The Beauty of Customer Satisfaction

Recently I vistied a new dentist who is known for being very sensitive to patients' needs and to customizing their experience so that it fits the patients' preferences. While filling out the intake paperwork, they had a section for a nickname.

You can see the results for yourself.

Consumer Christianity

Both Dallas Willard in The Great Omission and J.P. Moreland in The Kingdom Triangle touch on the tendency of western Christianity (and perhaps Americans in particular) to convert true Christianity to a consumer-driven Christianity.  The two authors discuss the issue using different terms — Moreland talks about the empty-self syndrome and Willard about the twisted use of the term "spirituality" — but they are certainly communicating a similar message:

We have allowed our consumer-driven culture to convert true Christianity, which is always associated with obedience to the commands of Christ, into an anemic, malnourished substitute.  Instead of denying ourselves and following Christ, we fill ourselves with the lousy (but oh so titillating) substitutes the world has to offer — materialism, the cult of celebrity, entertainment, the chase after adrenaline and the feeling of happiness.  

We treat our faith, our spirituality, as a consumer good or a consumer experience, and move from one church to another, one concert to another, one video to another, being entertained, stirred emotionally and maybe even challenged a bit.  But at the end of the day, we allow these experiences of spirituality to take the place of a real faith that determines how we live and infiltrates every arena of our existence.  

This challenges me not only on a personal level but also as a church leader because I have no doubt that I have contributed to the epidemic by playing to a culture that looks for experience over substance.   

Expelled

Just came across this and watched the "Super Trailer." This looks to be a potentially powerful movie that could be very important for our culture.

Christians are increasingly buying into the view that their faith is not knowable as truth in the same way that science is. Consequently people believe they can "know" things with scientific certainty, but they cannot "know" spiritual things in the same way. This is the dangerous ground where our society finds itself -- all things non-scientific are personal beliefs that cannot be judged or criticized (except if these beliefs happen to be exclusivistic in nature).

Watch the Super Trailer.

Newly Launched LifeJournal Pastors' Blog

We've just launched our online Life Journal blog page so that you can get a look at what the pastors at KCF are journaling. It's pretty new, so the only one posting so far is me, but that will change shortly.

Check it out here

Putting Up with Raisins

I just finished reading Amy Carmichael's little book God's Missionary. What an incredibly powerful reminder of our calling as Christians to be different from the world we live in! She writes to fellow missionaries, but the truth is she writes to all of us who name Jesus as our leader.

As I mentioned, the book is quite short — not quite 60 pages — but it is packed with great challenges. She cuts right to the heart of our tendencies as human beings to make room for other things in our life when God has called us to singularity. How many times do we rationalize taking part in activities or behaviors because "what's the harm?" When in actuality the harm is that the still quiet voice has called us to come apart and be separate.

She uses the Nazarite as an example. The Nazarite in the Old Testament was set apart for worship from an early age and was to never eat any part of the grapevine. We can understand why God might not want one who has taken Nazarite vows not to drink wine - that might result in accidental dissipation. But what about raisins? There is nothing harmful about those! And practically speaking, there is nothing harmful about raisins, except that the are forbidden for the Nazarite.

What has God forbidden to you? It may be different from what He has forbidden from someone else. I remember reading that Jack Hayford believes that God has asked him not to eat chocolate. This is not because anything is wrong with chocolate, but rather just because God has called him to give it up. It is a demonstration of Hayford's commitment to be set apart for Him. It is not, however, a demonstration that Hayford chose! It is well and good when we decide to give something up unilaterally for God, it is something else entirely when God asks us to give something up for Him!

What has God asked you to give up that you haven't been willing to?
When have you ignored your conscience because you used the rationalization "what's the harm?"

Life Journal: What's Hiding Under Your Tree?

Genesis 35:4 NIV
So they gave Jacob all the foreign gods they had and the rings in their ears, and Jacob buried them under the oak at Shechem.

Luke 14:33 NIV
In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.


Jacob had a difficult time severing the connection between his families idols and gods. Such was the connection between them that he hid them under the tree at Shechem — with the obvious intent to return and retrieve them at some point in the future.

But he hid them because he was going to worship the living God who he knew was not happy with these things.

Jesus presents us with a similar challenge — to leave all items of worship that are not "true God worship" behind and to sever the connection we have with them.

It is no easier for us to leave our stuff then it was for Jacob and his family to leave theirs. Yet if we do not, we are simply demonstrating our unwillingness to truly follow Him. We are in effect saying, I'm leaving an exit plan for the future just in case I want to go back to my old ways.

What Jacob should have done, and what we must do, is to destroy all that which is not worthy of Him in our lives.

So we must ask ourselves:
- What am I hiding under my tree?
- What things do I bury and then plan to return to after cleaning myself up to visit with God?
- What exit plans have I made that are simply setting me up for a future fall?