I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to live in authenticity as a Christian and follower of Jesus? Authenticity being the place we accept ourselves as a fallen and broken people in the midst of an ever changing world. Simply meaning we come to the table “letting it all hang out” before the world.
Let me explain. Recently I was with a friend who is fully aware of my work as a pastor and who we’ve become good friends with over the last couple of months. On one occasion he let out a loud sneeze and I responded with a good old “bless you.” His response along with some other things happening in my life of recent grabbed my attention. He says something like with a smile of course, “you don’t force your religion onto people?”
My authenticity as a follower of Jesus means that I am going to live my life out as an example of God’s grace. In my living out my faith before others with the recognition and acceptance that I am a broken person and that without God’s love in my life, I could not manage living on my own, that this is a much better approach to sharing my faith as opposed to giving the impression that my faith in Christ is to be pushed onto someone else. Avoiding having others see me as someone pushy or forceful. It also lets others know that I am not by know means living my life perfectly and sinless.
Too often people are faced with those who use the smothering approach to evangelism. I grew up with it. I was schooled in it in some ways by my surroundings of people I observed growing up in the church. This was the thing to do at one point in my youth as a young person and a Christian. I see this even in my work as a pastor with others who are still tied to a model of evangelism that I have no doubt God uses and has used but at times overwhelms the one on the receiving end of the “good news.” When do you begin that conversation? How do you discern that precise moment in time where “you’ve earned the right to be heard?”
I am hoping to finish a book I started sometime ago called, Just a Walk Across the Room,” by Bill Hybels out of Willow Creek. It is something that I want to go through with our leaders and begin praying about in the way we do outreach together as a church community. Obviously we adapt as opposed to completely adopting the cookie cutter approach to evangelism knowing that not every model fits or works.
I hope to blog some more over the next few weeks about evangelism and about living out our faith before others as authentic followers of Jesus.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNb9ETJFeWE]
I know this old. But you forget sometimes that there is a whole world still needing good news.
HT: ipastor
(Welcome to my friends from church)
The month of November we will focus on a theme of thanksgiving in our worship services (8am & 10:30am). Our sermon series for the month of November in church will cover four themes; giving thanks for each other, giving thanks for our enemies, giving thanks when times are hard, and giving thanks for the world. Our scriptural theme for the month of November will be from 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, “Be cheerful no matter what; pray all the time; thank God no matter what happens. This is the way God wants you, who belong to Christ Jesus, to live.” (The Message Paraphrase)
The word thanks means to be actively giving thanks or to express gratitude towards something or someone. In our case as followers of Jesus we express gratitude to God for all that he does for us as his children. Being thankful is sometimes not easy to do. Especially when the world around us seems to be crumbling every time we turn on the news or read the morning headlines of another problem burdening the world.
How does one give thanks appropriately to God? I appreciate Eugene Peterson’ paraphrase from 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18. “Be cheerful no matter what, pray all the time, and thank God no matter what happens.” Paul gives us three things to do that I know for myself are sometimes difficult to live out.
There is a song we sing in worship by Matt Redman called “Blessed be your name,” that is applicable to us especially when we feel like not giving thanks to God when times are tough. May these words be our prayer as we learn to truly give thanks to God with a grateful heart.
Every blessing You pour out , I’ll turn back to praise, When the darkness closes in, Lord still I will say; Blessed be the name of the Lord, Blessed be Your name, Blessed be the name of the Lord Blessed be Your glorious name.
Giving thanks for you!
Pastor K.C.
In church in the morning we celebrate the sacrament of baptism. It’s our first baptisms in the church since we’ve begun our relationship as pastor and congregation. What a joy and an honor to participate in kingdom work.
Found a bit of humor for the occasion…
A mother looked out a window and saw Johnny playing church with their three kittens. He had them lined up and was preaching to them. The mother turned around to do some work, but soon she heard meowing and scratching on the door.
She went to the window and saw Johnny baptizing the kittens. She opened the window and said, “Johnny, stop that! You’ll drown those kittens.”
Johnny looked at her and said with much conviction in his voice: “They should have thought of that before they joined my church.” (from Mikey’s Funnies)
(Pulpit rock in Norway)
This Sunday in church (in a few short hours) we move to a two service format. (8am & 10:30am) The last I church I was part of had two worship services. One “traditional” and one “blended.” The pastor did a wonderful job of leading both worship services. The lay helpers, the choir, and the praise team all had a hand in making the services a worshipful experience. My son says to me today, “dad, are you doing the same sermon twice?” My response, “I hope.” Say a prayer for us if you visit here on occasion and for those of you from church don’t forget to set your clocks back and don’t be late…hehe.
It was a long weekend in so many ways. I officiated a memorial service of a way cool guy hanging with Jesus as we speak. No more suffering. No more pain. Jimmy is indeed with the king of kings. I also officiated a wedding yesterday for a neat couple.
Right after the wedding, an older gentleman and I were talking and he said to me, “you know, preaching is like selling newspapers. You’re selling the same news every week hoping someone will buy it.” 
Another person said to me, “you know, you’ve done a memorial service, a wedding, now all you need is a baptism. You’d have the whole spectrum of life.”
Smile. Smile. Smile.
How is it possible that the gospel should be credible, that people should come to believe that the power which has the last word in human affairs is represented by a man hanging on a cross? I am suggesting that the only answer, the only hermeneutic of the gospel, is a congregation of men and women who believe it and live by it. Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989, p. 227).
What does grace look like when it grows up? It looks like a window you wash in your house and immediately after its cleaned for some reason the fingerprints of those you love reappear within minutes. What does someone look like when God does his work of grace in a persons life? It’s like the window covered with fingerprints instead the fingerprints belong to the maker of the universe.
Every person in my life was some kind of instrument of grace growing up in the church. I’m a follower of Jesus because of the people in my life who gave me grace. I’m a husband and deeply in love with my wife because of how I witnessed those I watched from afar in the way they loved their own wives. I’m a father because of the grace I watched shown to those who fathered their own children.
Covered in grace I am. Giver of grace God is and I now because of those who loved me like Jesus loved me; I now get to give the grace of God away to those I meet and greet in all that I say and do as a follower of Jesus, husband, father, and pastor.
For a few bucks you can get up close and personal. This sounds familiar from a church history class I took in seminary.
“When the message of the kingdom of God is separated from the name of Jesus two distortions follow, and these are in fact the source of deep divisions in the life of the church today. On one hand, there is the preaching of the name of Jesus simply as the one who brings a religious experience of personal salvation without involving one in costly actions at the points in public life where the power of Satan is contracting the rule of God and bringing men and women under the power of evil. Such preaching of cheap grace, of a supposed personal salvation that does not go the way of the cross, of an inward comfort without commitment to costly Action for the doing of God’s will in the world – this kind of evangelistic preaching is a distortion of the gospel. A preaching of personal salvation that does not lead the hearers to challenge the monstrous injustices of our society is not mission in Christ’s way. It is peddling cheap grace.
On the other hand, when the message of the kingdom is separated from the name of Jesus, the action of the church in respect of the evils in society becomes a mere ideological crusade”… pp9
