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Strippers protest outside church

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Protest2

I saw this on The Gospel Blog (here) and it just made me laugh – I’m sorry, I just couldn’t help it:

For the last four years, Pastor Bill Dunfee and his congregation have held protests outside of a strip club in Warsaw, OH. Now, Tommy George, the club’s owner, and a few of his dancers have decided to turn the tables and protest outside of New Beginnings Church.

It seems that when Pastor Dunfee and his congregation protest outside of the strip club, they bring bullhorns, signs and video cameras for posting customers’ license plate numbers online. As a counter measure, dancers from George’s strip club wear bikinis and grill hamburgers outside of New Beginnings Church.

I just love the irony and the sense of humour of the strip club owner, Tommy George – but I wonder if Pastor Bill sees it that way?

I can’t help but feel that it is a real opportunity for the church to reach out to the strip club employees and show some love, care and compassion.  I wonder if any of the church members have gone and had a burger with the protesters?

Also see the YouTube video below:

Any thoughts?

The church and culture contextualisation

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Streetpreacher

What is the right way for the church to engage with its contemporary, surrounding culture?  Should we engage, or should we be distinctly separate?  And if we do engage – in what form should that engagement take?

These are big questions that we need to get a hold of if we are to be effective disciples.

To this end, Ed Stetzer has posted a number of articles on his blog recently about the ‘contextualisation’ of the church within contemporary culture:

The call to contextualize is not a call to gospel compromise and syncretism, or living thoughtlessly and recklessly. The call to contextualize and engage the culture is simply an implication of being called to preach the gospel and make disciples.

Read the articles in the series – Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here and Part 4 here.

Any thoughts?

Breakup via Facebook

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Alg_computer_breakup

A true contemporary cultural phenomenon – the breaking up of relationships via Facebook as reported in Newsweek:

….Ilana Gershon, an assistant professor of communication and culture at Indiana University, began to notice a curious phenomenon among her students. She was teaching a class on linguistic anthropology—the study of how language influences culture—and she tried a new exercise to get her students to think about their shared expectations for behavior. “I asked them what makes a bad breakup,” Gershon says. “I was expecting people to have really dramatic stories, ‘I caught them in bed together,’ something like that.” Instead, they all responded with tales of outrage about the medium rather than the message, complaining that they got the bad news by text or by Facebook rather than in person.

Gershon decided to study how new technology has changed the rules of romance. She interviewed 72 undergrads, 18 men and 54 women, who shared stories of being dumped via texting, voice mail, Facebook, instant messaging, Skype, and even occasionally an actual paper letter. The result is her new book, The Breakup 2.0: Disconnecting Over New Media. Almost all the people she talked to agreed that the most honorable way to break up was in person, but many turned to new media because the face-to-face conversations didn’t get the results they wanted, Gershon says. “They would be in cycles of breaking up and getting back together, and they finally said, ‘If I do it through another medium, maybe I will finally end this relationship and I won’t be stuck anymore.’”….

….Facebook’s role is unique because it is so public, Gershon says. (In one class, her students compared it to the abstract gaze described by French philosopher Michel Foucault). “Facebook official” has emerged as a new stage in a relationship, Gershon says, but the meaning can differ from one person to the next. Gershon says that some people will claim that a breakup isn’t official until it is Facebook official, while others point out that changes in Facebook status may just be a sign of trouble; in many cases it’s unclear whether the breakup will take.

Read the full article here.

Also – have a look at this article from 2009 in the NY Daily News here.

Photo: Getty

Why do we need religion?

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There was an article posted a few days ago in the Opinion section of USA Today written by Oliver Thomas explaining in his opinion why we need religion:
Why religion? In the face of pogroms and pedophiles, crusades and coverups, why indeed?
Religious Americans have answered the question variously. Worship is one answer. Millions gather each week to acknowledge their higher power. The chance to experience community is another. Healthy congregations are more than civic clubs. They are surrogate families. The opportunity to serve others also comes to mind. Americans feed the hungry, clothe the naked and house the homeless largely through religious organizations. Yet as important as community, worship and service are, I am convinced that religion’s greatest contribution to society is even greater.
Religion makes us want to live.

Or as he concluded later in the article:

….religion makes it easier to be decent. The positive core values, mutual accountability and constant striving for self-improvement help one to be a better person. And I want to be a better person. Not because I’m afraid of God. Because I’m grateful for another trip around the sun and, like a good house guest, want to leave this place in better shape than I found it.

Read the full article here.

I must admit that this article made me sad.

If this is what the acceptable face of Christianity has become then we really have lost faith in the power of the gospel.

Temporal, therapeutic, moralistic deism – is that it?

Where are the hard won benefits of the cross and new resurrection life in Christ?  Where is the power of the Holy Spirit?  What about transformation and new life in the inaugurated Kingdom of God – with Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour – freeing us to experience the present reality of the future new creation?

Is faith in Jesus only about becoming ‘a better person’?

But this is where I got sad…..

As I found myself getting angry and disgusted by Thomas’ description of the value of ‘religion’ it suddenly occurred to me that maybe he was describing the reality of my spiritual experience more than I initially realised.

Am I truly living in the transforming power of the gospel – or am I just slowly becoming ‘a better person’?

The hard truth is that it is too easy for us to lose the cutting edge of faith – for the refreshing transcendent experience of freedom in Christ to become a mundain shadow of what it used to be – for the Holy Spirit power that worked so freely in us and around us at first to become a distant memory.

Christ in me, is my hope of glory – that is the truth that must be a constant and present reality in my life!

Life doesn’t come from practicing religion – it comes from knowing Jesus – not by becoming ‘a better person’ but by being transformed by God’s love and grace.

Anything else is just a poor copy – a tawdry imitation!

Lord, I repent.  Forgive me.

Celebrity or mystery?

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Greta-garbo-swedish-american-film-actress

Mark Sayers posted on his blog about an article that is worth reading in the New York Times about celebrity and mystery:

“The world, you see, no longer has any tolerance for — let alone fascination with — people who aren’t willing to publicize themselves. Figures swathed in shadows are démodé in a culture in which the watchword is transparency.

Increasingly, the perception is that everyone is knowable, everyone is accessible and that everyone is potentially a star. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, blogs, personal Web sites with open-door chat rooms, the endlessly proliferating television reality shows are now commonplace forums for the famous who want to seem like ordinary people and for ordinary people who want to seem famous. Us magazine’s rubric “Stars, they’re just like us!” has now been inverted to “Us, we’re just like stars.”

THE theory appears to be that if you never shut up, no one can forget you. And that to shut up is to withdraw from life. I was seated not long ago next to a magazine editor, discussing a former glamour girl who had disappeared to a farm in South America. “I think it’s cool she was able to go cold turkey on being a celebrity,” I said. The editor answered sadly: “Really? I see it as giving up.”

Fame has become an existential condition: If your image isn’t reflected back at you, then how do you know you’re alive? The problem is that, people being people, 24-hour visibility will ultimately breed if not contempt, then weary familiarity. That’s why the tabloids need a new generation of cover girls and boys every year or so, a breeding process facilitated by reality television. Jake, Vienna, Heidi, Spencer: blink and you’ll miss them, though you can bet they’ll keep using Twitter until they die”

Read the full NY Times article here.

Read Mark Sayer’s blog post here.

Ed Stetzer – Future trends in evangelicalism

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Have a read of Ed Stetzer’s recent article on the Patheos portal (in fact, just have a look at the Patheos portal – because it is interesting in its own right!) where he identifies what he thinks are the main issues in evangelicalism that need to be discussed and resolved:

First, evangelicals must learn to navigate … a “post-seeker context.”

Secondly, evangelicals need to regain a confidence in the gospel.

Thirdly, in the next decade, we will need to address the definition of evangelicalism.

Fourth, evangelicals must address our shallow definition of discipleship.

Read the full article here.

Any thoughts?