Confessions of a Recovering Pharisee

[CNN]
If you’re the parent of a Christian teenager, Kenda Creasy Dean has this warning:
Your child is following a “mutant” form of Christianity, and you may be responsible.
Dean says more American teenagers are embracing what she calls “moralistic therapeutic deism.” Translation: It’s a watered-down faith that portrays God as a “divine therapist” whose chief goal is to boost people’s self-esteem.
Dean is a minister, a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary and the author of “Almost Christian,” a new book that argues that many parents and pastors are unwittingly passing on this self-serving strain of Christianity.
She says this “imposter” faith is one reason teenagers abandon churches.
“If this is the God they’re seeing in church, they are right to leave us in the dust,” Dean says. “Churches don’t give them enough to be passionate about.”

Read more here.

[From me]

Powerful article. It don’t think it is just teenagers. How many cultural Christians are there? There ought to be something radically different about us verses the world. Our actions should be different. Our language should be different….OUR lives should be different.

[HTR News]
“Bye-bye church. We’re busy.” That’s the message teens are giving churches today.

Only about one in four teens now participate in church youth groups, considered the hallmark of involvement; numbers have been flat since 1999. Other measures of religiosity — prayer, Bible reading and going to church — lag as well, according to Barna Group, a Ventura, Calif., evangelical research company. This all has churches canceling their summer teen camps and youth pastors looking worriedly toward the fall, when school-year youth groups kick in.

“Talking to God may be losing out to Facebook,” says Barna president David Kinnaman.

“Sweet 16 is not a sweet spot for churches. It’s the age teens typically drop out,” says Thom Rainer, president of LifeWay Christian Resources in Nashville, which found the turning point in a study of church dropouts. “A decade ago, teens were coming to church youth group to play, coming for the entertainment, coming for the pizza. They’re not even coming for the pizza anymore. They say, ‘We don’t see the church as relevant, as meeting our needs or where we need to be today.’ ”

“I blame the parents,” who didn’t grow up in a church culture, says Jeremy Johnston, executive pastor at First Family Church in Overland Park, Kan.

Read more here.

[From me]

I’m sure there is a lot of blame to go around. But blaming parents only is stretching it. Having grown up in Youth Ministry and being a Youth Minister myself, I think it has more to do with hypocrisy that students see. When they see adults fighting in church over_____________ then they don’t want to have anything to do with that. Having edgy music or cool games doesn’t cut it. They can find that anywhere.

I’m still working with students now and what they want are authentic relationships. Age doesn’t matter if you treat them with respect and you are honest and authentic. Just my humble opinion.

What do you think?

Yesterday I heard a radio advertisement on a Christian station asking Christians to join the “I Vote” campaign. This campaign involves placing billboards and putting bumper stickers on cars that say “I vote.” The advertisement said to let the liberal government know that “we” (Christians) don’t like what they are doing.

Now, I’m as conservative as they come. But something didn’t set well with me when I heard this ad. Why is it that the vocal Christian media makes it sound like Christians are “AGAINST” everyone and everything. I’m not happy with what is going on in our government but instead of complaining I’ve been praying. I’ve actually been praying “FOR” not against those whom I disagree with. Hasn’t God used people who opposed his will in the past? Do Christians want to be known for what we are against or what we are for?

Personally, I want to be known for being a praying man. I will vote and will support the candidates that I believe represent what is best for my Christian worldview. But if they don’t win, I will continue to pray for all of our government leaders even if I don’t like their views. Why because Jesus said to pray for them! So instead of complaining and letting the world know “I VOTE”…. I want the world and my leaders to know that…

I PRAY!

I was a minister of evangelism for several years at a great church in the Southeast a few years back. It was my job to train people to share their story with their friends, family, co-workers and neighbors. My favorite style of sharing my faith has always been relationship oriented. However, because I was the “Evangelist,” there was a lot of pressure on me to see people give their lives to Jesus every week. Which meant I had get them to “walk the aisle” every Sunday during the invitation. It got to the point where it became more of a job than a concern for people. I became convicted that I was teaching people a form of evangelism that I didn’t believe in. I was leading people to Christ, but we would see people accept Christ and leave the church shortly after because we had no relationship with them. I even led someone to Christ on a dare with some other ministers at dinner one night. The turing point came when a man on my street had a crisis and we didn’t even know him because I was too busy evangelizing people who visited our church when I should have been building relationships with my neighbors! I began to feel like a professional evangelist instead of a friend and someone who really cared about people. That is why we left to start a church.

I’ve been serving as a minister in the workplace on and off since 2001. I worked for an organization that placed chaplains in the workplace part-time for 4 years while we were planting a church in Atlanta and then for a while in South Alabama. What I found out while I was a workplace chaplain was that I enjoyed being a chaplain more than I did pastoring or being on staff at a church. You see, I left coaching football and the business world because I wanted to minister to the people I worked with and I didn’t know how. However, once I became a pastor I was separated from the people whom I really had a burden to reach.

The organization I worked part-time for doesn’t hire full-time chaplains but I heard about Corporate Chaplains of America who does. I began serving 2 companies last year when I moved back to Alabama. My job also includes finding new companies to partner with us. I now serve 7 companies in the Birmingham area. We have another chaplain in Birmingham and one in Mobile and Huntsville as well as hundreds around the US. God is truly using our chaplains.

What I love about what we do is that we get to hang out with people who would never set foot in a church. The other thing that is great about our jobs is we do everything with the employee’s permission. Some people think that we shouldn’t force ourselves on employees. I agree and we don’t. Everything we do and the care we give is up to the employee themselves. If they don’t want to talk to us they don’t have to. There are a few employees at every company that chose not to talk to me and that is their choice. But we are always there for them 24/7/365 via our satellite paging system if they ever need us.

I never realized how God had prepared me for what I’m doing today. Two days ago I talked with an employee who is going through some things now that 2 years ago I would never be able to relate to. However, as of now, I can honestly tell this employee I can relate…I’ve been there…I am there. I can be open and vulnerable now. When I was a pastor, there were some church members that didn’t like knowing that their pastor struggled. Well, reality is we all struggle. I had the privilege of leading this employee to Christ.

While I was writing this I got paged by an employee whose father is in the hospital. I will be going by there tomorrow to see him and another employee I’ve been visiting since November. The one I’ve been visiting since November we once thought might die and may never walk again. Today he is learning to walk again. These are real life stories that happen everyday. Many of these people would have no church and no one to care for them emotionally and spiritually if it weren’t for their employers providing this service. If you want to read real life stories about what happens in the workplace I encourage you to read C-Change and The Third Awakening which are books written by our founder Mark Cress. The stories are real but the names have been changed because of confidentiality.

Yesterday I was making rounds and one employee told me he was reading Old Testament. He said, “there is a lot of strange sh@* in the Old Testament.” I don’t know if he was trying to see if I would scold him but I chuckled inside. We talked for a while and during our conversation he told me he had been kicked out of church as a youth because he threw a Coke bottle out of a church bus. What kind of discipline is that? Anyway, as we continued to talk he “Gave me Permission” to share how he could have a relationship with Jesus. He asked if he would have to quit drinking 1st. I told him that Jesus wanted him just like he was. Now Jesus may convict him and challenge his thinking later on but you don’t “clean up” 1st. So right there in this heavy industrial area this man a whole lot bigger than me gave his life to Christ.

I’m convinced that if Jesus were here in person today, He would go where the people are. The biggest mission field in the US is the workplace and people bring their hurts and problems to work. There are 115 Full-time chaplains with CCA and there are other workplace ministries that are similar. Many of these Chaplains are a whole lot more effective than I am. We have chaplains that lead people to Christ almost every day! Why? Because they genuinely care for these employees and their families. I would like to challenge those of you who do work in the secular world to be open to the Holy Spirit’s leading with your co-workers. For Pastors I would encourage you to find a way to be around people in the workplace. Our organization is now partnering with Southeastern Seminary to offer a degree in Workplace Ministry. Our founder’s dream is to see churches with Pastors of Workplace Ministry that are on staff to assist their members to minister to their co-workers. After all, most people are at work longer than they are anywhere else. If you are interested in what we do contact me, I’d love to share more about how we care for employees and their families.

[Yahoo News]

The Presbyterian Church USA’s statement of faith says God through Jesus Christ delivers followers “from death to life eternal.”
But one in three members of the nation’s largest Presbyterian denomination seem to believe there’s some wiggle room for non-Christians to get into heaven, according to a recent poll. The Presbyterian Panel’s “Religious and Demographic Profile of Presbyterians” found that 36 percent of members disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement: “Only followers of Jesus Christ can be saved.” Another 39 percent, or about two-fifths, agreed or strongly agreed with the statement.

“There seems to be some universalist streak in Presbyterianism, where some Presbyterians are open to the idea of other paths that folks in other faiths might be taking,” said Perry Chang, administrator of the Presbyterian Panel, which convenes every three years.

The Presbyterian Church USA, with about 2.1 million members, is the largest Presbyterian denomination in the country. A total of 3,450 Presbyterians responded to the study, which was mailed in October 2008. The panel issued the religious and demographic report last month.Polls asking similar questions about views on salvation have provided a wide range of results. A 2005 national survey funded by Baylor University found that 53 percent of the 1,721 adults who were polled agreed with the statement,

“Many religions lead to salvation,” and another 19 percent said “My religion is the one true faith that leads to salvation.”
A 2007 poll by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that 70 percent of Americans with a religious affiliation believe many religions can lead to eternal life.

Another study found that evangelical Christians may adhere to a much stricter interpretation of salvation. The 2008 report by Lifeway, the publishing and research arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, found that 75 percent of Protestants who hold “evangelical beliefs” strongly disagreed with the statement, “If a person is sincerely seeking God, he or she can obtain eternal life through religions other than Christianity.”

Read more here.

[From me]

Jesus Himself said in John 14:6:

“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

So either Jesus is telling the truth or he is delusional or a liar. You can’t have it both ways. He is either the only way to heaven because that is what He said or He is a fraud. I believe He is who He said He is, God Himself. You can’t get to God by using opinion polls.

What do you think?