RUSSJONES.US

This one is really starting to gain some steam in our culture today. "I will not go to church if they are going to make me feel bad or guilty." We have recently experienced a rise of "positive" preaching in the world today. Pastors and preachers who have vowed not to say anything negative or condemning from the pulpit or otherwise. Now on the surface this sounds ok. But when you dig a little deeper, it can be very disturbing. People love to go to church and know that they are not going to "feel" bad about their behavior or actions. No one is going to sit them down and talk to them about their lifestyle. That they are are not going to be rejected for their choices. I can understand this but I want you to keep reading. First of all, the Bible is full of passages where either by example or command we are told to help each other out. A couple I can think of is in 2 Timothy where Paul writes, " All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teac

When I ask people that question I get answers like: "I love the preaching there." "My friends go there." "My kids love it there." "I get alot out of it." That's all well and good. But here is an answer that I rarely hear. "It's God's will for me to be there." Have you ever prayed and asked God, "Is this the church for me and my family?" It doesn't matter what the kids thought, it doesn't matter if the worship was awesome or if the preaching was good. You know that you are in the right place and the right time doing the right thing for your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Now if you asked (or if you were to ask everyone in church) if they knew it was God's will for them to be there, they would probably answer, "yes". But I think that they jury is still out on that. Why? When times get tough and the church goes through a rough patch, what happens to most of these people. (POOF!! Their gon

If you ask my daughter, "What are you?" she will respond, "Spoiled!" She is and she knows it. But when "spoiled" crosses the line, daddy is there to meet her. If I didn't do that I hate to think how she would turn out. Yikes!! When we think about church and our relationship with Jesus, are we spoiled? Do we have to have church in a certain way, our music has to be a certain style, our preaching has to be a certain theme, our religion just has to be so, so? I wish I could say that there is a wave of this coming across our nation and churches. But the wave has already arrived and it has already crashed on our shores. Churches struggle with their identity, Christians "shop" for a church like they would a new car. Pastors are confused as to what to do. People want the "positive" messages they see and hear on TV. They don't think that they should "feel" guilty in church. With Easter closely approaching, Bob Franq

I know that this may appear like I am splitting frog hairs. But there is a real issue here that I think that needs to be addressed. To begin with, we admit and know for a fact that we are living in the most Biblically ignorant generation ever. People know less about the Bible than ever before. But why did this happen? Well there are a couple of reasons. 1) Some church growth gurus in the 80's said that Sunday School was dead (it wasn't) and that churches needed to move to small groups. Good idea except people didn't embrace the small group culture. Therefore, they didn't receive any discipleship. 2) Discipleship moved from the "what you need to know" to "what they want to know". Small groups were all about peoples needs. That in and of itself wasn't bad - but it shifted the goal of discipleship from fulfilling Ephesians 4: 11 - 13 "11 It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to b