A Shameless Plug for e-Sword
February 28, 2005
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Bible, Miscellany, Technical Feedback : 1 comment so far
I think the best electronic Bible system available for Windows-based computers is e-Sword. Given that it is entirely free (though donations are gladly accepted), I want to thank Rick Myers for providing such an outstanding tool out of the goodness of his heart.
This may be a little late to the game, but as someone who has loaded up on the plug-ins available for e-Sword, I don’t always go back to the site to check for additions. Though it’s been almost a year, I see that the English Standard Version is available for download from the site. Excellent.
If you are a PC user (I’m a Mac guy, but I have a PC, too), this is essential software. Check it out today.
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The Christian Walk in a Nutshell
February 27, 2005
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Apologetics, Church Issues, Evangelism Feedback : 6 comments
Here is the classic conundrum that has boggled the church in the last fifty years or so.
The charismatics say, "Well, the Holy Spirit says…."
The doctrinarians say, "Well, the Bible says…."
The neo-"Jesus People" say, "Well, Jesus did…."
Here's the only truth: They all reinforce each other. You can't have one without the others.
You want the Christian walk in a nutshell? Here it is: Those who love the Lord Jesus and serve Him alone are led by His Spirit to speak the Truth of the Scriptures while reaching out to other people like He did. That's it. Doesn't seem too hard, does it? Here's all we need to understand as disciples of the Lord Jesus: We must love and serve the Lord alone:
It is the LORD your God you shall fear. Him you shall serve and by his name you shall swear. —Deuteronomy 6:13
And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. —Mark 12:30
Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him." —John 14:21
We must know Jesus and know His voice:
And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. —John 17:3
My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. —John 10:27
For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. —Romans 8:14
We must know the Scriptures:
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. —Colossians 3:16
And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness. —Acts 4:31
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work. —2 Timothy 3:16-17
We must get out there and reach people:
And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age." —Matthew 28:18-20
Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.' Then the righteous will answer him, saying, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?' And the King will answer them, 'Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.' —Matthew 25:34-40
Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father. —John 14:12
That's it—the Christian walk in a nutshell. Now what's it going to take for us to live it?
Tags: Apologetics, Church Issues, Evangelism, Good News, The-Gospel
Commune-ity Values (or Redefining “Church” Yet Again….)
February 26, 2005
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Christianity in North America, Church Issues, Community, Counterculture, Hospitality, Relevance, Simplicity Feedback : 1 comment so far
Oy vey!
That's all I can say after reading The House Church Blog's post on what the Bible really says about house churches.
As someone who has even considered whether a house church was the "church of last resort" for a couple of square pegs like my wife and I, this semi-new definition of what constitutes a house church should have even Robert Fitts throwing a few of his namesake (minus a "t"—of course.)
A distressing—for all those house church proponents, at least—excerpt:
The implications of Gehring's insights about the importance of oikos [Greek for "household"---Ed.] are huge! For one thing, it means that moving church from a special church building into a home does not go nearly far enough. The churches established by Jesus and his disciples were not mere weekly meetings. They were literally households—ongoing, 24/7, family-like communities.
Consider 1Cor. 16:19 - "Aquila and Prisca greet you heartily in the Lord, with the church that is in their house (oikos)". If we read this from our 21st Century Western context, we would (unconsciously?) conclude that once a week a group of Christians met in this couple's home for church. However, if we read this verse from the 1st Century context, we would conclude something quite different.
To say that we have a "house church" because we meet in someone's home at 7 pm on Tuesday nights, falls significantly short of the New Testament concept of "house church".
Yikes! Are we back to the redeemed hippie communes of the 1970's Jesus People era? Well, from this assessment, it seems we are.
The perpetually moving target that is the method of some to capture the exact mode of meeting of the first century Church is bothersome. Methodology is great and I applaud those who are going for as pure a methodology as can be understood, but at some point we just need to get on with doing what the Lord commanded: making disciples. If every couple years we rip down the idea of what constitutes a "true" church meeting, then we are only forcing our churches through ever-finer strainers. Who or what comes out of that in one piece is debatable.
Perhaps we are asking too much of people. In the midst of a resurgence in house churches, this is an acid test that few can withstand, I suspect. "Now we have to live in the same house with these people!" is asking too much too early on in this nascent movement.
My wife and I have wondered if the best model is to get a group of six or seven committed Christian families to purchase about fifty acres of land near a smaller town and build a home for each family on that land, along with a larger building that can provide a centralized meeting place. One or two of the families can work the remaining land as a source of food and revenue for the community, not to mention a source for feeding the poor. A portion of the income of each family would be pooled and used to support the community, especially during times of duress (such as medical expenses or job losses), and for basic outreach benevolences. Childcare and homeschooling would also be provided in this model, with every family chipping in. Group meals could also be planned, as well as allowances made for private dinners devoted to the needs of each individual family. The items that many families duplicate (yard care, basic tools, even vehicles) could be pooled in order to save money, while time can be saved not having to work and shop for duplicated items, freeing folks up to spend more time in devotion to the Lord.
Despite this idea of ours, I'm not completely ready to give up on the current model we have used for so long. It may not be perfect, but that imperfection may lie more in our inability to stay true to the Gospel message than in our lack of replicating the Book of Acts' style of church meeting to a "T." There is much to be said for the synergy a church of two hundred or more can bring to a locality when all two hundred souls are on the same page spiritually, right with God and with each other. You just can't get that with any other style of church meeting.
That's what I am hoping for now in the church we just joined, at least. Should we grow that into something more "organic," then great. But for now, I'm not going to get flustered by yet another (somewhat) new direction in ecclesiology. You shouldn't, either.
Tags: Christianity in North America, Church Issues, Community, Counterculture, Hospitality, House Church, Relevance, Simple Church, Simplicity
Stones Cry Out (and Have Good Advice, Too!)
February 25, 2005
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Uncategorized Feedback : add a comment
Over at Stones Cry Out group blog is a look at twelve imperatives for all Christians. The thought was originally for those Christians classified as Evangelicals, but the expectations are Christian universals and carry no uniquely Evangelical message. Regardless of what kind of Christian you label yourself, this is good reading.
In short, those twelve expectations are:
1. Value Character
2. Support Human Rights
3. Develop a Consistent Ethic of Life
4. Honor and Protect Families
5. Help the Poor and Imprisoned
6. Be Responsible Citizens
7. Be Good Stewards
8. Do Justice
9. Recognize Evil
10. Seek Spiritual Vision
11. Demonstrate a Graceful Spirit
12. Share Your Faith
Read it all here.
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Who I Am & Why Cerulean Sanctum—Part 4
February 22, 2005
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Uncategorized Feedback : 3 comments
In what is hopefully the final entry in this last month’s series covering my life’s journey, we come back to where we left off—at the Vineyard in 1989.
I came to the Vineyard after most of the leadership left the Presbyterian church I had been going to. Many of my friends and some of those leaders wound up at the Vineyard and I followed them there.
Now this does not mean that I was unfamiliar with the Vineyard. In fact, I
had been listening to the worship CDs they had and loved the purity of what the Vineyard was trying to accomplish, recovering a worshipful attitude. I even recommended the church to some friends, so it was not a difficult leap for me.
It seems like an eternity ago, but at one time the Vineyard was highly controversial. Sadly, this was largely due to some poor choices the Association of Vineyard Churches (AVC) made in their attempt to remain on the “cutting edge” of the charismatic movement. But I’ll get into that later.
I started teaching classes at my new church and was heavily involved with the prayer team, the latter being a natural outgrowth of my desire to be an intercessor. Still, I was beginning to realize I had some unfinished business elsewhere.
After a few months at the Vineyard, I felt a calling to finish my education, eventually getting on at Wheaton College in the Christian Ed department. I attended a Vineyard church at Wheaton and encountered actual persecution for doing so. To this day, Wheaton acts like the AVC doesn’t exist. Being a charismatic at Wheaton was definitely no fun. The Kansas City Prophet movement blew up while I was there and I was forced into defending it by some profs who liked to put the lone charismatic on trial. The whole movement gave me the heebie-jeebies actually, so it was no fun trying to keep others at the school from throwing out the charismatic baby with the prophetic bathwater.
Truth is, Wheaton was stifling. I found the lack of openness to anything but what people grew up with to be a grind on me spiritually, so it was nice to get back to my Vineyard home church with my degree and my love for the Lord intact. In the earlier days of the AVC, there was a great emphasis on grace, and that was healing.
But what started with the Kansas City Prophet movement showed the dark underbelly of the Vineyard, too—an unwillingness to scrutinize “new moves of God” more fully before jumping on board with their imprimatur. The worst part was that when these new moves fizzled or their leadership fell into error, no one in the Vineyard would stand up and try to explain to the people in the seats what happened and why.
I met my wife, whose background was Evangelical Friends (the same denomination John Wimber had come from), in 1994 and she started coming to the Vineyard, too. I think it was a good thing for her, but we would not stay in that church for long. After getting married in 1996, I took a job with Apple Computer and we moved from Ohio to Silicon Valley.
Finding a church in California was something we thought would be easy, but we had a false start at one Vineyard church there before finding another Vineyard in Palo Alto that was a good place for us. We were at that church for almost four years.
Before we left for California, I asked the pastor of our Vineyard in Ohio to not let the church become a clone of Willow Creek. While at Wheaton I had done a year-long study of the Willow Creek ministry model and had come away seeing that what others were billing as the model of the future was actually an emperor with no clothes. I viewed that model as lowest common denominator Christianity and the last thing I wanted to see was that model being adopted at our Vineyard church. Little did I know how prophetic my warning would be.
After returning to Ohio in 2000 to address the ill health of my parents, we found our old Vineyard church had swallowed the Willow Creek ministry model hook, line, and sinker. Seeker sensitivity had become the new mantra and everything that had been good about the church had been dumbed down and laminated in order to not offend anyone.
But the Gospel is offensive to many people and you lose something by trying to take the cross and sin out of the equation. When my wife and I moved later to the far eastern portion of Cincinnati, we were now faced with an hour-long drive to the church. I’d just buried both my parents and we’d had our first child. After moving, we lost our primary source of income and were truly in the pits. When we needed to hear about the Lord most, we were instead getting sermon messages about self-esteem.
Things got better for us as we looked past our church for the spiritual strength we could not get there any longer. We also realized the importance of being local, so after a long withdrawing period we finally split from the Vineyard after fifteen years and have recently found a wonderful, small non-denominational charismatic church just a few miles from where we now live.
And that’s the whole story!
As for Cerulean Sanctum, this blog was actually born out of another blog I started in 2001 (does that make me a blog pioneer?) that looked at current events from a Christian perspective. But out of my dissatisfaction with the direction our Vineyard church in Ohio had taken, I felt a calling to change the blog to reflect the growing unease many Christians were feeling with the church growth movement, spiritual deadness in many congregations, foolishness in the charismatic movement, and “mega-Churchianity.” Many of us are reading the Bible and thinking, How come churches today are not like the one we see in Acts? That’s a very good question that we show much reluctance in addressing.
I want to tackle these issues because we cannot ignore them. The future of the Church in America depends on us using God’s wisdom to be strong and wise.
My heart is for the Church as it is expressed in America. I know where we can be because I’ve seen glimpses of how astonishing the Church can be when we are living out the truth of Jesus Christ in its fullness. But rather than this being the norm, too many Christians are settling for something far less. My prayer is that Cerulean Sanctum can be a nexus for people who are looking for more than lowest common denominator Christianity. I hope to inspire people to think more critically about many of the fads in Christian circles and to call us back to the true heart of the Lord.
Some would classify that as prophetic and perhaps it is. But that is why I am here. I hope you can be edified by the discussion here, and that together we can grow to become the Church God has always desired us to be.
Blessings on you all. Thanks for stopping by.
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