Fellow Believer: Hey, have you heard that awesome new Mercy Me song?

Me: No, I haven’t.

Fellow Believer: Aww man! They play it over and over on Klove.

Me: I don’t listen to Klove, it puts me to sleep.

Fellow Believer: How can you not love Klove? It is so awesome to hear such positive music on the radio.

Me: I like positive music but Klove just seems bland to me.

Fellow Believer: Well what positive song do you suggest?

Me: That new Katy Perry song, Firework, it is so inspirational.

Fellow Believer: Oh, I don’t listen to that kind of stuff. Besides, she is gross, she sang a song about kissing a girl.

Me: *Walks away*

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

Fellow Believer 2: I know you follow politics, how do feel about Mike Huckabee?

Me: Well, I met him once. Seems like a nice guy. I have to disagree with him on wanting to repeal healthcare.

Fellow Believer 2: Well someone has to fight against the liberal agenda, it is so anti-God.

Me: Well I just don’t see as to how the liberal agenda in itself is anti-God. I actually consider myself to be a liberal.

Fellow Believer 2: They are just blinding you Jason. I don’t see how you can be a Christian and not fight for the conservative worldview.

Me: Well, I believe that the conservative worldview trumps up corporate America in order to stomp on and feed on the flesh of the poor.

Fellow Believer 2: Well the Bible says that the poor will always be with us. Plus those liberals want abortion to be legal!

Me: Well I don’t believe the abortion debate is black and white. There are many factors involved. The Bible also says that we are to strive toward the kingdom of God. Which means we look after the poor.

Fellow Believer 2: It is the Christians job to care for the poor, not the government.

Me: If every Christian stepped up, there would be no poor. The problem is that we Christians refuse to get off our butts and do anything, myself included. We Christians have had over a thousand years since the founding of America to properly care for our poor. We have failed. Therefore someone has to enforce it.

Fellow Believer 2: Wow, your ideas are really messed up. I am going to pray for you brother.

Me: I’ll do the same for you… *walks away*

I know this has been a slightly irreverent blog. However, I am trying to emphasize the point that Christianity needs to be less of a culture and more spiritual. We should be an amazing spiritual body full of differing ideals. You should never walk into a church and see only people who vote ONE way and listen to only ONE type of music. Variety is essential. Variety reflects how God made us.

I would like to propose something cathartic for myself. I plan on writing a series of short blogs that simply start off by saying “It gets in the way of my faith when….” At that time I will have the opportunity to share and release the feelings within that tend to hinder my faith. I would like to encourage other bloggers to follow me in this project. It would be nice to see such a burst of openness and transparency within the Christian blogging community. So here goes nothing……

It gets in the way of my faith when…. I turn on the television and see people like Sarah Palin and the other tea partiers evoking the name of my Lord in order to push their political agenda. I don’t mind the fact that they hold to conservative political opinions. I mind that they use the name of my God to push the agenda. Then I see other evangelicals that I thought were my friends abandon and pretend not to know me simply because I voted for a liberal candidate. It hurts me and clutters my relationship with God when I see people mold faith in the view of their politics and vice versa.

But “challenged” does not even start to describe how I feel. After hearing Scott Harrison speak regarding the need for clean water I became angered. Not angry at nature or God for allowing children to grow up in a terrible situation but; angry at myself and people like me.

See, we have this view of Christianity that is purely cultural. By God, this is a Christian nation and so we believe in God. While we are at it, you better vote pro-life, watch the words you use and never under any circumstances listen to Marilyn Manson. Yet, I truly feel that we have missed the point. We might have asked God into our hearts, we may do or not do the things that our culture deems as Christian or non-Christian yet; we miss the point. We miss the whole point of the gospel. However, maybe we aren’t missing the point, perhaps we are just ignoring it all together.

When Francis Chan was giving his message to the stadium he pointed out something that just blew my mind. Europe is full of Cathedrals that have cracks in the walls. These cracks served to allow lepers to see inside the church without being inside of it. THE CHURCH IGNORED A NEED TO SUCH AN EXTENT THAT THEY BLOCKED PEOPLE FROM JOINING THEM IN WORSHIP. Francis also pointed out in Germany there were many churches set up near the train tracks. Trains would travel by as they carried loads of Jews on their way to concentration camps.  Eyewitnesses recall being told to sing louder in order to cover up the screams of the Jews. A BODY OF BELIEVERS SUNG THEIR WORSHIP SONGS LOUDER AND LOUDER IN ORDER TO IGNORE THE SCREAMS OF THE PERSECUTED JEWS! All of this caused me to think about my own country. As Americans we accepted slavery, and even supported the stance Biblically. Not too long ago segregation was the norm in the South. In fact, I live near Greensboro, NC where one of the most famous sit ins occurred.  YET, THE CHURCH IGNORED SLAVERY AND IGNORED THE HORRORS OF SEGREGATION. People were tortured because of the color of their skin and the church just sat back and ignored it!

The Church has to stop ignoring injustice. Today, we have a task ahead of us. Millions of dollars are spent on “preaching the truth” or “spreading the gospel.” Let me tell you this, Jesus never met spiritual needs without first meeting a physical need! Why are we doing this all wrong? We put “truth” at the forefront of our faith instead of putting service at the forefront. If you love Jesus, it is simply not good enough to tell others about Him. If you love Jesus you must serve people.

I am sick to death of all the need in this world. We live our posh western lives where the poorest American is still rich compared to the rest of the world. Yet, we complain about the color of the carpet in our sanctuaries. We complain because people walk into our churches wearing jeans or shorts. How about we cut the electricity off in our churches so that they become a place of discomfort… maybe when we are uncomfortable we can truly experience what God is doing. There are churches in Central America that I know of where no electricity is found and yet they are excited about what God is doing and they rejoice!

I am going to step off my soap box now. I ask that my blog readers pray with me and for me. I want to be used to change the world. I want to help people. Rather my world impact is made from within a church or within another organization. I want to be used. I want to be someone who helps to restore this broken world. I hope you wish the same for your own life.

Last week’s sermon at my church was a breakdown of the Old Covenant vs.. the New Covenant. It was during this sermon that I felt conviction and truly realized how wrong I had been. See, I always felt that alcohol was wrong. This entire basis was built upon my Baptist tradition and it was not Biblically based. After all, 1 Timothy 5:23 actually encourages the drinking of wine as a digestion aid! Looking back, I kept seeing church leaders, even some that I respect, drilling the idea into my head that Jesus turned water into grape juice and not wine.

Now, I am not writing this post for the reason to tell everyone that I think drinking alcohol is acceptable. My main goal in writing this post is to tell you that I am a recovering Pharisee. I have lived my life in an extremely religious manner instead of in a Christ-honoring manner. There is no telling how many people I have turned away from Christ because of my misconceptions. I can only ask that God forgive me for those mistakes. I also hope that those in my life can forgive me for some of my misconceptions. We are all on this journey toward Christ and every one of us still has more than enough room to grow. I know for myself, God is continually breaking my misconceptions and showing me his way.

Let me encourage all of you who are on this Christian journey; take a step back and examine your life. Out of everything that you do and do not do, are those things done or not done because of the teaching of the Holy Bible?  -or- Are those things done or not done because of tradition?

This album is probably one of the best Christian albums to come out in a while. Yet, that is not saying much. The Christian music industry has really failed within the past 10 years to provide the listener with something fresh and current that can compete with mainstream top 40 radio. Let me explain…..

I heard the Newsboys live a few months ago and thought that they really were going to change the course of the industry. Their live performance with new frontman and former dcTalk member, Tait, was amazing (they even covered a Black Eyed Peas song). However, this recording does not do the band justice. Songs that were pumped up live, are calm and mellow on the album. I really think the production value of this cd was centered toward the soccer mom type Christian family. This was probably done in order to gain radio airplay on stations such as K-love. I would share my opinion on Christian radio here but there are plenty bloggers who have already been critical of the “K-love” styled radio format.

The cover of ‘Jesus Freak’ which was amazing live, falls short on the disc. KJ-52 pretty much ruins the rap verses of the song. Perhaps my view on this stems from my prejudice toward Christian rappers. I think Christian rappers are like Christian comedians… it just can’t work because it is too squeaky clean.  I would like to suggest that there be no more remakes of ‘Jesus Freak’ without a reunited dcTalk being the ones to make it.

All in all, I know the Newsboys are great guys. I have met several of them, I even met Tait during the time where dcTalk were crossover successes and I know these people are genuine. Hands down, they need to fire their producer and a&r rep.

After the summer, who knows what the future will hold. I am updating my resume and need to send them out. If you know any churches or ministries in the triad area who needs to hire please keep me informed regarding that. I can work in most every aspect within the church. I have speaking experience as well as experience in youth ministry, children’s ministry, college ministry and outreach ministry.

I would like to use those two above examples from each political spectrum and offer a solid solution; a solution that would allow Christians to put aside politics and focus at the real matter at hand. My simple solution is a command to change hearts.

We as Christians continually try to regulate Christian morality by means of law. The Christian Right wants limited government intervention except when it deals with abortion. If the government told doctors how much they can charge for a procedure it would be considered a loss of freedom. Yet, if the government tells doctors that they cannot perform a procedure (abortion) it is considered heroic. Now, us on the left want the government to intercede on behalf of the poor and downtrodden. That would be nice but there are deeper issues going on in America.

People are no longer seeking after God. Hands down, this is the cause for all the problems addressed by both political spectrums. If people loved God, they would not except a multimillion dollar salary for overseeing a company; at least not without giving a majority of that back to society. If people loved God, they would not kill their unborn children. If doctors loved God, they would charge the bare minimum that they needed to charge while at the same time refusing to kill an unborn child.

Everything comes back to the heart of the matter. We have forgotten our calling as Christians. We would rather spend more time trying to change policies through politics than by addressing the heart issue. Honestly, fixing our country’s problems would be done more easily through politics. Still, rather than taking the lazy way out we should regain our calling to make disciples. If we can seek to change people from the inside out, our problems would all dissolve.

Something else that I would like to point out is the toll that talk radio and opinion based news broadcasts are taking on our faith. It is a sad day, when someone as divisive as Glenn Beck is the commencement speaker for a major Christian university. On what Biblical authority does he come and take such a platform? Is it possible that opinion based news has become an idol to us? Have we came to a place where we quote conservative (or liberal) talking points more often than we meditate on the beauty of God?

In closing, I would like to offer a challenge to my Christian friends. So many times here as of late people have said to be in regards to social justice: “Jason, you don’t get it. The Bible says there will always be poor people. There is nothing that can be done about it.” Well, my final answer to this statement is simple. Sure, there always will be poor people. The Bible also says that there will always be those that oppose God. So does that mean that we should stop trying to make disciples? Should we close all of our churches and just give up? I think not! So I would also think that we would do all we could to fight injustice.

Rather than leave this blog post open to comments. I would ask that you step back, re-read what I said here and pray about it.

My journey through college has been quite an interesting one. There have been trying times and there have been wonderful times. I think of the trials that I endured during my internship at a church plant last year. Those trials made me stronger and helped me realize better what my ministry needs to look like. I also endured trials where I had to question my theology and discover what I truly believed before finally deciding on a university that fit my worldview.

I once heard someone  say that students leave Christian universities in two states. Either they become stronger in their faith; or they lose their faith.

Fortunately, what doesn’t kill you only serves to make you stronger.

So many evangelicals are getting on board with the view of salvation shared on the video. It is causing problems within the church and I honestly fear what damage this philosophy will do. The sad thing is that he is reaching directly to young people in one of his videos. I will not touch the theology of the video. That is for another time and another place. I plan on addressing his theology after I take more time to digest his message.

Where I take the most issue with this Bible teacher is essentially in his approach. Early in his lecture, which is more of a scream session than anything, he forces the listener to doubt his or her salvation. All sins are equal under heaven but to me one of the worst crimes you could ever commit is to make someone doubt their salvation. Telling the audience that hundreds of them are not truly saved, does just that.

I take offense at how he speaks. I know that this is not important to most. I grew up in legalistic circles and I know how that experience allows you to become numb to those types of preachers who do so with elevated voice levels. Now, I don’t agree with this false teacher’s message. Yet, I would give him more respect if he followed the advice of Peter.

..if someone asks about your Christian hope, always be ready to explain it.  But do this in a gentle and respectful way. (1 Peter 3:15-16, NLT)

I preached a message regarding what I call the “bullhorn man.” My point on this blog is the same point I made during that message. YOU WILL NOT REFLECT JESUS AND ALLOW HEARTS TO BE CHANGED IF YOU DO NOT LOWER YOUR VOICE!

1. Cascada- Evacuate the Dancefloor

2. 30h!3 & Katy Perry- Starstrukk

3. Mighty Mighty Bosstones- The Impression That I Get

4. Black Eyed Peas- Pump It

5. Fee- All Because of Jesus