What's the Social Gospel? (case study: United Methodist Church)

It's not the Gospel, for one.

It is the reduction of "Christianity" to an outward faith devoid of almost anything Christian, let alone Biblical, except for the occasional references to a God or Christ in an attempt to infuse their agendas with strength. In that sense, it's no different from any worldly religion invented by greedy men to pursue their agendas with a "god says you must."

The United Methodist Church is running an ad campaign called 'rethink church.' It, and the site they redirect you to, is a perfect example of the social gospel.

See here:
http://rethinkchurch.org/learn-about-united-methodists
http://rethinkchurch.org/beliefs-into-action

On the second link, you'll see a dozen or so 'social justice campaigns,' and notice that nowhere in all of it is there anything hinting that people's eternal destiny is a concern, or even in mind.

Clicking the link to "spirituality," out of curiosity, I find this:

They briefly mention "anxiety, sadness, anger, shortcomings, guilt, shame" but don't connect it to sin and certainly don't tell about the remedy for sin, or how God sees sin or what He did for sinners. Nope. Instead they say that their goal is to 'find ways to connect with God' and find 'spiritual self expression.' 

We don't assume everyone's connection to God looks the same. Or should! We're reaching out to share God's love by meeting people where they are, and sharing our hearts in the process.

We welcome dialogue. We're respecting other people's beliefs and opinions about God, while maintaining our own practices and Wesleyan perspective.

We don't think church should just be for a certain kind of person. We think it's important for every person to have a place where they can express their spirituality.

The only thing they get right anywhere on this entire site is the tidbit that Church is not a building, it's a gathering of believers. But since the UMC doesn't identify what a believer is, their definition of church becomes functionally meaningless.

The Social Gospel denies and ignores sin and presumes to address physical difficulties, like hunger, housing, income, deforestation, etc as the greatest human ills and their sole focus.

It fails to save anybody. It accomplishes nothing more than making many people feel a little more comfortable on their economy-class flight to hell.

Further reading: http://www.gotquestions.org/social-gospel.html

~ Rak Chazak

Texting Treatise: Flirting

Three texts I sent to a female friend, spontaneously, a few nights ago (the warm weather lets me text more because my thumbs don't get numb when I'm taking walks with the dog at night):

Euphoria After Talking With Young Ladies That Day

Man, I like flirting. Maybe they think I'm cute, but even if they don't, I get high on the privilege of being the one to pay them attention and make them feel that someone thinks they're interesting, wants to talk to them, and maybe even finds them attractive. Making girls happy makes me happy. Can't explain how, but the 'why' seems obvious: I'm made to gain pleasure from seeing pleasure in a woman's face. It's undoubtedly a biological hardwiring designed to create a positive-feedback-system in my courtship/marriage where I get ever more motivated to serve my wife the more I serve her and bring joy to her by doing so. And in the meantime, I get my "fix" by flirting and talking to pretty girls. It gives me enough cheer to keep up the hope of finding someone I can really turn up the romance for/with, some day.

Definition of Flirting

I dunno (in response to my friend saying they don't think they flirt much with people), as far as I see it, flirting is just another word for being nice IF conditions are such that you have interest in that person, or either of you may be subtly communicating attraction, even by the benign act of choosing to talk to (which is by definition showing interest in) that person, RATHER than, literally, anyone else. So talking to a guy you like, if you smile, is a low-intensity flirt, essentially. Various behaviors that make interest more obvious make a flirt more obvious.

How I Use Flirting In Daily Life

So there's even a sense in which certain things I say to you or [another friend] can be (seen as) flirtatious, simply because you're attractive young women and I personally find you interesting to talk to. I can't think of a concrete recent example at the moment, but if I say something to compliment your personality or appearance, whereas it is sincere and typically meant as an encouragement first, it's "cross-categorized" (lol technical) as a flirtatious remark. What should be understood is that I'm not using 'flirt' to mean something frivolous or insincere OR (very importantly) something said with, by necessity, the intention or hope of producing desire in the object for the subject. Many of my flirts are for that purpose, but many are defiantly* not, and aloof, and some are just my friendly personality but interpreted by somebody else in a more intentional way. Lol clear enough?

Epilogue

I finished the text conversation with another text explaining how I saw our communications--I don't talk to her as an "outlet for flirting," for example. I explained what I appreciate(d) about the texts I get from her and the other girl, namely that whether I find agreement, criticism or disinterest as the response for something I say affects how I think about that, and it gives me an opportunity to refine my thoughts and speech and become a better man. Basically, this is the essence of Christian fellowship--encouraging each other and enabling each other's spiritual growth--merely over text. It's a great time to be alive.

~ Rak Chazak

*By the way, "defiantly" is not a misspelled "definitely." I intended to say that it is with defiance that I refuse to only flirt with people I might have romantic aspirations for. 

Personal Life Update, End of March

Frustration as a Source of Motivation

At work, our store has been two months in the process of a series of inspections to evaluate whether it should be elevated to "Training Store" status. This would bring along with it a number of perks, such as more attention paid by Corporate on the level of replacing damaged or missing equipment. It would also, supposedly, make the upper-level bosses more inclined to confirm promotion requests for crewmembers, which the General Manager would send. But according to the GM, Corporate has "put all evaluations on hold," pending the outcome of the store evaluation. My 6-month date was nearly 2 months ago, and I still haven't had that "6-month evaluation." I'm taking the GM at his word and waiting to see whether I and others get promotions--and for that matter, back-pay for the lost 2 month's raised pay--and will wait to take any action until afterwards. But I have many ideas for how to go from here. As always, it's a waiting game and a matter of time.

The Animals of Summer Are Arising

I saw a bat earlier this week when I took only my second outdoor run all winter. You've gotta have good eyes. They flap very much like small birds, and don't make any noise, but their flight-paths are very irregular. The typical sparrow will bob or dip in a sinusoidal wave pattern as it crosses a street, but bats move side to side as the presence of insects allows, so you can spot them that way, even if it's a bit too dim at twilight to see their wings against the lighter backdrop of the sky. 

Speaking of insects, that there are bats out means that it's getting warm enough for the flying crawlies to come out. It's been nice not having tons of fluttering creatures stuck to the front door on account of the light, at night, when coming home or after taking the dog for a walk. That's going to end by the end of May, I figure. Not that I know what this year's weather is going to be like. I've never seen so many individual snow days ever. It's been a very wet winter.

Yesterday, it rained all day and extremely hard at times. I walked the dog in the morning and must have passed by nearly 1,000 or more earthworms in the span of the mile distance I went out from home. They were all over the road, choked out of the wet ground by the moisture.

Allegra

I'm taking Allegra (and since 3 days ago, Allegra-D) for my springtime allergies, and I made sure to start very early, as soon as there was a mild week in March, anticipating the pollen spread. So far I've sneezed once a morning and that's been it. It's too early (too cool) to tell whether this means the drug is working to control my allergies, but by mid-April it should be more obvious. If Allegra does the job, I won't have to go back to the allergist specialist and beg for immunization shots. Something to pray about :)

YMCA

I'm closing out the second month of my Y activity, although only the first month of membership (got fortunate that the lady who handles applications got the flu for a week, and didn't get to mine for the rest of the month, so I got to use a guest pass all of February). It's been just as much fun to meet people from school as it's been to notice the improvement on my biceps. That's the only muscle I've really been pushing hard with increasing weights; the others I've been really careful to not stress too far, until I 'feel out' where my limits are, so I don't overwork myself and get taken out of commission for a week due to soreness. It happened once. You can lift beyond your threshold for soreness, I found when I went way too gung-ho on the back-situp machine at my college. One of the guys who has had the biggest body transformations since high school is in there frequently, and he spontaneously referred to himself with an accurate nickname I liked: Boulder Shoulders.

Upcoming

Going to take care of my taxes the next time I get to use internet in a non-public location. I also went to church today for the first time in 3(+?) weeks, and the youth pastor (28, and has been married for 7 years!!!) gave a sermon on 1 Peter 3. He made a pretty good point at the part where it says "don't let your adorning be in jewelry, or hair, or clothes," by saying that if this meant that women can't wear jewelry or 'do their hair,' then it would logically also require that they don't wear clothes. Probably a fun interpretation for the nonchristian, but it's plainly not the intent of the author. Instead, the point is that jewelry and hair and clothes are not WHERE your beauty should be found--it should come from the heart. Being outwardly beautiful is not evil, but it shouldn't be used to compensate for, or be at the expense of, an atrocious character.

If the warm weather stays, I'm going to be happy to pick up my running routine again. Perhaps by mid-July I can once again reclaim my former physique (my peak cardiovascular condition was in my 17s)

~ Rak Chazak

What About the Jews?

Should We or Should We Not Pray for God to Come Back Soon?

Poem: "What of the Jews?"

I recently wrote a poem exploring the conundrum I've had regarding whether it's best to ask for God to come back as soon as possible or whether it's best for Him to be as patient as possible, letting history drag out and waiting for more people to be saved before the final 7-year period of Earth history known as the Tribulation.

I think I explain the issue pretty well in the rhyme scheme itself. Without further ado, please enjoy the below poem, and feel free to read the footnotes for background information on the things I make reference to in the poem. It is my favorite poem I've written yet, because of how much complex thought I was able to fit into it without upsetting the scheme. 

Reading note: Lines will have the stress on the second syllable, a la "dut-duu," unless there is an asterisk -- * -- at the beginning of the line, in which case the stress will be on the first syllable, a la "duu." 

What Of the Jews?

A thought about the Rapture’s¹ struck my mind in recent days
It came about as I was contemplating how to pray
Should I petition for the Lord to come to Earth with speed?
Or should I ask that individual Jewish souls be freed?
The Bible says that, in the end, “All Israel shall be saved.”²
But in the years before that, many more go to their graves³
* What, then, ought my focus be in praying for my friends?
* What will give them the best chance to make it in the end?
The way to life is death, as their whole hist’ry goes to show⁴
I yearn for them to sooner meet the Savior that I know
Before the Time of Jacob’s Trouble,⁵ many will refuse
A “partial hardening”⁶ has become the norm among the Jews
I wish it were not so, but it is hard to reach them now*
As a nation, one could say, their heart is far too proud.⁷
Could this be reason, then, to hope for Tribulation⁸ come?
That hardship would ensure all live, instead of only some?
But if the Tribulation came today, what of my friends?
* Would they be unsaved if they should meet untimely ends?
The fear of asking carelessly is keeping me awake
And anxiously considering the lives which are at stake
* What’s a bigger roadblock to a Jew’s accepting Christ?
Is it prosperity or is it deadly human strife?⁹
* War can make a man more urgent, peace can make him slack.
* Should we then hope that the Jews come soon under attack?
* May it not be so! Let me suggest another way:
The many  Jewish tribesmen sealed descend from those today¹⁰
Implicit in that they believe is that they’ve heard it preached—
The Gospel cannot save the men to whom it hasn’t reached¹¹
So whether they believe through trial, or escape before
The answer to my doubt, it seems, is: Preach the Gospel more!
We can’t assume the end will come so soon s’ as to be lazy
Few things in life are truer than [that] the future is quite hazy
* We don’t know when time runs out. We can’t afford to quit
So carry on, and do God’s will—yes, every little bit!
I love the Jews, and want them saved, from great to very small
But best of all for them ‘s to join us at the Trumpet call¹²
“Escaping all these things,”¹³ to spite their stubborn ancestry
Rejoicing at the Wedding Feast¹⁴ about God’s majesty
* Meanwhile, those we left behind will have another shot
To flee their sin, repent and put their faith and hope in God¹⁵
* Stubborn Israel took two thousand years to learn the truth:¹⁶
That God, in choosing men for heaven, cares not what we do
* We can only e’er do any good by His great grace
To try to work our way to Him is, in His eyes, disgrace
* My dear Jewish friends, I hope you’ll come to Faith today
But if you don’t, as we have seen, God still will have His way.
Baruch HaShem¹⁷

Footnotes for those curious:

1. The Rapture is a Biblical concept supported by the theological reasoning behind the purpose of the present Church Age and future Tribulation. Put shortly, in the final 7-year period of human history before the return of Jesus Christ, God punishes the pagan gentile nations and disciplines rebellious Israel. As the Church is neither pagan gentiles nor rebellious Jews, there is no reason for it to be present on earth during this time. Concurrently, the book of Revelation nowhere mentions the Church after the description of the end-times begins, although Israel is mentioned many times. The letter to the Thessalonians explains why the Church is not present by saying that all believers in Christ will be “caught up” (Grk. harpazo, Lat. rapturo, from which we get ‘rapture’) 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 introduces this doctrine, and 1 Thessalonians 5:9 supports it by saying “we are not appointed to suffer wrath.” A subsection of the Tribulation period is known as The Wrath, where God releases His righteous anger on the world. See Revelation 6:16-17. Logically, 5:9 indicates that the Church won’t be on earth during that time period. For clarification, the Church is defined as the sum total of all those who are saved by faith in Christ. It does not refer to a building or religious institution. The Roman Catholic Church is not THE Church, and neither is any other church. There are unsaved people in every religious institution that calls itself “christian,” and there are probably at least some who are saved, in every such institution as well. Do not be mistaken: affiliation with a religion does not save you, only faith in Christ can save you.

2. Romans 11:26

3. This refers to two things: one is that for as long as the Church Age draws on, Jews will continue to live and die natural lives and most of them will remain in unbelief, dying in their sins, and this is a great tragedy. The other thing is that it is quite possible that even though many will come to faith in the Tribulation, many will also die, and it is presently unclear to me whether there is any guarantee in Scripture against the possibility that those who die before the Return of the King will be unsaved. If there is no such guarantee, then the Tribulation will result in the deaths of many unbelieving Jews, and thus for those who do not convert before the end of the 7-year period, and die, the calamity means nothing but damnation for them, and not salvation. Such a possibility urges me strongly against wanting to ask for the end to come soon, lest I inadvertently be praying damnation on someone.

4. The first part of this, “the way to life is death,” refers to Christ dying on the Cross for us. His death made possible our eternal lives, if we repent and receive His sacrifice as a substitute for the punishment we deserve because of our sin. Consequently, Romans 6:11 “Count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” To live, we must die. The second part of the line is just a clever artistic reference to the fact that it is the very history of the Jewish race that has brought us the message of life as delivered to them by God, through continual national calamities after calamities. Even today, the Jewish story is not yet over, because even though they are still killed throughout the world, and will yet be in the future, those who are alive at the end of the Tribulation will be alive in Christ even as the whole world has died – and those who live now have the opportunity to live by the power of God through dying to their Jewishness and accepting the Gospel of salvation through faith and not nationality.

5. The Time of Jacob’s Trouble is another name for the Tribulation, further lending support to the doctrine of the Rapture of the Church. Jacob is Israel. The primary reference for this is Jeremiah 30:7 “How awful will that day be! No other will be like it. It will be a time of trouble for Jacob, but he will be saved out of it.”

6. Romans 11:25

7.  That the Jews have stumbled because of a general case of religious-nationalist pride (being the “Chosen Ones,” you know – it can make you arrogant, and it did) is a common theme in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament where the prophets preach continuously against their countrymen’s sins. Here is how Paul—the Jewish Pharisee—puts it in Romans 10:19-21 :

“Again I ask, Did Israel not understand? First, Moses says, “I will make you envious by those who are not a nation; I will make you angry by a nation that has no understanding,” And Isaiah boldly says, “I was found by those who did not seek me; I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me.” But concerning Israel he says, “All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and obstinate people.””

8. The term Tribulation comes from Jesus’ discourse in Matthew 24:21, where the word He uses to describe the future events He’s foretelling about has historically been translated ‘tribulation,’ meaning distress, trouble, etc.

9. Proverbs 30:7-9, the sayings of Agur:

“Two things I ask of you, Lord; do not refuse me before I die: Keep falsehood and lies far from me; give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you, and say, “Who is the Lord?” Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God.”

10. Simple logic. Revelation 7:4-8 describes 144,000 people of Jewish descent, 12,000 from each of the 12 tribes, as being “sealed” by a mark on the forehead before the earth was subjected to the Trumpet and Bowl judgments, but after the Seals (read Revelation for more details. The three categories described are telescoping sequences of catastrophes unleashed on the earth during the Tribulation period). Those sealed were supernaturally protected from death and suffering throughout the course of the Tribulation, in the vision John saw. The hope that these could be Jews who turn to Christ very shortly after the Rapture and Seal judgments is a potential motivation to pray for God’s Second Coming to happen soon. Revelation here blatantly guarantees that 144,000 Jewish people who were NOT believers prior to the Rapture WILL be saved. This is very encouraging news. And so the logic that I lay out in the poem above is, if they come to faith, they must have had access to New Testaments and/or the preaching of Christians prior to the Tribulation, so that the events would have provoked them to faith in Christ. The reasoning for this is in the point below.

11. Romans 10:13-14 “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved  (ref: Joel 2:32). How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?”  The following verses go on to say, “How can anyone preach unless they are sent?...Faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ.” The conclusion, then, is to preach the Gospel so that the Jews may hear and believe.

12. The ‘trumpet call’ phrase is inspired by the line in the song “Days of Elijah” by Twilah Paris, that goes, “behold He comes, riding on the clouds, shining like the sun, at the Trumpet call.” In comparing Matthew 24:30-31 with 1 Thessalonians 4:16, these passages identify a trumpet of some sort with the Rapture, as well as informing that God Himself will make a “Second Appearing,” coming down but not touching down on earth, before the Tribulation, but not to be confused with the Second Coming.

13. Luke 21:36 (Luke 21 is the parallel passage to Matthew 24 in Luke’s Gospel).

14. Revelation 19:6-9. The Wedding Feast of the Lamb is a celebration that takes place in heaven during the Tribulation, where all those who belong to God participate in glorifying Him. It is called a Wedding because the Church is symbolically represented as a bride, such as in Ephesians 5:25, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up for her…”

15. Romans 9:31-32. “But the people of Israel, who pursued the law as the way of righteousness, have not attained their goal. Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the stumbling stone.”

16. I don’t mean anything concrete by this. It simply indicates that if the end of history is within the next century, then it took roughly 2,000 years after the Messiah came for the Jews to finally believe in Him, one and all. It doesn’t mean that no Jews ever have. Remember, it was a partial hardening. Romans 11:23 says, “And if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again.”

17. This is a common Hebrew phrase meaning "praise God," "thank God," or literally, "blessed be the name of the Lord."

Further reading about Israel: Romans 9-12.

Note: the verse quotations were taken from my NIV Bible. I have a KJV and NIV, so the way I phrase something may appear to look different from the actual quote I put up, but this is simply a matter of translation. For that matter, the verse pop-up feature uses the ESV version. Variety is the spice of life!

~ Rak Chazak

Journal Treatise: Why I'm Not Baptized

Treatise: Why I’m Not Baptized

                        My earliest memory of any encounter with Young Earth Creation is not even a memory of the thing itself, but of my mother reminding me about it some years later. It was that long ago, and apparently didn’t make enough of an impression on me to result in a lasting recollection. Apparently I was calling a lady from the church we then attended, and apparently I had mentioned something about human evolution—what the context was, I don’t know (remember that I was well-indoctrinated in the orthodox evolutionary dogma through my dinosaur books [and after 3^rd grade, an increasing interest in astronomy as well]). Apparently she had gotten upset and said (yelled?) that she wasn’t descended from no ape, or whatever. My mom probably remembers it better, it seems to have surprised her. My reaction to being told this was perplexity. What was so insulting about what I said? There was nothing I could see that would be offensive about it. Humans were descended from apes, what was the big deal? Perhaps this is why I’d quickly forgot the exchange. I, like many people today, had simply believed both sides of what I’d been told—evolutionary history and the Hebrew Scriptures—without thinking about it closely enough to realize that the two are in contradiction and can’t be simultaneously believed with any consistency.

                        The first time I actually became aware of the views of Young Earthers was between 10^th and 11^th grade, when I had visited the second church we attended and seen an interesting-looking book in the pastor’s office. That book was entitled “15 Reasons to Accept Genesis as History,” produced by Creation Ministries International, an organization I later discovered in 2010/11. The back inside cover had an advertisement for “Refuting Evolution,” another book, with a picture of Ken Ham holding it up. Later when I discovered Answers in Genesis in 2010, my mind flashed back to this image. I took the book (the former mentioned) and utilized it for bathroom reading. I distinctly remember the section about skin color genetics, and one part where Neanderthals were hypothesized to have had rickets (a Vitamin D deficiency that affects the bones), rather than being bow-legged creatures intermediary between a human and ape. The book was fascinating, and I found it very educational. I brought up some of the things I learned from it in conversations (the kind where you say “guess what?” and share a random fact as a matter of trivia). But strangely (in hindsight, that is), I didn’t change my views on evolution at that time. Apparently I just found it interesting, but it didn’t lead to a paradigm shift. If it had anything to do with my eventual change of mind, it took over 4 years for that seed to germinate.

                        It wasn’t until a year later that I actually had a significant shift in my beliefs about evolution, when I took Advanced Placement (AP) Biology in high school. As an interesting aside, it was to my great surprise, considering how many of the ‘smart kids’ were in my class, that I actually had the highest grade of them all. I was exempt from the final exam, and as for the AP exam, I got a 5 (on a scale of 0 to 5, for the uninitiated). So lest anyone get the idea, I understood what I was learning, and didn’t get “confused.” That’s all I mean to prove by this. It’s funny, our textbook had an interview with Richard Dawkins placed before one of the chapters; I didn’t remember who it was, but upon encountering Dawkins through my personal research in Spring 2010, I looked it up again and had another déjà vu flashback. I’d been lightly interacting with this stuff all along, skimming the surface, but barely getting affected until much later. Maybe the time wasn’t right. As Ecclesiastes says, “God makes everything perfect in its time.” It was in AP Biology, with one of the best teachers I ever had at answering random curious questions, as I’m inclined to have, that I discovered that natural selection can’t plan ahead. It may very well have been courtesy of Dawkins’s interview—otherwise it was something the teacher said, and I questioned her further. I hadn’t thought of it in depth before, but at the moment when I realized that natural selection can only deal with what’s already there, I did a quick and simple calculation: the human genome is 3 billion base pairs of DNA long. Life on earth has existed for about 3 billion years. Therefore, one base pair addition per year, on average, would have to be locked in to the genome in order to go from an original number of 0, to the 3,000,000,000+ that now exist. And that’s just the good ones that amount to something, not all the others that get weeded out from the population. And on top of that, all the other forms of life in the world would have to be accounted for as well. It was plainly obvious to me that this couldn’t happen randomly, in the time available. And here’s the silly part, in retrospect: I simply decided that since it couldn’t happen by itself, that obviously meant that God was guiding evolution! Because the thought would not have entered my mind at that point that evolution wasn’t true—that’s a ridiculous thing to accept at face value, when you’ve believed it all your life. I became a theistic evolutionist at that point, though I didn’t know that name until years later.

                        Then I went to college. I didn’t attend church during the first four years, but made it to a handful of services in the last one, because I was within walking/biking distance. I had neither bike nor car on campus the other years, and so I was stranded on campus due to lack of transportation. But for all this, I didn’t lack theological instruction for most of that time. I found much more vast knowledge through the Internet than I could have hoped to absorb through once-weekly, hour-long church services during that whole time. Sermons included. I found that Church is not a building, it is the sum total of all living believers on earth. All the commands in the Bible to be in fellowship with others and support the Church are telling us to interact with other believers, not to go to a building on such and such a day. This is not to say that “going to church” is contrary to Church, because it can be a great way to do that, but far too many people go to the building without being a part of the edifice.  Knowing this, I was encouraged despite not being able to go to sermon services regularly in person, because I wasn’t shunning the things of God in the meantime—and I was in fact consuming multiple sermon equivalents in online video and audio clips, as well as articles, throughout that whole time period. I decided it was worth it to wait until I could consistently attend church before attempting to become more involved in one. Doesn’t that make sense? I think so.

                        The reason why I’m not yet baptized is twofold, and the justification is based on practicality. One: I wasn’t as passionate about theology as I am now until 3 years ago, so the impulse to be baptized wasn’t there. Two: I was excused from needing to attend church while I was at college, because I had access to teaching online and access to people who would keep me accountable on campus, friends I met through my university’s discussion board and whom I’d made an attempt to build relationships with “In Real Life.” Because of this, I didn’t attend church, and consequently didn’t develop a connection to any church body, so as to find getting baptized therein purposeful. Because what is the purpose of baptism? An outward public display of an inward condition. It’s thus most pertinent to get baptized in a place where people know, or will know, you, for their benefit. They’ll be encouraged when they see your baptism, and they’ll also recognize you as a believer and not wonder about you. Getting “shotgun baptized” somewhere and then disappearing because you move somewhere else seems pretty pointless, accomplishing little or nothing. Hence, I’ve been waiting for the opportunity, and I know it’s not here yet. When I know where I’m going to live for a period of some years, then I’ll have the security to know to look for a church in that region and to become a member there. Baptism isn’t what saves you, so I’m not afraid. Baptism is what proclaims to everyone who sees and hears about it that you are saved. So I’m merely selecting the right audience. And that’s why I’m not yet baptized.

Campus Frivolity for Christ

My college campus has had a chapter of Campus Crusade for Christ Cru for about 4 years. It served as a launching-pad for me to investigate specific theological issues, when I was coming out of my period of questioning in 2010. Consequently, I have a generally fond view of the campus group and considered myself a member, though I slowly began to attend less as I learned how to acquire good spiritual 'food' on my own.

In the fall 2011, and spring and fall semester of 2012, I attended the first meetings of the semester in the hopes of getting to network with other Christians and to hear some good expository teaching.

To my dismay, I found the group's leaders had decided that we would play silly games instead. One year they separated into teams and had a race to see who could wrap a person up with toilet paper to make them look like a mummy the fastest. Another year they put stickers on your back with the names of fictional characters and you had to ask people questions to find out who you were, so you could find your partner (Belle and the Beast, Peter Pan and Tinkerbell, Timon and Puumba). Another year they had a scavenger hunt where the goal was to take pictures of your team at various landmarks on campus.

One of these times, I asked one of the student leaders why they weren't having a normal meeting. (One with worship music in the beginning, a speaker presenting a message, and closing with a prayer and more worship music, that was the typical flow of a meeting. And copious amounts of time before and after the meeting for people to simply talk to each other.) The response was that the games were supposed to make things interesting and be "for fun, and to let people have a chance to get to know each other." 

Call me crazy, but I think the best way for people to get to know each other is by talking, not by being separated by an arbitrary game that hinders your ability to interact with others, and has questionable or nonexistent spiritual application.

What upset me was that I was coming because I wanted Cru, not a silly game. It definitely seemed to me that the leaders had decided to sell themselves out just to be exciting and interesting. The problem was that by doing this, they accomplished the opposite. When people come to a Christian event, they want to experience Christian things. When you give them kindergarten-level meet-and-greet entertainment, they get bored.

At least I did. Maybe I'm the only one. But the fall-off from 80-110 attendees the first week to 20-40 the third week would seem to suggest otherwise.

You have one shot to get people interested in your group, and what do you do? Do you behave in a manner completely different from the way you usually do? Some church and para-church organizations seem to think that. I don't follow that logic.

People go to Church to experience Church. They don't go to experience 6th-grade Phys Ed. When they go expecting to learn about Christ, and you give them nothing of spiritual value whatsoever, you do them a huge disservice.

I found myself agreeing wholeheartedly with this quotation I found on Elizabeth Prata's blog, which is apparently original to another writer.

"These relentless overtures to make the church more hip or more culturally savvy are in themselves a danger to any church. They downgrade the gospel, make people seek excitements as vehicles for their silliness and pander after entertainment instead of seeking Christ as a Savior for their sins. These excitements are a judgement to any church. Believers come seeking for bread and to be fed and you offer them stones! Oh brood of vipers, and you call yourselves Christ-ian (Christ-like)!"

Source link:  http://atwistedcrownofthorns.com/2013/02/21/dont-bring-that-harlem-shake-to-my-church/
Referring link: http://the-end-time.blogspot.com/2013/03/harlem-shake-is-dead-but-at-least.html

It really grieves me to see such a focus on "entertainment" rather than Christian teaching. I really do prefer the latter. Don't make me jump through hula hoops or hold hands with people and run in a circle. That's not what I'm there for. Your insistence on giving that to me as the only option is insulting to my intelligence and my attention span. Let me decide if I want to stay or go. Don't try to trick people into thinking Church is fun by acting like dorks because you think that's the stuff they like. -- And when I phrase it that way, can you see how it's insulting to the people you're supposedly trying to draw in?

That's my criticism of the Cru faction on my campus, but it's equally applicable to any church which behaves the same way.

P.S. After going to the first meetings in 2012, I didn't attend again for the rest of the semester. I'm now no longer involved in Cru. So you can take a wild guess whether "fun and games" made me want to come back.

~ Rak Chazak