Nope, it’s John Stickley! I made a massive mistake while working on my blog database today and I thought I had lost my entire blog. If you stopped by this afternoon I’m sure you noticed the disaray. While contemplating the thought of losing 2 and a half years of my writing I called John for help. Amazingly enough, John tells me that it was an “easy fix” for him. Whew! I’m glad to have him around!

So, in case you’re wondering about who that is flying by your house faster than a speeding bullet, no, it’s not Clark Kent, just John Stickley on his way to fix my mistakes once again!

Thanks John!

In America today we have a great problem with ethnocentrism. According to wikipedia “Ethnocentrism or ethnocentricity is the tendency to look at the world primarily from the perspective of one’s own culture.” We have a tremendous tendency to relate to scripture and the characters in scripture in ways that are familiar to us. There’s nothing unusual in that, it only makes sense that we would try and relate to people and concpets in ways that are familiar with us. In one sense though, that’s what makes understanding scripture very difficult for those of us in North America. The society and culture that Jesus lived in was tremendously different than the one we live in today.

For instance, I have a good friend who is a church planter in California who likes to refer to many of our current American pictures of Jesus as “Surfer Jesus” because of his blond hair and blue eyes. I’m afraid that I have many aquaintances from the southeast who are going to have a heart attack when they find out someday that Jesus looked a lot like the middle easterners that they villify in their snide comments and actions.

For many this may not seem to be much of problem. You may see the that there is a problem, but it may not seem to carry that much weight particularly in comparison to many of the other problems floating around the Christian world. It is, however, a much greater problem than many would imagine.

For those who are missionaries among non-anglo-americans the wall of the “American Jesus” can often loom large. It was amazing to me, when living in another culture, to consistently have to battle with the belief that to be a “christian” meant to behave as an American. For instance it one particular instance was disturbing to me as I spoke at a Ghanaian church. After driving 30 minutes past electricity and pavement I was confronted with a small white church with a steeple, a sound system powered by car batteries (complete with wireless mics) and an indigenous African pastor wearing a suit and a tie leading the church in American hymns. Sadly many well meaning, but poorly trained American missionaries had contextualized the gospel to the American context and then allowed that contextualization to carry the same weight as scriptural truth to the point where many of the Africans that I encountered believed that a succesful church wasn’t possible without many of the typical Amer!
ican features. Unfortunately this occured at the loss of the gospel within their own cultural situations.

Now I’m not opposed to contextualization, as a matter of fact I think it’s important in helping to apply biblical truth in any context, however when the American perception of Jesus, or the Americanization (is that a word?) of Jesus, takes precedence over the authentic Jesus, we have a problem.

This is equally problematic in America, however. We have so twisted and changed the authentic Jesus and the original church that there is often very little in our American contexts that reflects what originally was.

The video below is a funny, yet altogether too apropriate example of that. Vintage21 is a church in Cary, North Carolina that worked through a series on Jesus. As part of that series they put together a series of videos that takes a humorous look at many people’s perception of a pansy, judgmental, Jesus. I hope the video is enlightening to you as much as it has been for me.

From my house, to yours, here’s a wish that you have a Merry Christmas filled with worship of the Christ-child and surrounded by family and friends. Blessing to you and your family this season!

I have claimed, for some time now, that evangelism is not the first priority of the church. I have faced some significant opposition from friends, but my study of scripture leads me to believe that bringing glory to God is the first priority of the church. As such, evangelism takes on an incredibly important role, just as does discipleship, ministry, fellowship, etc. I came across a quote today from Dallas Willard that I thought was particularly good and I thought I would share it with you. I’m curious to know your thoughts.

It is, I gently suggest, a serious error to make “outreach” a primary goal of the local congregation, and especially so when those who are already “with us” have not become clear-headed and devoted apprentices of Jesus, and are not, for the most part, solidly progressing along the path. Outreach is one essential task of Christ’s people, and among them there will always be those especially gifted for evangelism. But the most successful work of outreach would be the work of inreach that turns people, wherever they are, into lights in the darkened world.

A simple goal for the leaders of a particular group would be to bring all those in attendance to understand clearly what it means to be a disciple of Jesus and to be solidly committed to discipleship in their whole life. That is, when they are asked who they are, the first words out of their mouth would be, “I am an apprentice of Jesus Christ.” This goal would have to be approached very gently and lovingly and patiently with existing groups, where the people involved have not understood this to be part of their membership commitment.

Ok, so my break was really short! I read this article today and thought it would be something that many of you would find interesting.

According to the Guttmacher Institute in a recent survey, close to 95% of Americans have had pre-marital sex. Beyond that, their survey claims that this number hasn’t changed much since the 1940’s. They also claim that women are almost equally as likely as men to engage in pre-marital sex and that these realities have remained this way for almost 50 years. Their research says that among women born between 1950-1978 aproximately 91% of them had engaged in pre-marital sex before they were age 30.

This study was extremely disturbing to me. If this is correct, and I’d like to see more research to substantiate their claim, but if it is true, it would behoove us to reconsider how we approach our teaching in this regard. If this is correct, than it is obvious that there is little success in our traditional methods. We must find new ways to communicate the biblical truth that abstinence is THE policy before marriage.

While I’m not taking a blogfast, this Christmas season has been my busiest ever. As such I’m just giving you a heads up that I’ll probably be offline for a week or so. If I unexpectedly get some time, or I find somthing important that “needs” my commentary I’ll be back. Otherwise, I hope that you all have a blessed Christmas season!

Our family Christmas letter is now online. Some of you reading this blog will be getting a Christmas card from us, but even you will have to access the web to read the letter since we no longer send out hard copies of our Christmas missive. If you’re interested in keeping up with our family you can do so by clicking here.

It appears that some of you are having difficulty getting to the Christmas letter. If you click HERE it will take you directly there.

If you are in the mood for Christmas shopping, and you haven’t quite figured out what to get that hard to shop for “little hunter boy” than we have the gift for you! How about a hunter jeep complete with deer on the hood and cooler in the back, not to mention that it rides around accompanied by the sounds of “Low Rider” and “Sweet Home Alabama.”

Man, if I can ever stop laughing I might have to buy this for some folks I know!