First Blog

It is late Friday night and my wife is at a Lady's retreat. It is my first blog and I sort of impulsively decided to have a blog. I don't how much this will just be for me to air my thoughts or how many I will share my blog with, but I always have a lot of thoughts that need expressed. If anything, I look forward to articulating what's going on in my head, because it often disappears later when I want to return to it!

I am reading a life changing book right now called Total Truth by Nancy Pearcy. She rails against the sacred/sectarian divide in Western civilization. I have longed wondered why we are not doing a better job of making disciples. I have thought for some time that it was just because people didn't want to pick up there cross and follow Jesus. But Pearcy has opened up eyes to see that often people just don't know how to be a disciple. They have been conditioned by society and the church to intensely privatize their faith, so that they have no Christian worldview for their jobs or schools or the public sector in general.

It is so easy for us "ministers" to preach at our congregation to be more Christ like in their workplace. The truth is I have no idea how hard it is for them. The last time I worked in the "secular" world was over ten years ago. So, we are sending people out every week without giving them the skills to form a worldview that allows them to live as disciples 24/7.

I've got to work on this. I am expositional preacher and have always looked at other stuff as "fluff." However that other stuff sometimes is what people need. I may need to preach in a more relevant, contemporary way while still being true the text. It is not fluff. It is theology. On the other hand, if we give people the text and don't show them how it shapes their everyday life, then it might as well be fluff.

I look forward to reading more from Pearcy.

David