'Gangs more like Family than Church' says Ex-Gang Member.

“A while back a former gang member came to our church. He was heavily tattooed and rough around the edges, but he was curious to see what church was like. He had a relationship with Jesus and seemed to get fairly involved with the church. After a few months, I found out the guy was no longer coming to the church. When asked why he didn’t come anymore, he gave the following explanation: ‘I had the wrong idea of what church was going to be like. When I joined the church, I thought it was going to be like joining a gang. You see, in the gangs we weren’t just nice to each other once a week – we were family.’ That killed me because I knew that what he expected is what the church is intended to be. It saddened me to think that a gang could paint a better picture of commitment, loyalty, and family than the local church body.” Francis Chan

It is embarrassing to read the above quotation by Mr Chan-and he probably goes to a lively ,progressive hip, happy clappy church! How do 'lesser' churches among us fare.Is your church like a family? I'm not meaning is it like a family for some of the long term members who have been able to form themselves into a clique which might be defined as a small close-knit group of people who do not readily allow others to join them.What I am talking about is: Can it be family for all the strange ones who come to our meetings who love, or want to love Jesus but who may be different,punkish, working class,radical,enthusiastic,outgoing, addicts,tattooed or loud-or all of the above! My guess is that in most cases it's not family for them! Which makes me say three words: Shame on us! Remember that the now famous evangelist Nicky Cruz was once a ragamuffin, and it was for those such as him that Christ came and died!

Do you agree or do you think I am too harsh?

'How is it and when is it the Church'? by Romanos Gorny

Today's posting was written by my American, Eastern Orthodox friend and brother Romanos Gorny who hosts the excellent blog:The Cost of Discipleship (copy and paste http://cost-of-discipleship.blogspot.com/ ) or click the title above to go to his site.
I like this article because it asks questions that we don't often think about, and if we do, we quickly move on to something else because in order to find the answer we have to think too hard, preferring to be content with the status quo!Romanos however is prepared to articulate these questions, reflect on them, even if in the end he must confess that only God knows.This article was originally a response he made to yesterday's post.AK


It's always on my mind to contemplate what the Church is, how it is, and when it is. Where it is doesn't bother me at all. I meet saints of God every day and I feel myself surrounded always by the great cloud of witnesses.

Some things I know: The Church is the Bride of Christ, the little flock, the pilgrim people who follow the Lamb wherever He goes. It is people always, never a building or an institution, though the Church can be found dwelling amidst these visible structures, yet it is never limited to them or by them.

How the Church is, that is more difficult to put my finger on: I have many questions, but few answers. Is what we see and experience as church, even when it is languishing in self-indulgence and smug accomplishment, still the church? How can it be? Yet there are souls in that condition and estate who confess the name of Jesus and can even give their testimony, yet the remainder of their life appears to be a false witness. Yet according to the letter of scripture, they are saved, because they can claim one or two verses as proof texts, and they have a license to do whatever they want. They call it "abundant life."

When the Church is, that also is difficult for me sometimes, mostly for the same reasons I wrote in the previous paragraph. When is the church the Church? Is it the Church when it is simply a sheep pen with the gates closed and latched shut? Is it the Church when it's free-roving rams outside the stockade rustling more sheep? Or is it only the Church when it is an open field full of sheep and rams that follow only the good Shepherd?

My Christian life is always lived in tension between all these ideas, but luckily, the Lord doesn't let me indulge in too much philosophizing or mooning about imponderables. He calls me every day and says, "Do this" and "Do that," and "Follow Me!" My only responsibility is to "just say Yes to Jesus." And everything, I mean everything, takes care of itself.

"Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these other things shall be added as well."

Evangelical US megachurches like Saddleback are market-driven, with transcendence not on the menu

By Harriet Baber of the Guardian Newspaper,England.

'O would some power the giftie gie us to see ourselves as others see us'. Robbie Burns

This is a critique of one of the 'show pieces' of American evangelical Christianity and one which many evangelical churches would aspire to be like. Also with it being 'Burn's night' it is perhaps apt to listen to the views of someone who holds a different perspective. Harriet does not mince her words here and I think many of them are well spoken. Certainly the business/ money aspects of many churches seems a far cry from the time when Jesus had nowhere to lay his head or when St Paul had to go through times of hunger through lack of finances!Tozer was also not behind the door when he wrote the following words about an old preacher called Meister Eckhart: 'Eckhart once preached a sermon on Christ cleansing the temple. He said, “Now there was nothing wrong with those men selling and buying there. There was nothing wrong with exchanging money there; it had to be. The sin lay in their doing it for profit. They got a percentage on serving the Lord.” And then he made the application: “Anybody that serves for a commission, for what little bit of glory he can get out of it, he is a merchant and he ought to be cast out of the temple.” Hard words indeed from Tozer that can and should cut us to the heart!

In a similar vein it has been said that if we want an example of how to be a good business manager we could well look to Western church leaders/Pastors, but if we want to meet a holy man or a really spiritual person we must look to the East but not to Christianity!If this is true should we not say: 'shame on us'! AK

Rick Warren at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California. Last Sunday we drove up to Rick Warren's Saddleback Church in Orange County, a collection of affluent, politically conservative suburbs south of LA. The model of a modern megachurch, Saddleback boasts over 112,000 "unchurched occasional attenders" as well as 22,800 active members – many initiated in the temperature-controlled baptismal pools on its 120-acre campus.

Megachurches are market-driven. They study demographic data and plan marketing schemes tailored to their local target audiences. The oft-cited example of a target profile, developed by Warren, is Saddleback Sam: "A well-educated young urban professional … [he] is interested in health and fitness … but is overextended in time and money, and is stressed out. He carries a lot of debt, especially due to the price of his home. He is married to Samantha, and they have two kids, Steve and Sally."

Judging from Saddleback's promotional literature, Sam and Samantha have an insatiable appetite for therapy and self-improvement. Saddleback offers a generic "Celebrate Recovery" programme and customised support groups for "ADD Adults," "Diabetics in God", "Families with Incarcerated Loved Ones" and victims of other ills.

We entered the Worship Centre, an immense auditorium shell, where Warren was preaching from a stage at the front, where an altar might have been. Saddleback assiduously avoided traditionally churchy architecture, costume and decor. Its campus was relentlessly quotidian, designed to suggest the shopping malls and office parks where members spent their time during the week.

Warren described Saddleback's programme for "spiritual growth", with numbered headings. Spiritual growth, he explained, was (1) a lifelong process, (2) measured by obedience, (3) based on God's word and (4) would set me free. Free from what? From habits, hurts and hang-ups, from painful memories, worry, bitterness and guilt. How would I achieve that? According to Warren, Jesus had the plan. At Saddleback, he assured us, we would learn to follow his plan "systematically, sequentially and in a process" through the classes Saddleback offered.

This is the future of middle-class US Christianity, according to the latest American Religious Identification Survey (Aris). If the trend identified in the Aris study continues, we will see a country divided between conservative evangelical Christians and secular liberals – the latter hostile to religious belief, identified with evangelical Christianity. This is bad news because popular evangelical Christianity is religiously vacuous. It is directed to secular ends which, arguably, should be promoted by secular means. Saddleback is religion for people who don't like religion: transcendence is not on the menu.

Although almost half of Americans say they have had a religious experience, mysticism is likely a recondite taste. For the minority who have that taste – who seek God as an object of contemplation – Saddleback has nothing. Evangelical and mainline churches promote activism and are contemptuous of navel-gazing.

As a navel-gazer, I was depressed by Saddleback. It seemed the butt end of Christianity: stripped of history and icon?ography, wholly immersed in its secular surroundings, constructed according to a business model and promoted by motivational speakers – bland, cheerful, dull.

We drove away, past immaculate housing estates and strip malls iterating chain restaurants and shops, replicated in every suburb from coast to coast. I wondered why anyone would want to live in that charmless place, much less to get more of the same at church.

The Cause-Driven Church-What does a healthy church look like? by Erwin Raphael McManus

The early church existed with a dynamic tension: it was both expanding and consolidating - growing and unifying. The Bible tells us that first century believers “shared everything in common” and that “the church was being added to day by day.” We want our church to live in this same tension.

This tension is illustrated by two biblical images - the body of Christ and the army of God. The body of Christ is centered on community; the army of God is centered on cause.

Healthy community flows out of a unified cause - not the other way around. Jesus called his disciples and said, “Follow me. I’ll make you fishers of men.” This was not an offer of community. “Follow me and I will give you something worthy of giving your life to” is a statement of cause. But the neat thing is, when they came to the cause, they found community like they never knew could exist. That’s the power of the church.

One danger of the American church is that we often try to offer people community without cause. Without cause, you’re just another civic organization. You don’t have life transformation.

Jesus said, “I have come to the world to seek and to save that which is lost.” The cause of Christ is accomplished by expanding the kingdom of God.

Communicating the gospel in a postmodern context can make us feel forced to compete with the entertainment industry. You might be able to compete if you have millions of dollars and that level of expertise. Most of us don’t. We have only one advantage that neither Hollywood nor MTV has. We have the presence and power of the living God!

Why in the world would we eliminate God’s power from our core strategy and actually move to a deficit rather than to an advantage