Wow... what a fantastic example of losing the message of Jesus in the midst of theological fog.

Evangelism is simply introducing people/students to Jesus, and allowing Him to do the work in their lives. I found the debate on the idea of an understanding of depravity before/after meeting Jesus utterly ridiculous. It's completely missing the point. And pre-Christians couldn't care less about a stupid theological minutia such as that. Those kinds of things are just head-trips so that Christians can have something to measure who's "in" or "out".

Jesus constantly blurred the in/out lines. So should we.

hmm, I'll have to talk to my friends in YL to see their take on this.

I've never been afraid that I was going to loose my job over theology. Maybe the amount of fundraisers or how I taught. :) No, I've never been anywhere that close. Although when I got here I had so sign a statement saying I would follow the policies in the Staff Manual.

I don't think of it as evangelism anymore. Once i started really digging into that word, I stopped doing it. {http://merriam-webster.com/dictionary/evangelism} has a us vs them feel to me when I started to think about it. Andy Stanley and Stuart Hall coined the word "disciplism." that I like to use. Making disciples is part of being a disciple. It's not an event. it's opening your mouth when the Spirit wants to speak. Or its moving when the Spirit wants you to show someone the Son.

I like what Martoia said at the MI GA last year. People need to Belong, because they are with us their Behavior will change, and then they will Believe. For a long time it's been the other way. When you Believe the right things, and you change your Behavior, Then you Belong to the church. I also like how Frost and Hirsch put it in Shaping of things to come, the not-yet Christian. It's a spectrum of knowing Jesus. A gradient that touches all. the we more of Jesus, and then start to follow him the "color" gets bolder and less transparent. "Savvy?"
It's longer than a three hour tour.

I read the Non-Negotiables by YL, and I think they are right on. We should be held to a standard of teaching. How else will anyone come to know Christ? Yes, Jesus blurred the lines by allowing society's undesirables to be a part of the kingdom, but he always brought the person to a place of decision. He did not allow them to think they were a part of the kingdom if they were not.

Biblically, I don't see a single person who came to know Christ over time. They encountered Him, and made a decision - for or against. Later, maybe they were given another opportunity to make the decision again, but at no point do I see a person gradually accepting Christ. I don't read in Acts that Paul had a gradient change (unless you consider instant change from black to white a gradient change). I also don't see a relationship with Christ before Paul's conversion.

Jesus began this "church" thing, and He states that until one comes to know Him there is no salvation. We cannot grow into it. Either you are or you are not saved. There is no gray area. It is not that we are choosing who is "in" or "out." Jesus, himself, does that according to His standards (called doctrines).

I agree that discipleship is ongoing, but salvation is an event. It begins discipleship, and until salvation, there can be no discipleship. Disciple by definition is someone who believes or accepts doctrines.

Evangelism, on the other hand, is defined Biblically as spreading the good news of Jesus Christ. What is that good news? That He died in our place. He paid the price of our sin, i.e. death. If these topics are uncomfortable for the hearers, that is unfortunate, but if we never give them this information, they will never be saved. At what point do we stop placating the listeners, and lay it on the line for them?

My young people seem to be stronger because they know that they are saved, and they are growing because they know that there are standards. They are able to overcome adversity in their lives, not because it feels good, but because they know Jesus, and are confident of their election into the church.

I guess it is difficult for me to agree with Martoia, when he contradicts Jesus. Jesus said to believe first, and belonging and behavior change would come after.

Hey there Antiquer,

I definitely don't want to get into a debate on blogger, but you need to make sure you're speaking accurately about the Bible:

Jesus did NOT always bring people to a decision. Look at the story of Zaccheus, the woman caught in adultery, all of the "sinners" that Jesus ate with... there's not a peep about a "decision". There was life-change BECAUSE and AFTER they encountered Jesus, but there is nowhere in the text that a "decision" is mentioned :)

We need to make sure we're not reading our Western-American-Protestant-Modern-Post-Enlightenment views of what it means to be "saved" into scripture.

Also, although there are surely examples of "decisions" for salvation in scripture, nowhere does it say in the Bible that salvation cannot be a process. We can't make scripture say something that it doesn't.

Right?

in the last analysis, when we are judged, we will not be asked to lay down our doctrinal statements, and if we have the correct paperwork, then we get in. it will more be like, when I was hungry you fed me, when I was naked you clothed me. to be a disciple does NOT mean you believe or except doctrine, it means you follow Jesus, and do as He did. Does that mean proclaiming the Gospel, yes. That means more than just transmitting the information, it means embodying it, living it, so people who do not know this Jesus, can see, touch, experience Him. If it were an exchange of information, like a TPS report, then there will be a lot of people who will not get the memo!

"At what point do we stop placating the listeners, and lay it on the line for them?"

That's the thing, the line, we have been so focused on the line, that no one can see beyond it, and what it means to encounter God through Jesus.

I like what Leron Shultz has to say from the old Emergent-US blog -

"Jesus did not have a “statement of faith.” He called others into faithful relation to God through life in the Spirit. As with the prophets of the Hebrew Bible, he was not concerned primarily with whether individuals gave cognitive assent to abstract propositions but with calling persons into trustworthy community through embodied and concrete acts of faithfulness. The writers of the New Testament were not obsessed with finding a final set of propositions the assent to which marks off true believers. Paul, Luke and John all talked much more about the mission to which we should commit ourselves than they did about the propositions to which we should assent. The very idea of a “statement of faith” is mired in modernist assumptions and driven by modernist anxieties"

While I am not trying to debate or argue either, I thought the core of being emergent was to discuss ideas. I am only trying to enter the discussion. If there is no room for an opposing idea, then does that not make you exactly what you are trying not to be – closed minded and exclusive? I just feel that if the Church of God is to emerge into something, we should be very careful as to what we are going to allow ourselves to emerge into.

Unfortunately, I don’t read Greek or Hebrew, I am restricted to the Biblical translations that are available in English. I can only trust that those scholars who did the work of translation knew what they were doing and did it correctly. Since I have found English translation Bibles to be true in my own life, I would assume that the work was done correctly. If that is “Western-American-Protestant-Modern-Post-Enlightenment”, then so be it. I think it is more problematic to read into the Bible an Eastern-Asian-Pantheist-Ancient-Un-Enlightened view.

You are right that we should not make the Bible say what it doesn’t say. However, by your reasoning we must conclude that those who worship Buddha are going to heaven because the Bible does not specifically forbid Buddha worship. One has to infer from the second commandment in Ex 20: 4-6 (do not worship idols), but this is an inference made from reason or “Enlightenment” and may not be acceptable in this discussion.

Also, your very statement that “nowhere in the Bible does it say that salvation cannot be a process” requires the understanding that nowhere does the Bible say that salvation is by a process and is therefore making the Bible say something it does not say. You contradict yourself and thereby prove yourself in error.

Your examples are also very weak if they are intended to shore up the idea of processional salvation. The story of Zacchaeus is probably the best example in scripture of a person making a decision to follow Christ and then being declared saved. Read it in the Bible in Luke 19. Zacchaeus was brought to the place where he had to decide to follow Christ, and it was very soon after encountering Jesus. Granted there was a very short time of process, but it is poor Biblical interpretation to assume that a very short process of minutes or hours could also be reproduced over many years. (Remember, you cannot make the Bible say what it does not). It was only after Zacchaeus’ decision to make right the wrongs he had done that Jesus declared that salvation was brought to the house.

The story of the woman caught in adultery is another great example of Jesus’ requiring a decision from a sinner. John 8:11 – “Go and leave your life of sin” requires that she decide. It takes little wisdom to see it, and one cannot reasonably argue that no decision was required or that Jesus was allowing her some time to come to salvation. If one is required to remove reason from the discussion, then all we are left with is foolishness. I am fairly certain that God is not the God of foolishness.

Yes, Jesus did eat with sinners, and we must as well. That part of the discussion I agree with. It is the avoidance of any kind of gospel that is disturbing. The sinners Jesus ate with were called to repentance, Luke 5:32. Nicodemus was required to be born again, John 3:3. Even Joshua understood this idea thousands of years before Christ, “Choose today whom you will serve,” Joshua 24:15.

Which part of these very blatant and direct scriptures is the part where I am adding any bias?

Also, please give me one obvious example of someone coming to know Christ over time and there not being a moment of decision, an event after which they were declared part of the kingdom, i.e. saved.

I understand that we must be among sinners, and the congregation has been very wrong to exclude sinners from their midst. However, they are still sinners until they decide to follow Christ. There is no scriptural basis for believing in a half-Christian. You either are or you aren’t; either a sheep or a goat; either righteous or unrighteous. One cannot be both, and I don’t see any gray area here, at least not scripturally. The church is comprised of those who are saved, not those who are in process.

I really cannot believe what I am seeing here. I am going to trust that you are all actually Christians yourselves because at no time do you ever quote the one you say you follow - Jesus Christ. You quote philosophers and refer to scripture, but you don't acutally go to scripture. Who is it that you think wrote the scriptures anyway? Was it not God himself? Do you believe anything about scripture or only what the latest fad philosopher says about scripture?

Let me quote Jesus for you:

Luke 18:18-20

18A certain ruler asked him, "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"

19"Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good—except God alone. 20You know the commandments: 'Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother.'

If this is not Jesus requiring a set of standards, then please explain to me what it is. Leron Shultz may sound good and you may like what he says, but in the end he is just wrong.

Paul put it best in Romans 10

8But what does it say? "The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart,"[d] that is, the word of faith we are proclaiming: 9That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.

This is a statement of belief, pure and simple.

C'mon guys you are better than this. Stop giving in to every wind of doctrine.

Yikes...

Well, as far as "contradicting myself", that's just not true or logical. You heard something that I wasn't saying. :) My statement was merely that salvation as a process is never excluded from scripture. I wasn't saying that it is the only way of salvation to the exclusion of a "decision". I'm a huge fan of challenging folks to make concrete decisions for salvation through Jesus... but I'm not arrogant enough to read that into scripture as the ONLY process of salvation. Ok?

Again, your application of my statements to "Buddha" is not accurate. That's really not the point:

It's really about the difference between induction/deduction when it comes to reading scripture.

And that's also where in-depth, contextual study of scripture is very helpful.

And your quote: "The church is comprised of those who are saved, not those who are in process." is a very exclusive and country-club-like mentality... and is only useful if you are truly able to judge someone's heart and soul.

Ok, out of time...

Take care and blessings! :)

Jeremy, my point is this.

It is not up to us to decide if Jesus is arrogant or exclusive. He is the judge and He decides what is the way and what is not. Our comfort with His decisions is irrelevant.

In the scriptures Jesus states there is only one way. He repeatedly uses a single method for salvation - decision. He also judges those who are in or out. Exclusive? Yes, but He is God and He gets it to be however He wishes.

The true arrogance lies in thinking that Jesus was wrong for not allowing another way. If He didn't use processional salvation, what arrogance must we have to assume that we can. He is God, not us.

And ultimately, it is about our paperwork. Your name is either in the Book of Life or it isn't. Rev 20: 11-15.

Only the dead are judged by what they do, and scriptures are clear that those who are in Christ will never die.

Ok, this is my last post and then I'm officially out of the discussion... please carry on without me.

Again, don't hear what I'm not saying. You're completely missing the whole idea.

I never said anything contrary to what you just posted.

You're making my exact point without realizing it. The INclusive nature of the church is exactly because JESUS is the judge, not us. Therefore, I have a HUGE problem with Christians acting as judge and jury rather than introducing people FIRST to Jesus and also including them in the church even if they're in process.

But when you start acting like you're the judge, you're realling taking Jesus' place... and that's not right, and that's also why a lot of ministry is ineffective and irrelevant in today's world. Messed up priorities.

A hurting world needs to be introduced to the Jesus of the Bible and accepted into the faith community (no matter where they're at), not introduced to "modern" doctrine, or the latest rulebook of conservative-evangelical-pharisaical nonsense, or your personal definition of who is in or out (that's not your job).

Again, contextual study of the scriptures, and a good historical understanding of the evolving nature of the church and theology can really help with these kinds of paradigms. And if you don't think theology changes over time, then you really need to read a church history book.

Ok, peace and blessings to everyone. Take care!

antiquer, we "aint mad at ya" we're just dialoging here, aren't we? Thanks for your ideas and perspective.

My reference to Martoia is perfectly illustrated in the Zacchaeus story. maybe he had heard of Jesus before hand, and now he was checking out Jesus for himself. Right off the bat Zacchaeus found that Jesus really wanted that by him coming to his house(Belonging). After time, albeit short in this case, you're right there is decision. What I'm saying is there can be a million little decsions to follow Christ before we even realize that we're beinging to follow Christ. Then, Zacchaeus said I will live differant, and payback for how he had wronged people. That could be both Behavior, and Belief at the same time.

For me this YL situation touches on 2 things: 1.the way that people perceive the church, and 2. that we often tell people to follow Jesus it has to be this exact prayer and you will be saved. 1.There are many times in scripture that Jesus restores people in a myriad of ways. {Maybe an all together different post on "is it really salvation as in the Evangelical sense that we want for people or restoration, in the Shalom/completeness sense"} Some times Jesus restores people not even by their own faith. {Centurion, Canaanite woman, friends lowering the guy through the roof} I don't see one way in the gospels. 2.The church is perscieved as a place for clean people. "I don't go to church, because I'm not a church person. I don't have it all together. Church is for people that have all together." I have had people actually tell me things like this. This is also illustrated in the Zacchaeus story, do we as the church dine with sinners? are we welcoming people into the church and faith?

Are we overtly or covertly telling people they have to first be clean(not be a sinner) before they can come to Jesus? I think that is how we live our church lives. Maybe not you and me personally, but the church. Since I am a leader in the church, I must speak out about that. I see that as contrary to how Jesus lived. I see YL, an organization that I think gets a lot of things right, make some steps a backward I wonder what's going on.

Yea, I am done after this comment. I don't know how it got to

"Do you believe anything about scripture or only what the latest fad philosopher says about scripture?"

antiquer
You're painting with a pretty big brush.

Of course you can be a part of the conversation, but it's hard to go much further with this knee jerking with an anonymous poster.

I agreed with a lot of what you posted. You took what we were commenting on with Doctrinal Statements, and ran to the wrong end zone.

See we are all chewing on these emergent thoughts as well, and lot of folks think we have thrown off everything, chucked the word of God in to the bonfire, and gone to the dark side, when we are just trying to go where we believe God is leading. We know through the people we interact with, that having a system (that is centered on condemnation and fear, instead of love) that people have to go through in order to experience Jesus, would just turn their back and want nothing to do with Christianity.

“while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8)

When things like the Young Life Non-Negotiables come out, I see the divide that is happening, and it creates more and more questions.

We love to ask those questions of ourselves, and of the circles we run in.

If I have offended you, that was not my intent. I apologize if I came across rather strong. I am passionate about my Lord and biblical truth.

****************************

I agree with what Randy and Jeremy have said in the last two posts. The "church" as the world knows the term needs to be more inclusive. However, what you are describing is not the church as Jesus understood and used the term.

That church was an exclusive group of people who believed in Him and lived like Him, accepting His ideas and principles. Ironically, that church was both exclusive and inclusive - anyone could belong, but it required a decision to follow Christ before being admitted. A paradox surely, but for them, it was a life and death thing. Let the wrong person in, and the whole congregation gets fed to the lions.

So, we seem to be coming to some middle ground, but the questions remaining are these:

How do we maintain inclusiveness without throwing out the gospel which is by definition exclusive?

How do we overcome the bad image the world has of what they think is the church?

Will statements of belief accomplish this, even in part? (i.e. we believe this and we are willing to actually live like we believe it. For me the biggest part of the problem with the "church" is that we don't live like we say we believe. If the church had done that over the years, we would not be having these discussions right now.)

Does inclusiveness require that we accept sinful behaviors without addressing them as sinful?

Stan
Bay City, MI

Hey Andy,

Didn't mean to paint you with such a wide brush. Sorry. Guess I got carried away.

You need to understand that people believe emergents are throwing off the Bible because they don't back up what they believe with scripture. Add a few scriptures to what is said, and people might understand better. Also, the few times the Bible is used, it is used in a way that is difficult to reconcile with the whole of scripture, making the conclusions suspect.

As to the gospel of love vs condemnation, I believe that the gospel is both. There is love, but there is also condemnation. Presenting anything less is to mislead the hearer into a false conversion.

I guess I just can't water down the gospel to make it more palatable to people, and that is what it sounds like in these posts. Jesus said that few would find salvation, and I am becoming more and more convinced that He was right. Yes, when presented with the whole gospel most people turn away from it, but the largest majority of Jesus' own congregation turned away from it when Jesus presented them with the gospel - "eat my body, drink my blood." I read this as "be totally and completely overcome by my presence in you."

I do understand that you cannot be condemning and expect anyone to listen, but when love gets a person's attention the condemnation part needs to be explained as well as the love part.

What do you think?

Well Hi Stan.

My angst with YL and the church is that we say that to come to Jesus, it has to be only this way or only that way. Essentially, you have to be holy first. That was the old way, sacrifices first, then a right to worship. Clean up first then you can talk to me/come in. We're doing the same thing. We are taking the place of the Holy Spirit and telling people what to change in their lives. It's one thing to be clear with people. It's another to say you can only approach Jesus in this certain way. That's my biggest problem with these happs.

hey guys, don't know if i'm a day late & $1 short but here's some of my thoughts on this; kind of a tangent on the YL issue, but connected nont-the-less.

within the issue of salvation i have come to a place that it's a "both - and" situation.
it's both an event & a process.

paul talks about it throughout his letters to the early church & what i'm going to list [scripture] is by no means exhaustive, but just a sampling.
paul talks about his salvation [& the salvation of others] in PAST, PRESENT & FUTURE terms.

when i first started looking @ this it kind of shook the foundation of what i had grown up with & understood salvation to be. but here's how i shook it out & what i found Biblically -

PAST: eph.2:1-10
we were dead in our sin, Christ saved us, we're objects of wrath. not much doubt there about our condition.

PRESENT: rom3:21
righteousness from God - apart from the law, talk of the atonement of Christ & God's justice.

PRESENT2: rom.7:14-25
paul's on-going struggle with sin, that it is a daily thing. connection to the law of God but also to the person of Jesus.

FUTURE: phil.3:12-14
recognition that he has not arrived. paul presses on toward the goal, the prize, the ultimate destination.

i think for many the goal has been, when we talk about evangelism, to get people "saved" & a seat in heaven.
i think we've heard this discussion before.
the problem then becomes just getting them to walk through the door & it becomes an event that is cast in history.

so for one reason or another we've, in our recent church history past, cannon-ized an event, a moment in a persons history & not giving much attention to what needs to happen right here & now.

on another note within this whole conversation.

i think that we've fallen in love with the moment of conversion, when that person makes a definitive choice to follow Christ. it all seems like sales hype to me.

"johnson, how many calls did you make today?"

relationships take time to develop & we need to make sure that we're not just setting up the conversation about Jesus for the sake of having the conversation. getting people to choose Jesus isn't really our job. that Jesus' job. our job [pastors or not] is to live out a life that's reflective of Jesus & "be ready to give an answer to everyone who ASKS you to give the reason for the hope that you have...with gentleness and respect."

maybe we should be listening more to what THEY are saying & form our conversation & talk of Jesus around those needs & heart desires...

one more piece on the PRESENT nature of our salvation - and a pretty big one: phil.1:12-17
paul says "work out your salvation with fear & trembling."

this issue of works & deeds is all over the NT. i think it's there because paul was dealing with the same thing that we do today. a balance, give & take of what we do & the work of grace.

here again is how is see the inter-play of works & grace: we're saved by grace through Christ, because of that recognition in our own lives we're prompted to do good works. we care for others, do for those that cannot do for themselves. we care about the environment, care for those in countries that have no water & are engaged in horrible war.
when we do good works it reminds us that we're saved by grace. & that no matter what kind of lives we live; healthy, wealthy, poor, dirty, war-torn, etc. we can experience Christ. and because of being saved by grace we do good works...

it's cyclical and one feeds the other. or at least it's supposed to.

Nice post Randy.

Scripturally, salvation is ongoing - Past, Present, & Future.

Question: Is the Present & Future relevant without the Past?

In other words, without the event is the process relevant?

Whoops!

I guess that post was made by Nathan.

Nice post Nathan.

good follow-up about the PAST/PRESENT/FUTURE. yea, the past has to matter. if we only look at the present & the future as a part of what God wants to do with our lives we're missing a big chunk of the puzzle.
our past matters!

something that i find interesting though, with students & adults [you guys probably see this also], is that we tend to become defined by our past.

whispers in our ear, "that's who you are & you can't change that. it's a part of your history."

while that's true, we sometimes allow ourselves to be TOO connected to our past & it defines everything about us.

but the past matters a ton as to where we've come FROM. we have to know/understand where we've been to know where we're going.

{wow I, let this sit here for 2 days. I don't know if its a complete thought or not. I'm going to post it anyway.}

I think my mind got side tracked for a while there.

Well said Nate. No we can't ignore any part of the time line of our lives. They all work together for who we are.

I'll be clearer. I believe that a person needs to come to a decision to follow Jesus. That is an event in history. Before I said, evangelism shouldn't be an event, like come to this event for the purpose of evangelism. I really mean a large group, come to the church/our terf event. I think sharing Christ should happen in all we do, and with words. So to make it an event, I think quarantines the decision from the whole picture of what it means to be a disciple of Christ. Converts as apposed to disciples. Is it possible then to help people through to the next steps of being a disciple? Yes. But we do a horrible job of it. I think it's more realistic to Share Jesus and faith on the small level. You're already connected with the person, and you have a space/place/time already to walk with them.

More on the "gradient or spectrum" train of thought. When we say that you have to come to Jesus in a certain way we don't allow for different types of people to come to Jesus in their own way. It's different in different churches. Some it's the altar. Some it's the new believers/members class. Some it's a particular service, or venue. To me that's what the YL issue is touching on. So people that don't know Jesus, often don't get a chance to make that decision. Some that would if they were allowed to in a way that ministered to them. Like maybe at someone's house, or while you're camping with them. Or maybe they need to hear about God's love first. Or better yet have it shown to them by us.

That sounds like the early church (Book of Acts) to me.

To them it was a daily living thing. Evangelism was not an event like you say - come to church and be evangelized. It was more like "my whole life is evangelism. With everything that I am, I preach Christ." Through that people were "converted" and then brought into the church group.

It is the discipling that has a gradient or as Peter wrote:

"But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,..." (2 Pet 3:18)