Un-Christian

This week we start a new series called Un-Christian... I had originally called it “What I Hate about Church” but thought that the word “un-Christian” said it all.  I grew up in church all my life.  Born in the deep south bible belt where my dad was the consummate Tent revivalist and in that environment you experience a little of everything that church life has to offer, both the good and the bad.  As I was thinking about this series of talks at Living To Go Church I kept coming back to the basic mission assigned to us by Jesus Himself so many years ago, to go to all the world and preach the message of Christ to all people. I think that the desire of nearly everyone that I know as believers is essentially that but somehow is seems that we get all tangled up in tradition and modern church life.  So our goal at LTG is to simplify.  As I get older I find myself worrying less about the periphery and more about the core, especially when it comes to my faith and as a pastor I think that the church that embraces the core of our mission as priority will be solidly effective in reaching people for Christ, as will each believer.  There is so much truth to the phrase “perception is everything” and the truth is that we’ve allowed ourselves to become caricatures to the world.  I believe that we have to know what the people around us think of us and then SHOW them what being a Christ-follower is all about.  KEY WORD IS “SHOW”! So let’s look at the image that we put out.  Is it really Christ-like? Have we become “stuck in the muck” of traditional thinking?  Or trapped by false norms?The Wesleyan Quadrilateral is a form of Christian theological reasoning that takes Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience as its norms. For Christians, Scripture is the "norming norm," the ultimate authority, while tradition, reason, and experience are "normed norms," real but nonetheless subordinate authorities. The conversation we have should be... “How do we present Christ in a compelling and truthful way?”.  I guess I said all of that to say this.   The message of Christ is simple at its core.  Maybe we need to focus on that instead of all the peripheral things and work on loving people into the Kingdom of God.....  Just a thought...