Countdown to the Edge
3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . . blast off into Lunar New Year and a new year for Church on the Edge. We’re seven days away from our new weekly format, and what I hope will be even more edgy posts - posts designed to challenge you, make you think, and encourage you to up your spiritual game in 2022.
One of the things I try to do in these posts is to color outside the lines of traditional and culture-bound Christian thinking. There’s nothing wrong with a traditional meal of meat and potatoes followed by a dessert of vanilla ice cream. We need sound, solid, biblical doctrine and teaching. The problem comes when that’s all we want.
I’m going to be honest. We are living in a day of what author, Dick Staub, calls Christianity-Lite, which he describes as “a brand of faith (that) tastes great but is less filling, and wherever it prevails, it is a source of impoverishment of faith and culture.” (The Culturally Savvy Christian, p.40)
Dick attributes the rise of Christianity-Lite to today’s popular culture, which has its roots in post World War II America in the 1950s and 1960s. If you have never read any of Dick’s books, I want to encourage you to do so. They are easy to read and, at the same time, thoughtful reflections on much of the church in our day. “A mile wide and an inch deep” is how a pastor friend of mine describes today’s church.
Too many in the pew want to be spoon-fed, to simply be told what to believe without really wrestling with the deep issues of our faith and calling to follow Jesus and proclaim the Good News of God’s Kingdom.
In many ways, this is what gave birth to Church on the Edge. Throughout most of my pastoral ministry, I found myself challenging much of the traditional thinking and practices in today’s church. And as I grew in my awareness that this is exactly what Jesus did in his day, what many of the Church Fathers did in the early centuries of the church, what the Protestant Reformers did in the sixteenth century, and what a host of godly men and women like John Wesley, William and Catherine Booth, and Martin Luther King Jr. have done throughout the years, I came to realize that this is my calling as well.
Now, don’t misunderstand me. I love meat and potatoes! And last night at 3 AM, I served myself a huge bowl of vanilla ice cream. But one of the things I’ve learned from living and traveling overseas is that there’s a lot more to feed on than what I grew up with.
The same thing is true of our faith as followers of Jesus. There are Streams of Living Water, as Richard Foster calls the many diverse and rich traditions of the Christian faith. And if all we do is drink from one stream, we miss out on the rich diversity and what Ephesians 3:10 calls the “manifold” or literally the “multicolored” wisdom of God.
And so, as we prepare to launch into a new year of Church on the Edge, I want to take this week to lay some groundwork and prepare us for what I hope will be a challenging year as we seek to build lives that reflect more and more of the grace and love of God found in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ.
In Christ,
Dan
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