Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Living and Breathing Out Loud, and not Just Blowing Smoke


I am currently reading what I believe to be an awesome, "memoiresque" book written by Donald Miller called Blue Like Jazz. In the book, Miller shares his life experiences in his personal walk with Jesus Christ through writing that seems to be down to earth and genuine. As I am reading this book and identifying with many of his own experiences as a Christian, I am burdened with the question: how should my living out what I believe about Jesus really look like and am I passionately doing that? Here is an excerpt from the book that we should give thought to:

"A friend of mine, a young pastor who recently started a church, talks to me from time to time about the new face of church in America - about the postmodern church. He says the new church will be different from the old one, that we will be relevant to culture and the human struggle. I don't think any church has ever been relevant to culture, to the human struggle, unless it believed in Jesus and the power of His gospel. If the supposed new church believes in trendy music and cool Web pages, then it is not relevant to culture either. It is just another tool of Satan to get people to be passionate about nothing" (111).

If we are personally living out loud what we believe about Jesus, living out loud biblical Christianity, then shouldn't the outflow of this Chrisitianiy impact our "broken" communities through the work of our local churches? What should this really look like?

3 comments:

Mmm Granola. said...

Ohhhhh, I read that book and loved it... I think I'm even going to read it twice. :o) It really helped me see another part of God, a part of God that is loving... I was used to seeing God with a baseball bat and an angry face.

Jennifer Lawrence

Michael Lee Carter said...

Yeah, the book has really helped me identify a lot of the pinned up thoughts and feelings that I've had about Christian faith and my personal walk with Christ that hasn't neatly fit inside the box of so-called American evangelicalism. Maybe its okay to step outside of the margins of the box. Or maybe the box is larger than I think. Or just maybe God is saying that there is no box and that believers should be careful about putting Him in it.

Steve said...

I only wish Donald Miller's theology was a little better.

Emergent guys have a lot to recommend them, but sometimes I feel like they become postmodern to reach postmoderns.

They ask great questions, but have come to some crazy conclusions, despite their "anticonclusionism".