The summer is upon us and churches are opening their doors to the community. Unfortunately, many churches aren't up to the task to share the gospel. With the latest round of summer movie blockbusters, seekers are selective about where to spend their entertainment dollars. This issue of ChristianityTuesday will help you get the edge with the latest market research on consumer trends in entertainment spending. The good news is there is great fun to be had this summer.

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It is often difficult to measure the high levels of commitment that exist in the church today. To hear some people tell it, we are on the brink of another Reformation. Broad new vistas open up to the post-literate Christian. I cite one example of the sort of self-sacrifice with which Satan and his quivering minions must now contend.

In just one part of his journey into the life and thought of St. Francis, one post-modern sets an example for all: he buys a tau cross. He does not crawl through broken glass or go to live among the lepers, no. He ties three knots in the string that came with the cross as a package deal. These three knots represent for him vows of Chastity, Poverty and Obedience.

In a way. He doesn't really take the vows, the knots represent the vows as he kinda mis-remembers them.

This would not be real chastity as pre-moderns conceived of chastity, and certainly not poverty in any remote sense of the word. And when it comes to obedience, who can say? Even the New Testament is not obeyed.

He has a friend who helps us understand neo-piety. By chastity he means "an all encompassing commitment to purity and holiness". Whereas chastity used to mean no sex, no family and no progeny, now it evaporates into something pleasant and manageable. The term chastity once meant an all encompassing commitment to purity and holiness.

"Chastity has come to mean, for me, a purity in relationships on all levels- that is, to pursue and nurture genuine community (not individualism). And yet, not to lose the individual in the group."

I can easily imagine a day when a devoted follower in the way of Jesus would not even have to tie knots in a string; he could just mark with a piece of chalk the places where he would have made knots to represent words he might redefine to suit his passions.

We don't need revivals; we have mock revivals. "Perhaps irony and camp are the means by which the Spirit touches a generation of hipsters-- and in some strange way kitsch camp becomes real revival."

Supreme commitment is easy, just redefine it. Not what chastity means: what it means to me. Not what the eschaton is; what I make the eschaton out to be. We can have a personally applicable eschatological hope.

And perhaps in some way this is just blather and pretense.

Sparing no effort in keeping you twisting in the wind with every gaudy religious trinket, we direct your attention to this.

It's called Movemental Christianity, and it has an "outline". Some would just call it a list, others would call it a mere ring of ovals, but it is very pretty. If you happen to have any smart pills lying around, now would be an excellent time to polish off the entire bottle.

There will be ten elements, maybe more.

• Prayer will "be a conviction that establishes its priority".
• To be movemental will require that you show intentionality.
• Change will cost you: you will have to move from "a place of being static" to a body in action.
• Movements do not occur through large things. They occur through small units that are readily reproducible.
• You should also "hold firm and passionate positions on biblical views."
• Movements will look like, and be owned by, ordinary people in their setting.
• Movements only occur when the disempowered are given the freedom, and then take up the responsibility, to lead.
• Movemental Christianity requires charity to maintain our firmly held convictions while rejoicing for and speaking well about those with whom we differ but are being greatly blessed by God.
• More frequently, non-scalable structures, will actually hinder the movement. These structures become bottlenecks rather than catalysts.
• Movemental Christianity will practice wholistic ministry much in the way of Jesus. Current movements and historical awakenings are and were accompanied by societal transformation.

(It's just a first guess, but I think Dr. Stetzer means holistic.)

Sartre once wrote, "l'enfer, c'est les autres". J-P. S. said several highly unreliable things and that was one of them, but this perception does cause me to wonder: What if A. W. Tozer had to spend an eternity sharing a couch with Dr. Ed Stetzer?

Jesus calls us fishers of men, but what bait are you using? What lures are in your tackle box? This week's issue of ChristianityTuesday will help you look at your favorite fishing holes with a new perspective.

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WARNING: The following post contains an accurate representation of emergents' words and ideas and therefore unavoidably constitutes an assault on proper sensibilities. Please exercise discretion before continuing.
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You might remember my visit to Journey Church.

We believe intentional communication with God through sacred acts of prayer, communion, worship, art, music, silence and meditation on Scripture is imperative to life with God.

The service I attended was a demonstration of signal incompetence in prayer, communion, worship, art, music, silence and meditation on Scripture. It was what I would call an experiment in Trinket Religion: shards of bumpkin piety strewn around to make deviant ex-evangelicals comfortable with an adolescent approximation of their parents' religion. It was to Christianity what Charlie Brown's Christmas tree and a plastic reindeer is to Advent.

Our task is not to seek full agreement on all things but to dialogue respectfully and listen for God's voice.

The comments that followed here on the blog were a fair example of Journey Church members' deep commitment to respect and dialogue. I was soon contacted privately by the she-pastor expressing regret over her members' behavior and she offered a nice apology. She also invited me to continue the conversation, but she suggested it not take place here on the blog.

Which was probably wise. The gist of the complaint from the journey-people was not that what I said was wrong; they merely took exception to my review because I hadn't asked them how they felt about their shards of bumpkin piety. I'm not sure she could have helped me there except perhaps to clean up the language a little bit.

Anyway, I dredge up these haunting memories because Journey Church and City Church here in the Metroplex hosted The Church Basement Roadshow: a kind of Special Olympics Revival/Book Tour/Halloween Ball. Devoted reader of emergentvillage.org that I am, I'd noted that they were coming to town and I posted July 18, 7:30 p.m. on my refrigerator. My birthday (and John Calvin's) eight days earlier passed unremembered and unremarked in my anticipation of the anointed hour.

We left the northeast corner of Dallas County for a southwest corner of Dallas with plenty of time; traffic was light and we got to the church early. We continued south on N. Zang Boulevard till we came to a Sonic. My wife likes Sonic and I figured something cheap, heavy and greasy in my stomach would aid in the evening's indigestion.

When we got back to the church we went through the doors crowded with some vaguely familiar faces and the she-pastor. I didn't see the money-bucket set out to collect the cover charge and I passed a table full of Bibles in a beeline for the men's room before I started shaking hands and leafing through books with my over-lubricated fingers. When I got to the men's room there was a guy in fire-engine red underwear. I didn't want to appear judgmental so I didn't snort, but I think he was donning red longjohns because he was suiting up to be a barefoot, red longjohn-wearing usher. I was tempted to ask him how he felt about wearing red longjohns in a religious service, but I decided not to.

I came out and wandered the building as I always do, checking for evidences of religious sensibilities. I went back to the auditorium and found my wife seated, fanning herself with one of those funeral home fans depicting a bearded woman holding a long pole and a lamb. On the back was the url for Wesley Theological Seminary. I gave my wife a disapproving look and remembered the ten buck cover charge, so I went back to the foyer and dropped a $20 bill in the bucket to help defray the costs of such mindless extravagance. With rampant global poverty and children all over the world starving, this is the best stewardship....

One of the things included in the handout packet was a bumper sticker that said, IF YOU LOVE THE CREATOR, TAKE CARE OF CREATION. I told my wife I thought I had time to go out and put it on her car and she gave me a disapproving look. Disapproving looks always provoke second thoughts so I wondered if it might be better to stick it on the bumper of the gas-guzzling, ozone-depleting assault on the creation Pagitt, Jones and Scandrette drive around in. I bet they even use the air-conditioner. Obviously their eschatological hope is a major rip-off.

On the screen was a powerpoint presentation of useless trivia circa 1908. I was reminded that in 1908 the Olympics were held in London.

Seven-thirty came and went and the show hadn't started so I wandered back to check out the book table and see if the "Trucker Frank for President" t-shirt came in my size.

Alas.

Finally the she-pastor, dressed all like a prairie maiden, mounted the stage and announced the beginning of the revival. What followed was a lot of what people in 1908 would have called blasphemy. Three intellectually challenged hayseeds laughing, posing and shouting Hallelujah and Yahweh in mock prayer and praise.

Doug Pagitt does not play the trombone, but he does hold it up to his lips and he works the slide.

He carries a slide whistle in his pocket as well and occasionally pulls it out to play a sound effect for giggles. Clearly he has dedicated himself to the art of the slide whistle and only switched to the trombone so he could move from the percussion section to the brass section. Scandrette is a washboard virtuoso.

They opened the show by declaring that Plato and Socrates were not worth following but that Jesus was. Plato was all about nous, and clearly these prairie frauds wanted to have nothing to do with nous.

I'll spare you the blow-by-blow, but each one got up and read from his book.

Scandrette warned us that what he had to say was perhaps not as polite as we were accustomed to, and he said that the church had been all "effed up". He told us all about Emperor Arcadia [pictured here] and an early conversation wherein the Emperor reveals:

"I HAVE BEEN CONDUCTING EXPERIMENTS ON MYSELF FOR 30 YEARS-EXPLORING THE MYSTERIES OF CHEMISTRY AND HEALTH. MY PRESCRIPTION: EAT A CLOVE OF GARLIC AND DRINK YOUR OWN URINE AND SEMEN TWICE A DAY."

Scandrette went on reading from his book and making about as much sense as the Emperor, and he summed up his chapter (and ministry) with this:

By telling this story I'm not suggesting that everyone could or should make friends with someone like the emperor. What I do know is that I feel alive when I am testing the limits of my own boundaries- finding a source of love that is greater than my own and discovering beauty in unexpected places.

He closed with some doggerel of his own invention which was rather pathetic to hear. It was like a pre-adolescent who'd just read Howl and thought he could do something similar with the right thesaurus.

Go ye into all the world and feel alive testing the limits of your own boundaries and find a love greater than your own.

Discovering beauty in unexpected places was a gift I sorely coveted there on July 18^th at 7:30 p.m.

Scandrette was just a daffy mid-westerner who found fulfillment rubbing shoulders with perverts and degenerates and claiming to be a follower of the One who forgave sinners and told them to go and sin no more, but Jones and Pagitt were priceless.

Pagitt had a profound experience at a passion play but was turned off to the church as a result of some follow-up work which involved evangelical illustrations of salvation. In particular there was a cartoon of a chasm between man and God and a cross which bridged the gap. This puzzled poor Dougie because he'd seen a play that suggested there was no gap between man and God. There was that and there was the heroic image he had of Billy Jack.

Tony Jones is similarly confused. He grew up in what he calls a "mainline church" and ran afoul of some evangelicals during his college years. It was not a happy experience. Evangelicals talked about "unbelievers", a term he couldn't understand in spite of the fact that the library had a dictionary that could help him with words like that. But Tony is not what we would call a scholar: remember that he divided up American Christianity into mainline and snake-handlers. Tony doesn't even know what the term "born again" means.

Tony was also annoyed that these evangelicals inquired after his "QT".

Now I say all this not to embarrass these three mid-western wannabe showfolk. I have read their books, listened to Pagitt on radio interviews, watched Jones on TV shows, and now I've seen their road act. These men clearly cannot be embarrassed.

What is important to take from these charlatans is the fact that they are illiterates who cannot make a philosophical argument (as demonstrated by Jones in his book) and they cannot make a theological case (as Pagitt has shown). And when they get an opportunity to explain their "reformation" in a way that suits their inabilities, in a way unencumbered by reason, literacy, argument, nous or logic, this is what they say.

And this is quite remarkable. Surely it should be rather easy to bring a case against the smarmy, unnuanced, saccharine oversimplifications of American evangelicalism! I mean that can be done by people who have to take lessons in how to fall off a log!

Tony Jones is in college and he doesn't know what grace means. He never learned this in his mainline church, he never consulted a lexicon, a theological dictionary or a concordance, so he asked an evangelical. The evangelical pulls out a pen and makes as though it were a gift. He tells Tony that grace is like an offer of a gift which requires nothing but acceptance. Tony leaves this conversation with the understanding that the story was intended to illustrate the cross. How, he asks, can we equate the central image, the defining event of Christianity with a pen? Tony hadn't yet grasped the purpose of a metaphor. I don't think he has learned since.

This is why emergents have issues with nous and why they are no friends of Plato.

So when you cast your mind back to Marie's experience of being shunned at church because she passed out in the school parking lot trying to get high, and when you recall her conclusion that therefore God cannot be known, you are not looking at a poor example of human reasoning, you are looking at the genius of Emergence.

This explains Tony Jones's confusion about what it means to be born again. It's not that Jones can construct an argument against the new birth from what Jesus actually said or what the Church subsequently taught; all Jones can do is raise the pathetic image of a child being manipulated by the light of a campfire.

This is the ethos of the movement. This is the vibe: adolescent irreverence excusing itself by pointing to painful personal experience.

They had the stage for two hours. There were no songs of Zion, no poetry readings, no gripping monologues, no Chautauqua-like lectures...just self-indulgent bumpkins laughing at what they don't understand and playing to the popular resentments of a degenerate crowd.

This revival had no altar call, of course, but an offering was taken. This move of the spirit is not about repentance and restoration, it is about self-promotion and collecting money. There's a cover charge because it is a show, and there is an offering because it is a show about religion.

Blasphemy, entertainment and greed, these three, but the greatest of these is greed.

Little do men perceive what solitude is, and how far it extendeth.
For a crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures,
and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.

--- Francis Bacon

It probably should not surprise us that there is so much confusion and feckless speculation about Tozer's missing friends. Today people don't know what a friend is for: witness the babblers who tell us their wives are their best friends. No wonder their friendships are less durable than their marriages. Their marriages are no great shakes, but careers depend on a certain pretense. No one measures a man by the friends he abandons or the associations he plies.

"A principle fruit of friendship, is the ease and discharge of the fullness and swellings of the heart, which passions of all kinds do cause and induce." [Bacon, later in that same essay.] And with the low standing of friends in this society, it is not surprising that A. W. Tozer found himself alone.

But in addition to the discharge of the swellings of the heart, Bacon reminds those who know only the associations of convenience nurtured in the place of friendship that the joys of that discharge are doubled and the sorrows halved.

And beyond the fellowship of the affections, friendship is also "healthful for the understanding". When a man shares his thoughts with a friend, "he tosseth his thoughts more easily; he marshalleth them more orderly, he seeth how they look when they are turned into words: finally, he waxeth wiser than himself; and that more by an hour's discourse, than by a day's meditation."

Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but these wounds are generally not those we desire from our spouses.

"A man cannot speak to his son but as a father; to his wife but as a husband; to his enemy but upon terms: whereas a friend may speak as the case requires, and not as it sorteth with the person."

Bacon again.

I believe that what we find in Aiden Wilson Tozer is not just a perceptive and forthright man; we find in his personal life an evidence of the truth he speaks. The loneliness is not just a fact about Tozer, it is about the church Tozer found himself in. It is not that his peers were worse preachers. He claimed to be a poor preacher, and I accept his witness. What we see in Tozer is the sort of man who would cherish the truth when he found it and a man who could say it out loud. To the discomfort of those around him.

It should not surprise us that he found few who could be com-passionate. Who shared his passions?

Who shares them now? Even today, where is the Society of the Burning Heart one might suggest to discharge the fullness of the heart? Perhaps the most uncomfortable question is not how Tozer could be lonely but how it is that we are not?

Worship of God is our highest calling, second only to sharing the gospel and drawing seekers in from the highways and biways.  But what if our worship of the Creator destroys his Creation?  A delicate balance must be struck as we continue to cast off the vestiges of bygone musical eras and adorn our worship with instruments better suited to worship in the new millenia.  This issue of ChristianityTuesday explores how worship teams can reduce their energy consumption and be a green light in a dark world.

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Friday I recommended that you read A Passion for God. I think it is important for you to read it for good reasons; even if you don't draw the same conclusions from it that I draw, it is important that you consider what is at the heart of this book.

First a few caveats.

I am not especially fond of Dorsett's writing. I think it is persistently annoying, unnecessarily repetitive and inexcusably imperceptive. I don't want to press the issue: everyone might not be as annoyed by the bits that annoyed me, and the subject justifies your time and reflection even if the observer left questions unanswered which he himself raised. I say this just so you understand that I see a value in this book, and should you be irritated with the path Dorsett chose, you should keep walking for the sake of the destination. I'll give two examples just so this doesn't turn into a hit-and-run.

He says on page 139 that Tozer admitted to being excessive in his criticism of religious movies, but Dorsett provides no context for this regret. Given Tozer's own words and deep contempt for religious entertainments, a biographer owes us more than a misleading footnote and a suggestion that his faith was recanted. I should like to have some context to draw my own conclusions. Tozer's claim has been confirmed ad nauseam: religious movies most definitely were influenced by Hollywood, and what survived to today is most certainly indebted to Hollywood. Look at religious movies. Do they look to you like they are derivative of the great Western playwrights and the early serious film-makers who regarded film as an art form?

Of course not.

Have they produced a stable, healthy church?

Please!

Dorsett also makes a big thing about Tozer's insensitivity (or inattention) with respect to his wife and family. Clearly there are two possible extremes. Tozer was just an insensitive, selfish, driven man whose marriage played second fiddle to his work. The other extreme is that his wife and family were a real hindrance to his ministry and represented a constant threat to his devotion which he resisted to a fault. As I say, these are extremes. I can be almost certain that the truth lies somewhere on the spectrum between those oversimplifications, neither of which I can accept. Dorsett should have helped us to make an informed and charitable judgment.

He might say that he found no conclusive evidence to share with us, in which case he should not have made such a big thing about Tozer's loneliness and his wife's feelings of estrangement. Every time I go to pick up milk and bananas there is this sort of writing I could pick up at the checkout.

Everything I know about the man suggests that these failings—if they were indeed failings—are significant. It is not that I would prefer a hagiography. Just the opposite. I stopped reading hagiographies a long time ago.

I grew up in a parsonage and I know first-hand the frustrations of an unsupportive, willful wife, and it takes no great imagination to see why one might guard against these interruptions, distractions and intrusions. I am not saying these reactions are justified, my presumption is that they were not justified but that they might have been understandable.

I also graduated from college where one of my classmates was abandoned by his wife on the day of his graduation. She felt she had fulfilled all her obligations when he shifted his tassel. I suspect there is more to this story than we will ever know because we will never again have Dorsett's opportunities to talk to those who had something to contribute.

I think this was unhelpful. The New Testament makes it quite clear that a determined minister might well be distracted by the things of this life and that one's enemies might come from his own household. Of course I cannot suppose that Tozer's family fell into that category so I cannot draw that conclusion. By the same token, neither can I suppose that Aiden's relationship with Ada was a flaw in him alone.

Ada survived Aiden and she remarried a widower named Leonard Odam. We read this chilling sentiment: "I have never been happier in my life. Aiden loved Jesus Christ but Leonard Odam loves me."

I must confess as one who sees in Aiden Tozer the end of a line that traces back to Isaiah and John the Baptist, that sentiment is instructive and more than a little disturbing.

A very dissatisfying book in that respect.

But the most irritating evasion in my mind is this whole notion of Tozer's loneliness. Nothing about Tozer's personality fascinates me more than this. He was sometimes irascible, abrasive and withdrawn; I should like to know, if Tozer believed a quarter of what he said, why he would not have been more irascible, abrasive and withdrawn!

I think I have read everything Tozer published. I have some sense of what he read, not just from the accounts of his acquaintances like McAfee and Chase but from the evidence that littered his writings and sermons. I also grew up observing Tozer's contemporaries. I know what they read. I know what rubbish blew across their minds and fell on their sermons. I know what they talked about when they talked to each other about their loves. I know what they thought made a good poem and what were its proper uses.

At family gatherings I have been driven to play with pets, shoe laces and dust-bunnies rather than talk with silly people. It was not until I translated the Apocalypse that I learned that the church social was not a Bowl Judgment. Do you have any sense of how excruciating it is to have Wordsworth at home on your desk and have to talk to some nutcase and watch his TV?

Again, whatever lessons one might learn from the man, I think those lessons should be drawn from a knowledge of what is in this book. If A. W. Tozer got it all wrong, we should give some thought to how it might be done right. At this stage I don't see anyone doing it right. I would rather live in a world with flawed prophets than the world of superficially well-adjusted religious functionaries and carnal drudges we have today.

And maybe our regard for Tozer is just one more nail in our coffin.

The giants of the Kingdom who live and wrought a generation or two ago are now gone home. While they lived among us, they led the Church by the sheer power of their gifts and the admitted superiority of their personal characters. But strange as it may be, while they themselves were might [sic] men and men of renown, they were not able to sire a spiritual progeny equal to themselves, so that, as they left us one after one, their mantles fell upon men very much inferior to them in ability, learning, and piety. The generation now in charge consists of sons and grandsons of the old spiritual heroes, and great has been the decline from year to year.

Though it may seem a gloomy conclusion, we must assume either that the race of spiritual giants is now extinct within the borders of evangelical orthodoxy, or that, if some do exist, they are for some reason strangely articulate, for it is hardly an uncharitable deduction that spiritual greatness is not discoverable in the lives and labors of our modern gospel propagandists.

One of the woes pronounced upon Israel at one time was that their princes should be children. God said that He would take away from Jerusalem and Judah the mighty man, the judge, the prophet, the prudent and the ancient, the honorable man and the counselor, and would give children to be their princes and make babes to rule over them. However much it may be deplored, it is yet not a singular nor uncommon thing for the more worthy to be led by the less worthy, for it is often true that the mighty in a given field are silent while the quasi-great are loud in their outcries.  Of course, the public, being neutral, will usually follow the most persistent voice. Plato said that the penalty good men pay for failure to take part in politics is to be ruled over by bad men. Sound, God-honoring believers in our day have to a large degree surrendered their leadership to lesser men who are not their equal in godliness but who are hungry for power and so are ready to take over at the first opportunity.

[...]

It may be justly said that the writer of these lines is of all men the least worthy to call Jesus Lord or to speak in His sinless Name. Amen. So be it. Nevertheless I have a soul to save, a God to glorify, and no one can stand sponsor for me before that great assize. There I must stand alone; and if it should be necessary that I stand alone for a little while here, I shall not wish it had been otherwise when the day comes. If my fellowship is worth asking, then it will be given to the saintly man, the humble man, and the holy. He who would call me to his side must have garments that smell of myrrh and loes and cassia out of the ivory palaces. Let him show me his scars and then command my service. I shall not withhold it. Gladly will I toil beside the man who reminds me of my Saviour. As for others, let them not trouble me. I am trying to show forth the glory of Him who called me out of darkness into his marvelous light. It is a great work and I cannot come down.

--- A. W. Tozer, Alliance Weekly, May 11, 1946

That excerpt comes from Appendix Two in A Passion for God.

If you have any sense at all you will read this book, and when you do read it, I’d suggest you read the entire column [reproduced on page 185] before starting with the first chapter.

Tozer said this kind of thing often; no one listened. No one is listening today. Imagine how Tozer might express his appreciation for the work of Camerin Courtney, Reggie McNeal, Frank Garlock, Mark Van Steenwyk, Ted Haggard, Tony Jones…and you’ll get a sense of the price we have paid. Tozer spoke the truth and only now do we begin to sense the consequences.

Where is the mighty man, the judge, the prophet, the prudent, the ancient, the honorable, and the counselor?

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A Passion for God, the Spiritual Journey of A. W. Tozer
Lyle Dorsett
Moody Publishers, 2008
ISBN: 13-978-0-8024-8133-7

Holiness...it's not just a word, it's a way of thinking. Thinking, not about what Jesus would do, but what would make seekers truly appreciate the kind of good changes that can happen. Changes that make sense. Changes that aren't intimidating. Changes that are comfortable and achievable. The staff at ChristianityTuesday hopes this issue will help you make those changes.

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I don't know much about Samantha Clark except for accidental discoveries on ISI, but she asks a question you must contend with.

How closely connected are pop culture and the things of salvation? I am not ready to say that Christians have no stake or legitimate interest in pop culture. As human beings, we are all naturally a part of and keepers of culture, low and high. But perhaps what is missing in the current form of evangelical engagement is an inability to see different levels of culture and to identify the increasingly complex obligations of higher forms of art, music, and literature. To parse out these different levels would require an understanding of two concepts that are not common among our modern American self-understanding: the need for hierarchy and the appreciation of artistic mediation.

I fear Ms. Clark hasn't considered the half of it.

You must resolve for yourselves what legitimate connection there is between pop culture and the life of the spirit—not just salvation. Fundagelicals have excused their philistinism by supposing it was essential to evangelism. The fact of the matter is that evangelism is neither the first nor the ultimate obligation we have. Some of us don't think pop culture has anything to do with salvation, that pop culture lacks the power to convey any enduring reality, and that pop culture as Gospel Tract is the smallest known fig leaf ever discovered in the plant kingdom.

St. Paul wanted to know about the power of Christ's resurrection, the fellowship of his suffering and about how one might be made compatible with his crucifixion.

We have groped long enough to find a way to capture these things in the daily ditty, and the only thing the church has learned is that these essentials are not even communicable between contiguous generations. How this is consistent with the sentiments expressed in the Apocalypse is beyond human knowing.

So, what will you tell your little one? What stake does the church have in pop culture?

Scot McKnight, as adept with political documents as he is with sacred scripture, celebrates July 4th with some simplistic suggestions for gun owners: store your gun in a "governmentally-based location".

Let freedom ring!

I came to this conclusion long ago: that God doesn't want Christians killing others. So, I sold my gun. Do I think owning and using a gun for hunting is fine? Sure. But, I think such guns ought to be stored in some safe, governmentally-based location. No one is following my idea, that I know.

In comment 17 he advises us all:

The only purpose of a gun is to kill. That is not true of everything else. If someone who does not hunt game owns a gun, they [sic] have declared at least a willingness to kill another human being or they have not considered what they are doing. It really is as simple as that.

And it really doesn't get any simpler than that.

Oops; I wrote that before I read comment 33.

We hope you all enjoy the Fourth.

ChristianityTuesday: teaching you how to reach the unchurched where they live in ways that will catch their attention and show you a good time.  Let seekers know that Christians aren't strange other-worldly creatures.  Want to show them that you are an average Joe with the same dreams, desires and aspirations?  Subscribe to ChristianityTuesday and we'll show you how.

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