Christianity vs. convenience...continued

I'd just like to point out that my post from yesterday was intended to portray one side of an issue. As a comment to the post astutely pointed out, using skits etc. can be an effective means to communicate truth. Personally, I am not against using anything that can be an effective tool to evangelize and make disciples of Jesus Christ in our modern culture. (My own sister is part of a Christian mime ministry called Mimeistry.) But I have to qualify that statement. In my mind, when the church of Jesus Christ resorts to Bingo nights, lotteries, 50/50 tickets, serving beer, playing Fear Factor, and Friday night fish frys, we are inadvertently communicating that the gospel of Jesus Christ is irrelevant. Instead we should be communicating the gospel of Jesus Christ as the "hook". When we have to invite our neighbors to a church-sponsored Super Bowl Bash instead of a Bible study, this implies the Bible is superfluous to Christianity. When we woo non-Christians with fun and games, we're inadvertently saying it's more important to have fun than to take Christ's gospel seriously. When we try to evangelize with T-shirts that are knockoffs of popular secular logos (such as "Reborn" made to look like "Reebok" or "Jesus Christ" in a Coca-Cola font), we're communicating that Christianity has no original thoughts to add to the world of our day and that Christianity requires the weight of secular muscle to be worth noticing. When we keep attendance rolling in with pony tricks and by constantly "changing things up" to keep it fresh, I agree with the author of Cerulean Sanctum when he observes that we've lost our long-term outlook and purpose. What is the church's raison d'être (reason for existence)? Are we here to entertain, or to take Jesus Christ to the world? Are we to spend our efforts making disciples of recreation and fun, or disciples of Christ?

 As I write these things, I am not completely sure what the proper conclusion and balance should be. I just know that things are not as they should be. Over the past year, I have been preparing a clean comedy routine that would appeal to believers. But I wonder if I'm wasting my time in doing so. This is really not what the church of Christ is all about.

And the disturbing trend in Christianity is to compromise more and more of the gospel in order to appeal to culture. So now we are bombarded by sensual photos of gorgeous female Christian music artists pictured in tight or low-cut shirts on the front covers of their CD albums, despite Jesus' statement that "whoever looks at a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart," and despite one of these artist's songs surprisingly titled "Don't Look at Me." Apparently this artist thinks it's acceptable in Christianity to plaster her website with glamour photos that expose as much of her silky smooth skin as she can get away with, and then turn around and tell all the men out there with their physiological sex drives, "Don't Look at Me." Hello?!? How far is too far? At what point is the gospel of Jesus Christ compromised? Do we have to wait until someone opens up a "Christian" porn site before we realize that we've crossed the line? I think we've already crossed the line. And that's why I'm motivated to write this blog - to reclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ from the culture that is eroding it. I'm the proverbial Dutch boy with his finger stuck in the dike to plug a leak. I'm hoping more people will join me before the ocean's force completely destroys the dike.

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