Lauterbach's Emergent Litmus Test
Mark Lauterbach has posted a summary of his thinking about the recent glut of reading that he has been doing on the emergent church. Rather than responding point by point he has come up with a litmus test to evaluate new models and new looks of "Christianity":
So, I suggest a simple litmus test for all thinking about new models and new theologizing . . . does the cross dominate? and does it have power and clarity to offend? Or have we centered the Gospel around something else? and have we removed the scandal of the cross?...
...the second litmus test is this: am I prepared to die for the truth of the Gospel?
What we Draw Them With Is What We Draw Them To
"What we draw them with is what we draw them to."
Neil Cole
Organic Church: Growing Faith Where Life Happens
p. 95
So let's draw them in through evangelism (telling them of God's love to forgive sins through Jesus' life and death on the cross is a necessary place to begin) and not entertainment.
My Flesh, God's Enemy
Sometimes we think of the flesh as our enemy; but it only hates us because God is in us: "The flesh wars against the Spirit" in us (Galatians 5:17)...
You can feel the hostility of the flesh whenever you approach God - it makes real love for him into work: Digging around the Bible to find a juicy new insight to impress your small group is like sailing the Caribbean, but poring over the Scriptures to find the Lover of your soul is like skiing up Mount Everest. Conjuring up a happy mood with some music you don't even know the words to is like solving 2 + 2 with a calculator. But savoring the glory of Christ and his tender love until your heart is softened toward him is like using mental math to calculate pi to the thousandth place. And giving a birthday present to your best friend is like forcing down some double-fudge brownies but giving up your extra bedroom to a homeless person in the name of Jesus is like eating the Rockies for breakfast...
If the flesh didn't mind God's wisdom, for example, the soul could meditate on the mystery of the gospel day and night without tiring, and find constant strength in God's plan to save him. But the flesh hates everything about God. Since it resists everything about God, it resists every way we try to taste him and know him and love him. And the more something enables us to find God and feast on him, the more violently the flesh fights against it.
It takes its battle to every quarter of the soul: When the mind wants to know God, the flesh imposes its ignorance, darkness, error, and trivial thoughts. The will can't move toward God without feeling the weight of stubbornness holding it back. And the affections, longing to long for God, are constantly fighting the infection of sensuality or the disease of indifference.
Kris Lundgaard
The Enemy Within: Straight Talk About the Power and Defeat of Sin
pp 46-48
Biblemap.org: Wow
I am beginning a two-and-a-half-year-long study of the entire Bible with my small group. We are reading through the Bible together, book-by-book - one book every two weeks - along with Mark Dever's Message of the Old Testament / New Testament books. One of the biggest hurdles for me that I've long thought should be easily overcome is Bible geography. If only there was a simple and quick way to get a lay-of-the-land I could better understand what's going on in the stories that I'm reading.
Well, Biblemap.org has done what I have wished for years would be done. They have tied Google maps in with the Biblical text, making known place names hyperlinked to the satellite view of Google maps. The site is still in Beta and constantly improving. This is not just another "cool" site, but a useful one that I think will help make the Bible come alive.
