This week I asked the question, “How much evangelism is too much?” I only ask this in the sense that if you are too upfront about evangelizing, will it turn more people off than draw into your religion?
Case in point. Below is a billboard which is near where I work. I post it here with the question, “How many people has this billboard brought to Christ?” And “How many people has it pushed away from Christ?”

Thursday night I attended Dave Ramsey’s Town Hall for Hope at my own home congregation. I wasn’t expecting anything more than common sense; I already know all of Ramsey’s spoilers – those revolutionary ideas like “Don’t buy what you can’t afford.”
What I wasn’t sure about is how we would handle evangelizing the public within our own church walls. Something was said about the ultimate hope being in the resurrection of Jesus. I felt a bit uncomfortable in this, not because I’m ashamed of my faith, but because of the fear visitors looking for simple financial assistance would be turned off by this advertisement. And then during the simulcast I saw that Ramsey himself was evangelizing, mentioning Jesus during and at the very end of his broadcast. This put me at ease. After all those disciples of Ramsey were surely familiar with his message and wouldn’t necessarily be turned off by it. And these visitors were inside of a church and should expect to hear a message of hope found in Jesus.
I suppose I, like the sower, should let the seeds fall where they may and let God give the increase. And yet I realize that friendship evangelism is the most effective form of evangelism, not these brief passing moments where seeds are planted.

The bumper sticker read “Imagine a World Without God in it.” An obvious thought provoking message by a vocal atheist.
Atheists and agnostics have been more vocal in recent years. As if it is popular not to believe in God. Whereas in the years of my youth the existence of the Christian God was not questioned. In the 1980s, it was a rarity to find a fellow student who did not attend church services somewhere. I would have to assume that atheists received some type of negative experience from someone(s) claiming to be Christian in their impressionable years. Vocal and blatent about their beliefs, these Christians probably do more harm than good. I’m not saying we as Christians shouldn’t be passionate about what we belief…the hope of heaven…salvation through God’s grace. What I am saying is that we should be mindful of how we portray ourselves to those of the world, and even to our fellow Christians. Young Christians, or those who have a potential of weak faith, are liable to blame God when they see fellow Christians actiing inappropriately.
Still I have imagine who or what caused my fellow motorist to stop believing in God and to be so vocal about it. Was it a hypocritic preacher? A disciplinarian nun? An abusive priest? We may never know. Or perhaps since we have generations of atheist parents raising atheist children, perhaps nothing happened. No child in that family was brought to church and taught the Bible. The gospel was never preached to the young.

North Korea has always fascinated me. Maybe its the same way car crashes fascinate me. Who could imagine an entire nation built on the broken system of communism mixed in with heriditary leadership and a cult of personality.
Enter Shin Dong-hyuk, a former North Korean citizen born in a concentration camp. His crime? His uncles’ colaborated with South Korea during the Korean War in the 1950s. He was guilty by heriditary proxy. In the concentration camp rape, death, and torture was routine. Shin himself saw his brother and mother executed.
Consequentally having only known life in the concentration camp, the idea of love was a foreign concept to him. Today Shin goes to church, but the concepts are difficult to understand.
What is especially heartbreaking is this statement:

The concept of forgiveness is especially difficult for him to grasp. In [the concentration camp] he said, to ask for forgiveness was “to beg not to be punished.”

Which begs the question…do we…as a Christian brotherhood…beg for forgiveness to avoid hell? Do we do good works to avoid punishment or because we genuinely love God and want to do His will? I think for most people it’s a little of both.

Sarah Palin. The very name leaves some of us scratching our heads. Was this the best the Republicans could come up with? Or was the the last wimper of a fading campaign?
Much of what the media has focused on is the pregnancy of her oldest daughter, Bristol. The commentators aren’t necessarily focusing on the shame of sexual relationship out of wedlock. After all, everyone does it, don’t we?
Instead the media instead focuses on the perceived hypocracy of Mrs. Palin. Teaching abstinence and not safe sex.
And yet we as a society seemed to have glossed over what we somehow need to be reminded of over and over again. Sex outside of marriage is sinful. David and Bathsheba is an example.
We hold elders to a much higher standard than that of Vice Presidental candidates. Consider one of the qualifications of an elder:

“He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him with proper respect. (If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church?)”
1 Timothy 3:4-5.

If an elder’s daughter were to get pregnant out of wedlock, the elder would likely resign, if he followed the Bible.
Replace particular words with the previous scripture.

“Vice Presidents must manage his/her own family well and see that his/her children obey him/her with proper respect. (If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he/she take care of our country?)”

What has gone wrong with our country? We rejoice in sin, or at the very least don’t condemn it and say it is a personal family issue.
Drug abuse is rampant in today’s youth and parents don’t say a word to their kids about it. Parents rely too much on schools and youth ministers rather than trying to actually act on their own.
If we are to overcome this sin, we must urge our parent to act like parents. Don’t be afraid to shell out discipline because in the long run it will make your child a better person and in turn a better society.

I’ve made it a hobby of mine to photograph religious roadside signs. The vast majority of them I’ve taken in rural Allen County, Kentucky. I have been told that most of these signs are the result of the activities of a religous radio broadcaster.
I guess I have to question it. Even this one with the message “Mommie! Thank You For Not Aborting Me!” with a thumbs up sign from the non-aborted child. This “in-your-face” Christianity will hardly gain followers, especially from couples who made the mistake of choosing abortion. I’ve been through this type of hard-lined anti-abortion preaching in the ’90s. It typically divided folks rather than united them.

Then there’s the idea of reminding people of the Ten Commandments…. in case you had forgotten them.

We don’t do Gospel Meetings anymore. In fact it’s been probably 5 years or more since the church I attend had a Gospel meeting, and it was more of a homecoming for a former preacher.
Gospel Meetings, for those uninitiated, are a half a week’s worth of Sunday night’s evening service replayed Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. During my elementary school years I can remember having to rush to get my homework done to attend each evening service. My family was still is a good family and would faithfully attend each evening service whenever the church doors were open.
I think that what church leadership has found is that Gospel Meetings don’t convert people. It might be a way to reach out to get potential converts. But it is very rare that lost soul will wander into a church during a Gospel Meeting who will then automagically make their life right with God.
The bottom line is that conversions are made through, say it with me: R-E-L-A-T-I-O-N-S-H-I-P-S. Which is why it is so important to invite your unconverted friends to both religious and social activities where they are surround by Christians. It’s not just Friends Day or a Gospel Meeting. It’s ski trips, retreats, scrapbooking night and the like.
Faithfully attending church should be easy in this day and age. And please note I’m not discounting the contributions and hardships of early Christians. I’m just saying that in this day and age when people are earnestly trying to provide for their family, working late and missing a Gospel Meeting shouldn’t make one a less than spectacular Christian.
One has the look at the fruit of a Gospel Meeting vs. the fruit reaped by other means. Which is why things like small group meetings should be implemented by church groups.

Luke 5:29-31
29 Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. 30 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and ‘sinners’?”
31 Jesus answered them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 32 I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

Many well meaning Christians have read over the above passage but never have put it into practice. In fact it’s not all that unusual for Christians to in effect shoot their wounded.
Take for example the fallen away Christian – the wounded Christian. The kneejerk reaction at the very least is to turn their back on sinners. The other common practice is to confront the sinner negatively thereby insuring an equally negative reaction by the sinner toward Christianity.
There’s the old adage that says “Hate the sin; love the sinner.” If only we could separate the sin from the sinner in our own minds.

Perhaps I’ve grown a bit more tolerant on social issues in old age. I find myself not getting as upset as my fellow Christians. Maybe I’ve become jaded or just not necessarily worrying about things that don’t affect me directly.
Today I attended a seminar meant for church teachers of youth. “How we respond culture” was the theme. Abortion, homosexuality, negative influences in the media were all discussed. The first two have been discussed at length during sermons and Bible classes at church. The third one, especially in the aspect of the internet, not so much.
Parents and Bible class teachers may not know how to respond to the internet in response to their student’s/child’s surfing habits. The problem much of the time is the teen is much more computer savy compared to the adults trying to police it. Teens find ways around the filters and monitoring.
Parents seem to have their hands tied and are unable or unwilling to learn more about their child’s internet habits and therefore fail to do anything about it.
Time and time again I’ve run across a church member’s MySpace page which doesn’t reflect the persona they try to reflect on Sunday mornings. It’s gotten to the point that nothing shocks me anymore. What is discouraging to me is that no one seems sincere about their Christianity anymore. It’s more a projection they want to portray to their parents/youth ministers/elders. And it doesn’t seem to me that anyone is willing to do anything about it.

Have you ever noticed how nosey some religious people can be? And they tend to use the excuse of having a need to pray for someone’s tragedy.
“But it was done out of love…” was one excuse I heard lately.
There exists a fine line between gossip vs. the sharing of information for the excuse of adding someone to a prayer list. In fact in most instances I see no difference.
Webster defines gossip as “a person who habitually reveals personal or sensational facts about others.” Whether or not the revealation was done in a negative light or for the purpose of praying for someone is not mentioned.
Humans have a problem with gossip. If someone hears a juicy rumor or horrible situation about another, there is a tendency to share it with a 3rd party, if only to see that person’s reaction about it. If we truly want to emulate Christ, then we wouldn’t even mention a person’s negative situation, if only to that particular person. It’s something we all need to work on, including myself.

I was going through the list of Bible classes at my own congregation updating the church’s website as I normally do. I realized something. I miss good Bible classes. I miss those thoughtful discussions where you don’t even realize the time passing by in your class. Sometimes we are focused too much on covering an entire subject with a certain number of bullet points in a 45 minute window, rather than growing a discussion.
During my teenaged years a handful of us would get together at a church member’s house on Thursday nights for a Bible study. Some of those discussions were the best Bible discussions I’ve had in a while. I still remember some of the topics.
And I must confess something. In larger Bible classes I’m apprehensive about speaking out, expressing my mind, for fear of looking foolish. I’m much more comfortable in a smaller class where I know everyone. But aren’t we all much better off with our friends in a class?
I’m starting to realize why churches with small groups seem to do so well. The tie that binds is never as strong as those participating in a long term small group. I wish I had that. I’m under the impression that there is a small group which meets on my street under the auspices of an area church of Christ. And sometimes I wish I were part of it.