Tag: Issues

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Unchurched and the Third Angel's Message

800px-Calvary_baptist_church_lex_kyThere is a new word that has begun to arise amongst us.  It is the word “unchurched.”  The word is meant to imply that we should stop trying to preach to the “churched” who presumably already have God, and spend all of our efforts (or at least most of them) on the “unchurched.”   It sounds all right on the surface, but is it really our calling?

First of all, the word “churched” is not a Biblical word.  We have all heard the preachers tell us that just because you are a member of a church does not mean that you are converted.  But then some of these same people will change gears when talking about evangelism and speak about addressing the unchurched.  Simply put, we are told to preach to the world.  Whether Baptist, Methodist, Pentecostal, and yes even Adventist, we cannot assume that someone is in a saved relationship with God simply becuase they are “churched.”  We cannot assume that we have no message to take to someone simply becuase they are “churched.”

But more than that, we Adventists have taking our self identity from the Revelation 14 which we have thought was a message of warning to the entire world.  We are telling everyone to not get caught up with Revelation thirteen’s Sea Beast system.  (Revelation 14:6-12).   We are to warn the entire world which presumably includes “chruched” and “unchurched” of the great deception that will be put on humanity.  If that is our identity, to only look at a segment of the world is to betray our mission.

I have not done a scientific study of many of these mega churches, but from my interaction with members, I find that many of the members have simply moved from other churches in town.  They do reach some “unchurched” members, but they also reach a whole lot of “churched” members.  So in a practical sense, why is it that they grow on the basis of transfers and then want to tell you to only address “unchurched” and some want to even follow the idea.

So in a real sense, the whole idea of “unchurched” is against our mission.  On top of it all, who really follows that idea and refuses to engage in what they call “sheep stealing?”  No one, well maybe those few who have bought into the idea…

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Keeping Your Eye on the Big Picture

wholeearthOver the last few weeks a theme has been coming up more and more, at least to me.  That is the idea of Adventists having a vested interest in things getting worse.  Therefore, they overemphasize “bad” things and underemphasize “good” things.  For example, when we find out that the crime rate may have gone down in a particular region, we hear nothing of it, but when we find out that particular storms are on the rise, they find themselves in our sermons and writings.

Interestingly, the last economic crash that began last year had even official Adventist websites and the like predicting that this was the very end, we were told that this was the end of everything.  Let alone the non-official sources that stated with certaintly that this crash was the begining of the very end of time.

And then when things blow over, we hear nothing from these prophets of doom.  I can remember one woman who told me that before Y2K the government was soon going to shut down the borders between the states.  We had to get out now!  Then when such far fetched news turned out to be false, she said nothing, but she did have another prediction about the government that she would tell anyone who would listen.

This kind of thing makes us all have “end of the world” fatigue and just give up on the whole thing.  Our ignorant rantings about what we know not and then our silence when  our illogical and incorrect predictions turn out to be false has created a culture where we either don’t care about the end or we are addicted to the charge of the next big thing.

What is of great interest to me, is how these predictions and prophets often lose track of the Big Picture.  We lose track of the Great Controversy and God’s quest to right all wrongs when we focus on these supposed end time events.   Many lose sight of who predicted what when we bounce from supposed end time events to other ones.  We sometimes end up quoting those who hate while we set aside the books that we say we believe.  To put it more bluntly, some of us end up reading anti-semetic sources who preach about a global economic plan by certain ethnic groups rather than the writings that have been placed in our hands, namely the Bible and the gift of Ellen White.

Perhaps it is time to get the big picture back.  Certainly there are indications that we are nearing the end, but every prediction by some crackpot is not such an indication.  Maybe if we kept the Big Picture we would be less likely to jump from false prediction to false prediction until we end up in an agnostic haze of wondering if the end really will come.

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It's A Lie!

crossfingersIt is assumed true by just about everyone in the church right now. you don’t even have to prove it. The church is full of legalistic finger pointers who are attempting to steal our assurance of salvation. They are running the church. They condemn you for eating cheese, they make those who are caught in sexual sin to feel unloved. They attack and put down. They put the writings of Ellen White above the Bible while they proclaim that they have reached perfection…

Where does this church exist?

I just wonder where this church is located. While it is true that you can find a church here and there or a member here and there that have this problem, I just haven’t seen it. The churches I see are overtaken by laxness not strictness. It is laughable to think that we have a widespread problem of condemning folks for eating cheese…There are not many people using Ellen White as a sledgehammer. We are to busy bending over backwards to not offend anybody. I mean many of our preachers don’t even use her name, instead they refer to their “favorite Christian author” or a “Christian author from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.” It is interesting that a preacher can refer to to “Billy Graham” or “John Wesley” or even “T. D. Jakes” but still doesn’t want to offend anyone by referring to Ellen White.

We Bought the Lie

And yet in this climate, we are accused of “worshiping Ellen White.” We have bought into the lie that we are too strict, and now all of our solutions presented have to do with solving this illusionary problem. So we always hear about grace and little about responsibility, well if we assume that all we hear is responsibility then we must set it aside for a while. We hear about what God did and nothing about what we are to do. And it makes sense, because we assume that we are correcting something. Well it is time to stop believing the lie that legalism is rampant. Stop believing the lie that too many are using the health message as a weapon.

Stop Believing the Lie

And if we stop believing the lie, then maybe we can begin to get some real balacne in our presentations. Then maybe we can begin hearing about grace and law. Then maybe we can begin hearing about our need for God’s act and our own response. If we stop believing the lie, then we will be in a position to speak to this present world rather than the figment of our own imagination where the readers of the “red books” run wild and vegans run off all of our converts.