asking me to come on my own dime and expense. You know the perception. If you are an American then you are rich. One such minister and I still write back and forth and he has even called me a few times. It’s a genuine friendship now, but I just have not made it to Kenya yet as other pressing expenses and priorities have taken place, plus I have not saved up that many dimes yet!

Well this past spring I received yet another email. This time it was from a land far far away, but it was from people that were only asking for a little local help. They just needed a place to sleep for a few nights when they made their way to Orlando for an International convention that was held this past June. The request seemed simple enough.

It seemed harmless and easy enough at first to reply, “Sure what can I do to help you 53 folks with? Give me a few more details and I will see what I can do.” Well as time progressed, I found myself caring, transporting and arranging more than I ever dreamed of by the end of a full 15 days of hosting people from Papua New Guinea. Of those 15 days 7 of them were days entirely spent in Deland with 29 of the 53 travelers on our grounds. I was spent as they say when it was all over. It was a good spent and I have no regrets, but it was some deal for sure.

Matter of fact since I’ve done it once, I feel I could do it again if needed, but I am certainly not searching the internet looking for people to host again by any means. I could never had done it without the gracious help of my staff, people and those precious ones in the community of Deland, and of course the wonderful grace of God. So many helped in big and small ways. After a couple of days my lovely wife said, “I think ill leave early on that trip to Ohio with the kids as planned, so you can open the house up to the others who are still sleeping on the floor.”. Within hours I had 10 people sleeping in my home. What a time we had! I truly lived life to the fullest with our congregation that week. Our local church will never forgot those people and those special days. Just check out one of those service here! We went to the coast, watched the Deland Suns play ball and so much more. I even took a group of 12 downtown for a cup of coffee on the BLVD one afternoon and of course wal-mart was the destination of preference many times over. Heaven came down when they sang at church and the power of God fell when they prayed.
Ten years ago I could never had imagined so much life and excitement could flow out of simply answering an email over the Internet. On the day they left to the airport I wept as I saw my new friends fly 24 plus hours back around the world to their homes in Papua New Guinea.
In the 47th year of our local churches history we went from yellow pages to web pages for the first time. We now have had visitors from a foreign county as well as from the local area because of web pages. We even have friends and relatives in our congregation who have viewed worship services live over the internet from Key West to Maine. Now that is something this local church probably could never had imagined just a few short months ago. Truly the addition from yellow pages to web pages has expanded our world influence.
Our ministry model of outreach and influence has changed over the last 47 years, but probably not as drastically as what the web pages has brought to this local Nazarene church in 2009. Even to this day there still remain approximately 45% of all churches in North America that do not have web page. Given the choice today I would choice a web page over a yellow page for sure.

We are seeing the results first hand. The emails come in, the phone rings and I get comments from time to time how they found our church online. Who would have ever imagined people from down the street to people around the world finding a local church in the new global phone book called the internet.
I sure am enjoying the transition of how God is using the new phone book to build His kingdom among us in Deland.