White Horse Inn - Romans Revolution (3) - The State of the Church

Some Random notes from the White Horse Inn episode The State of the Church.

Evangelicalism has become become big business

• Is the “customer” king, or Christ?
• The “seeker” is the customer, but we seek them as consumers.
• Bringing people into the church becomes an end to itself.
• Barna: the audience, not the message, matters.
• If the church is a human creation, we can do what we want with it, including discarding it.
  If the church is God’s creation, we don’t have the right or authority to tamper with it.
• Jesus calls the church “my church.”
  Jesus asks of Saul “why are you persecuting me.”

Picking and choosing what we believe

• There is a crisis of authority in the church.
• This leads to churches that are program driven.
• Doctrine is dumbed down.
• There is no Biblical definition of a Christian who isn’t in a church, just as there is no definition of an unbaptized Christian.
• People have a tension between wanting to belong and not wanting to be accountable.

Seekers vs tourists vs pilgrims

• Tourists have no desire to stay and settle in.
• Seekers stay, tourists move on to the next site.
• We confuse non-believers with un-churched people.
• We are pilgrims, not tourists.
  Pilgrims pass through a place, but they know where they are going.
  Tourists are just site-seeing.

Emergent Church

• The search matters, not the joining.
• Their use of older liturgies might be more nostalgia than anything else.
• People are more into having discussions than reaching answers.
• Good diagnoses, but no answers.
• Emergent churches are more willing to talk theology than “Boomers”, but they don’t want to come to answers.
  There is no understanding of definitive answers given to us by God.
  Theology has become a parlor game.
• Should visitors be welcomed or accepted?
• Emergent churches require a cause.
  They can’t just present the Gospel by itself, it has to be tied to something.
• There is a emphasis on Christ as example.
  People can be followers of Jesus without becoming Christians.
  The redemptive force of the cross is gone.
• Truth is replaced with sincerity.