The poll is up. 13 choices listed. Vote for your favorite, and the top 8 will become messages in the upcoming Element message series Coffee Shop Theology.
This Monday we will be breaking from our regular PRAXIS schedule and meet in a Green Hills home for one of our infamous Element game nights!
7 p.m. Bring your dinner as you would for PRAXIS.
E-mail info@elementnashville.org for directions.
We'll remind you Sunday night at the worship service and in Monday's e-newsletter, also.
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Also, don't forget about the party at the farm tomorrow!
Festivities begin at 10 a.m. at the McLemore Farm.
E-mail for directions if you haven't received them yet.
Stuff Christians Like, #24: Church Names that Sound Like Clothing Stores
Just read this and I think it's hilarious, because just a few hours ago my cell rang and the caller ID indicated it was an Element-related call. This is what happened:
Me: Element, this is Jared.
Female Caller: Can I speak to your buyer, please?
Me: Buyer?
Caller: Uh huh.
Me: We don't have a buyer.
Caller: Is this not a clothing store? (Yes, that's exactly what she said, I promise!)
Me: Nope, we're a young adult ministry.
Caller: Oh, sorry!
Maybe she was looking for this.
The fine edges of N.T. Wright's stuff on the atonement may be less sharp than others', but his stuff on the resurrection is better than anybody else's. Case in point: his doorstop-slash-book The Resurrection of the Son of God.
Wright's continuing call for a more biblical cosmology is not just reforming the way we view heaven, but revolutionizing the way we live our lives in the light of the kingdom that is "at hand."
Here's a quote from Wright's new book Surprised by Hope (HT: Darryl Dash):
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"The resurrection of Jesus offers itself, to the student of history or science no less than the Christian or theologian, not as an odd event within the world as it is but as the utterly characteristic, prototypical, and foundational event within the world as it has begun to be. It is not an absurd event within the old world but the symbol and starting point of the new world. The claim advanced by Christianity is of that magnitude: Jesus of Nazareth ushers in not simply a new religious possibility, not simply a new ethic or a new way of salvation, but a new creation....
We could cope – the world could cope – with a Jesus who ultimately remains a wonderful idea inside his disciples; minds and heart. The world cannot cope with a Jesus who comes out of the tomb, who inaugurates God’s new creation right in the middle of the old one."
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The resurrection, like the cross, is a scandal. But it's a beautiful one. The resurrection retroactively verifies the kingdom reality Jesus taught and lived in his 3 years of ministry and it effectively sets in motion the "rapidly gradual" invasion of the new heavens and new earth.
Now that sin is killed and death is conquered -- now that real life is the kingdom reality ruled by a death-proof king -- what ramifications might this have on the way we view just about everything?
Shouldn't it move us in ways deeper and more fulfilling than sports, music, art, movies? Shouldn't it imbue our work, our play, our pain, our desires, our dreams with more resonance, more meaning, more hope?
Sin has no power any more. Death is dead.
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Join us for worship this Sunday evening at 6:30 p.m. Element will be meeting on Easter Sunday, and we’ll be celebrating the power and meaning of the resurrection of Jesus.If you’ve got a friend who would like to attend church on Easter but doesn’t know where to go, why not invite them?
Over at The Gate, Steve asks, What are some symptoms or indicators that we’ve started thinking the Christian life, and/or the Bible, is more about ourselves and what we do than it is about Jesus?
My contribution:
Ever heard “The Bible is God’s love letter to you”? There’s truth in that. Heck, on the face of it, it is true. God is love, and His word is revelation for the purpose of His being revealed to us. But somehow we take the revelation of His love for us and mistake that for us being especially lovable, when the really amazing thing about it is that He loves us unfailingly despite our being especially unlovable. It becomes about us, not Him.
I think one symptom or indicator that we’ve started thinking the Christian life is more about us than Jesus is when we actually start treating Scripture as insufficient. I do believe the Spirit speaks to us, but the primary way He does that is in illuminating written revelation to us. We all believe this, but most of us, myself included, conveniently forget it in daily life.
I’ve sat in Bible studies where person after person laments that “God isn’t speaking to me” and we all have Bibles open not six inches from our noses. I think that’s an indication we are not satisfied with all that God has given us to be complete for every good work; we still want something special, something just for us, something that validates our self-interest.
And as anybody who spends any time in the Bible should know, the Scriptures are pretty much the antidote for self-interest.
Courtesy of John Piper
What's the Gospel?
What’s the gospel? I’ll put it in a sentence.
The Gospel is the news that Jesus Christ, the Righteous One, died for our sins and rose again, eternally triumphant over all his enemies, so that there is now no condemnation for those who believe, but only everlasting joy.
That’s the gospel.
You Can't Outgrow the Gospel
You never, never, never outgrow your need for it. Don’t ever think of the gospel as, “That’s the way you get saved, and then you get strong by leaving it and doing something else.”
We need your questions and topics and hot potatoes!
In June, we will begin a new Element series called Coffee Shop Theology, and this is your chance to "nominate" the subject matter for the messages.
For the next few weeks, we want you to suggest questions or topics that you think would make a good message subject. These can be theological, cultural, practical, spiritual, whatever. Examples could include:
"Does spiritual warfare still exist?"
"Does God care who I vote for?"
"Predestination"
"The environment"
"How should a Christian date?"
The field is wide open. The idea is that these are conversation starters perfect for "theology" done over coffee.
Once we have amassed quite a few suggestions, we will list 10-12 of the ones we think would best work for stand-alone messages and post them in a poll on the website. Then you guys will be able to vote on the ones you're most interested in. The top 8 vote getters will become the eight messages in the Coffee Shop Theology series.
So send those questions/topics in! You can do this via:
- the notecards on the tables at the Element worship service
- emailing info@elementnashville.org
- sending a MySpace message (www.myspace.com/elementnashville), or
- commenting on this blog post.
Many of us too often live our lives on a scale that is far less than eternal. We are not living, as Dallas Willard says, an "eternal kind of life." We are trained and taught that the Christian life is about winning at work, finding healthy relationships, controlling our finances, and/or having great sex. I firmly believe the Bible speaks to all of those things, but the Church is starving (starving!) for the glory of God. We too easily forget that what Jesus has done for us covers the scale of eternity, that it is the division between an eternal heaven and an eternal hell, that God is infinite and our sin is a condemnation-worthy offense against an eternally holy God. We forget that the grace of God in salvation for little ol' us is universe-sized HUGE.
We believe in and we settle for much less than what Paul calls in Romans 10:1 "the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God."
Our sights are set too small.
On that note, check out Jesus Creed author Scot McKnight's "Christianity Today" article on The 8 Marks of a Robust Gospel.
In short:
1. The robust gospel is a story.
2. The robust gospel places transactions in the context of persons.
3. The robust gospel deals with a robust problem.
4. A robust gospel has a grand vision.
5. A robust gospel includes the life of Jesus as well as his resurrection, and the gift of the Spirit alongside Good Friday.
6. A robust gospel demands not only faith but everything.
7. A robust gospel includes the robust Spirit of God.
8. A robust gospel emerges from and leads others to the church.
Read the whole thing for explanations and context.
I could quibble with points here or there, but in general it is quite good. And the call for a big gospel is always good and necessary.
Is your gospel scaled to eternity?
