Tim Keller writes a striking statement in his book The Reason for God (p.152), “If there is no God, argues Nietzsche, Sarte, and others, there can be no good reason to be kind, to be loving, or to work for peace” (emphasis mine). This is an all-or-nothing statement, that if proven true, radically changes the landscape of atheistic perspective. Every time someone, Christian or not, performs an unloving, unkind, or un-peaceable act we promote an atheistic perspective to the world. Simply put, this is how you can be an evangelist for atheism.

The flip side to this statement pre-supposes that love, peace and kindness are the sole-possession of theism, particularly a Christ-centered Theism as in Keller’s case. That last statement alone makes this idea hard to swallow if you focus on the outward fruit of many who call themselves Christian in our global village.

This makes me wonder, has the church really become a place of “Evangelical Atheists”? Obviously that’s a strong statement, and immediately I’m forced to backtrack and say that there are many congregations and many Christ-followers throughout the United States and around the world who would not fit into this category, however I think it’s safe to assume the majority of our society believes the stereotype of Christianity as judgmental, fear-mongering, war-mongering, right-wing extremists. How did we get to this point? Certainly it didn’t happen overnight?

Harry Emerson Fosdick wrote this back in 1919 in his essay The Sense of God’s Reality, “Atheism is not our greatest danger, but a shadowy sense of God’s reality. We do not disbelieve that God exists, but we often lack a penetrating and convincing consciousness that we are dealing with him and he with us.” Is the problem outlined by Fosdick after the turn of the 20th century the same at the turn of the 21st century, or perhaps magnified to a greater extent?

What I find interesting about Fosdick’s statement is how it presents itself in the prayers of the Christian. It seems without fail, whether in distress or painful circumstances at dinner or in small group we throw in the line “God be with us” or at the beginning of our worship services the prayer is heard “We welcome you here Lord.” I wonder how ridiculous those statements seem to an omni-present God who is already there, already comforting, already working and moving. I believe what this shows us more than anything is how right Fosdick was, that we live in the greatest danger of all: a shadowy sense of God’s reality… we don’t experience a perpetual presence of God’s reality.

Has the church lost its voice, its power because of our own atheism, our own practice of the absence of God? Have we, as Jesus stated of the Ephesians, “Forsaken our first love”?

Mark Driscoll’s sermons are mostly too racy to post on GodTube, the evangelical Christian “family friendly” video-posting Web site. With titles like “Biblical Oral Sex” and “Pleasuring Your Spouse,” his clips do not stand a chance against the site’s content filters. No matter: YouTube is where Driscoll, the pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, would rather be. Unsuspecting sinners who type in popular keywords may suddenly find themselves face to face with a husky-voiced preacher in a black skateboarder’s jacket and skull T-shirt. An “Under 17 Requires Adult Permission” warning flashes before the video cuts to evening services at Mars Hill, where an anonymous audience member has just text-messaged a question to the screen onstage: “Pastor Mark, is masturbation a valid form of birth control?”

Driscoll doesn’t miss a beat: “I had one guy quote Ecclesiastes 9:10, which says, ‘Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.’ ” [Read on...]

Ever wonder who the rest of the world wants us to elect as president? This is the question The Economist asked as it put together its very own global electoral college to help us answer that very question. With 9,875 electoral votes at stake encompassing 195 countries and representing 6.5 billion people, this is how the current electoral map stands as of 11:40am:

Click here for a current update. The map is updated every 3 hours with newly collected data.

Currently the college has it at: Obama 8,489 | McCain 16.

Obviously this isn’t a scientific poll but there is something that I do find interesting about the make-up of this map and the dividing line of red and blue, especially as it relates to the church.

The epicenter of the church has shifted from Western Europe and the United States to the Southern Hemisphere in locations like Australia, South America, Africa and China and in each of these locations on the map they are shaded blue. I find it interesting that Christians in the remainder of the world are not “voting” McCain or swaying many countries ‘Red’ in this global electoral college.

The difference between red and blue in the United States for the past 30 year has revolved around two main issues: homosexuality and abortion. However, for the rest of the world–Christians included–this doesn’t seem to matter as it relates to the next American President. For them it seems the power of America is much more far reaching than those two issues, that this country has a much greater chance to change the world for the better with a certain leader over another. This doesn’t mean that these two issues (homosexuality & abortion) are pointless, but rather that they are something that the church should handle in a caring and loving way — as it does in every other pro-choice nation around the world.

I for one am growing weary of the rhetoric my Christian brothers and sisters pour out in condemnation upon me for choosing to vote Democrat as if this is some sort of break with Jesus and Christianity… that I have somehow walked away from my faith and instead “embraced the liberal-ness of the Devil.” (My favorite accusation by the way.) My vote is no longer a “pro-life” vote even though it is a vote for the hope of peace and less war (no more needless and completely preventable death); it is no longer a “pro-life” vote even though it is a vote for a reduction in abortion (something conspicuously absent—read: removed—from the Republican platform) — // soapbox: if a Republican Congress (pro-life), Republican President (pro-life), and Pro-life Supreme Court can’t outlaw abortion in 8 years then what makes you think McCain is going to be the savior of it all? Don’t you ever feel used for voting for a party which continually promises to overturn Roe v. Wade yet never does anything about it? When is enough enough? Have you ever thought that if Roe v. Wade were overturned what the Republican party would run on that would win elections? There’s nothing else that swings an election like that… why would they get rid of their biggest weapon?// My vote is a pro-life vote for the countless widows and orphans in Africa, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and many other third-world countries who live in extreme poverty, a poverty that kills at a rate of 1 child every 3 seconds. My vote is a pro-life vote in these and many other aspects that I believe will be addressed by the Democratic party nominee for President and his administration.

I don’t disagree with your values, in fact I understand your convictions and applaud them… but please stop your anger and hatred for my convictions which I too find dripping from the pages of Scripture in the words of Jesus and the Prophets.

Perhaps what I find most frustrating about all of this is that we have allowed Red and Blue to divide not only this country, but the church as well… and for that we should be truly ashamed.

In this weeks Leadership Weekly email put out by Christianity Today an interesting tactic is being employed by many churches in their communities that will certainly do nothing to create a sense of goodwill or bring about any sort of partnership between the church and the communities they’re trying to reach and be a part of. Here’s the story:

It’s become known as “The Bush Doctrine.” In order to prevent another devastating terrorist attack like 9/11, President Bush announced that the United States would launch a preemptive strike against any credible threat. It doesn’t exactly jive with Jesus’ command in the Sermon on the Mount to “turn the other cheek,” but then again the United States Government isn’t pretending to be a church.

So what happens when a church decides to employ the Bush Doctrine by preemptively suing their local government for a zoning code the city hadn’t yet violated? This week Collin Hansen reports about the escalating tensions between churches and cities over land use. Municipalities are less welcoming to churches buying and building in their communities, because it takes land off their tax rolls. As a result, many are changing their zoning codes to severely restrict where churches may locate.

Some churches are responding with aggressive legal maneuvers of their own—including filing lawsuits before the cities even reject their land use applications. Do these strongarm tactics work? Are they right? And what is the impact on the church’s mission in the community afterward?

Here’s a full-length article in Leadership Journal about the same issue.

I must say that this is a rather destructive tactic, and one that will certainly engender more and more animosity against the church in the community. This certainly can’t be the sort of message Jesus was asking the church to convey…

Last Sunday was my final Sunday at the Shorewood Campus and Community Christian Church. I must say that it was bittersweet, however I can’t imagine a better place to have served.

When I started at Community 14 months ago I was in a completely different place than I am now, fresh off a gut wrenching and soul draining experience—in short a hellish year of ministry (somehow even those words can’t quite sum it up). Tracy and I came to Community extremely wounded, limping in on our last legs and expecting the impossible from the people and staff of Community. We came in expecting them to restore our hope in the church, to restore our wounded psyche, our broken hearts, and help us on the road back to wholeness. What was unfair on our part—we didn’t tell them of these expectations.

What’s amazing about the staff at Community and in particular the people of the Shorewood Campus: they didn’t bat an eye, were completely unfazed and immediately surrounded us with an amazing presence of love, support and encouragement like we have never experienced before. It’s the same sort of love, support and encouragement that they give to everyone—yet for us it hit the spot and did more than we could have ever hoped or imagined.

Fourteen months later I am leaving with a renewed sense of hope and faith in the church, a firm belief that the church can actually be a healthy, vibrant, world changing force. This post doesn’t come close to giving Community its due for how it has shaped and impacted me over the past year, but I am far different and a far better person because of how this church pushed towards the mission every day. Thank you Community… I wouldn’t be heading to San Francisco if it hadn’t been for you.

Last week while spending time at the North American Christian Convention I was able to make my way into a session on Spiritual Formation led by Dr. Neal Windham of Lincoln Christian College. A few of the statements that Dr. Windham made led me down a particular path of thought that juxtaposed our current emphasis on leadership with our lack of emphasis on spiritual formation as necessity.

I have had the opportunity throughout the past couple of years to spend some time at various conferences throughout the country focused specifically on being the church and bettering yourself as a leader. However, I have never found it odd that spiritual formation was never mentioned in the same breath as leadership until Dr. Windham said this:

Ministries can become small, shallow and confused when we neglect the doxological life.

In other words, leadership is important, vision is important, but without a leader who walks with God they are worthless.

It seems as if in our conferences and even in many of our churches we almost assume that spiritual formation is happening even though we do not have the necessary means of measuring or examining the inner life in accountable relationships. Leadership, it seems is all we’re focused on learning about and growing into.

There must be a radical transformation among the people and specifically the leadership of God’s church… yet, in our conventions and conferences the emphasis sits squarely upon the idea of leadership. It is great leaders we bring in to teach us and speak about leadership issues but we rarely, if ever, bring in a great person on spiritual formation to speak to the masses. I do wonder how many leaders, when looking underneath the mask, truly struggle and are unaware with what spiritual formation truly is and how to go about it.

As a church we need to recover a new attentiveness to the Other, a new understanding and emphasis on formation by the work of the Spirit not only in our people but perhaps more especially in our leaders.

I believe the emphasis on leadership has been extremely effective without it I’m not sure we’d see some of the amazing ministries that are on the landscape today. As a result, I’m not advocating we reduce the notion of leadership or reduce our emphasis on it. Rather, I believe what we need is to elevate the role of spiritual formation in our conversation and practice to the level or above where we currently hold leadership. It will be then and only then that the church will begin to move forward into a new realm of revival.

Leadership and spiritual formation is not an either/or issue… it’s both/and.

The Tangible Kingdom: Creating Incarnational Community
Hugh Halter & Matt Smay

Jossey-Bass—Church Ministry | Leadership
179 pages

[part 4]

At the end of Pagan Christianity, the authors called for and gave practical steps on how someone could leave the church community they were attending because of the vast amounts of pagan practices being employed by the traditional church body… Smay and Halter do something quite the opposite, something rather noble, and in fact something that looks out for the health and well-being of the church instead of someone’s personal preference. This is the kind of talk we need to hear, and the action we need to see in the church today to bring us together in unity and walk through the changing cultural landscape that is before us:

If you recognize that you are a part of a traditional-attractional church structure, don’t punt! The best response is to create the missional pyramid from scratch with a few missional people of your choice and start right where you are. If you leave, nothing beneficial will happen in your church. But if you—with a humble desire to influence or model a new way—launch out with a few friends while staying connected to your church, you’ll not only enjoy the freedom of being on mission, you’ll be able to influence and inspire more people within the existing structure to change…

We ask for a small handful of would-be missionaries to pilot incarnational community. If it works, then we believe the grassroots success will spread to more people in the existing structure. Most pastors have no reason not to want this experiment to succeed. They want you to live out this calling, but part of their calling is to also hold the saints together. Structures don’t change easily through challenge or critique. They change best as people within the organization change and model new approaches. So, instead of pointing your finger at your pastor or elder board, go live out this ancient way and pray for the larger community to eventually move forward with you… If it works, you’ll have helped move your church into new territory. If it doesn’t, you’ll have a great time with a few friends. How bad can that be?

I greatly appreciate this approach, and I could imagine a better way for the church to begin working together amidst different philosophical approaches. This is the antithesis of “I’m taking my ball and going home” which has become way to prevalent in the church today.