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I often think to myself, wouldn’t it be great if the church was known for THIS… My “this” ranges from a quick and effective response to Haiti, to the way we care for the poor here in the U.S., to our compassion in general, to the topic of this New York Times article on churches’ focus on the environment in the Northwest.
Interestingly, one of the slants in this article is that focusing on the environment is a good “growth strategy”. I suppose it is that, but it’s also something deeper – it’s part of our Kingdom theology of stewarding the creation God has given us.
Wouldn’t it be great if the church was known for…you fill in the blank.
Trackback URL: http://fulleryouthinstitute.org/2010/01/what-the-church-is-known-for/trackback/
January 25th, 2010 at 7:38 am
Absolutely! The kids and I watched “The Pregnancy Pact” last night, and the only depiction of the (Catholic) church was as a bunch of fuddy-duddies with their heads in the sand. Those of us within the church know that every church is different, and I know that mine does so, so much good in the world. We have to remember that we should toot God’s horn.
January 26th, 2010 at 5:23 pm
Here’s another example of how the church is poorly represented, straight from The Unofficial Stanford Blog:
http://tusb.stanford.edu/2010/01/look_whos_coming_to_breakfast.html
No wonder some have such a dim view of Christianity.
January 27th, 2010 at 7:04 am
Yes, we as followers of Jesus do shoot ourselves in the foot sometimes.
February 2nd, 2010 at 12:14 pm
I saw this article and also thought it was interesting that the pastors cited saw environmentalism as a “growth strategy”. It seems to me that any trend being used as a growth strategy ultimately will shoot the church in the foot. What will be attracted are not followers of Jesus who care about the environment because thats part of being in the Kingdom of God, but rather environmentalists who care about Jesus so far as he supports their environmentalism. Better to live out an authentic, holistic vision of the Kingdom of God, and attract people to that in all of its richness. P.S. there’s an article in today’s NY Times about evangelical churches using Mixed Martial Arts to attract young men, kind of in the same vein.