Here are some quotes from a pastor who thought he was on the edge but found out different. As least he is looking.
But before we start singing “We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord,” here’s the harsher reality — we are brothers on the same ship called "The Titanic."
To hear us volley at each other, you would think we are fighting for the souls of the nation between us. But in reality, we are not. Among those of us in the younger set of our camps, we are competing largely for the hearts and minds of the 20- and 30-somethings with their iPads and macchiattos. We are already dinosaurs, and we did not know it.
The average Christian in the world right now is an African or Latin American female in her early 20s.
She doesn’t read our blogs, and she doesn’t read Christianity Today. She doesn’t know or care who I am, and she never will. The names Piper, Driscoll, Chan, Bell, Stanley, Warren mean nothing to her. Like most Pentecostal women coming into the kingdom around the world, words like "complimentarian" and "egalitarian" are not in her vocabulary, nor Calvinism and Arminianism.
Unlike some of my brothers would lead you to believe (where their lunch table is the only one that cares about Scripture and THE GOSPEL while anybody who believes differently from them in these tired conversations are flaming liberals), she takes the authority of the Bible very seriously. But more importantly, she believes in the power of the Bible in ways that are incomprehensible even for our most rabid "conservatives."
The Western filter and language that frames these issues will not be determinative for her, unlucky as she is not to read our blogs.
She may well in end up leading a church one day where she preaches Jesus like a woman on fire and lays hands on the sick and watches God heal them, though this will surprise those Reformed colleagues who are sure all female church leaders have been trained by godless-Unitarian-lesbian-leftist-radical-feminist-seminarians (she didn’t have access to seminary at all–unfortunately, she has read the Acts of the Apostles). Who knew?
The world has moved on, God has moved on, and we didn’t even notice.
I do not wish to be overly contentious with my colleagues.
Tribally, we are different, but culturally, we are so very much alike. This is intended to be more conciliatory.
Why don’t you pull up a chair beside me here on the deck, bring something to drink, and let’s at least watch from over the bow, shall we? I would hate to feel this irrelevant all by myself. It’s a beautiful sight, really. It is not so tragic for the world to lose sight of us. We must decrease so He might increase. So it’s a celebration then.
Perhaps now people will turn to Christ and not confuse His bride the church for Him. The church cannot save. Only our worthy Lord can do so. May He forgive us for causing men to look at anything else but Him.
Michael