Everything You Never Wanted To Know About The ECM…

Part 7 of the Pulpit series on the Emerging Church-a-majig.

“I have friends who have suggested that the emerging church idea is the predictable fruit of churches that tailor their youth ministries to whatever style is currently fashionable, hold alternative church services for the youth in a separate building (”the youth building”) and never incorporate them into the actual life of the church itself. They’ve grown into adulthood while their styles and preferences were catered to in a special “church” service all their own. The actual church service was something they weren’t expected to like. Many of them were never really exposed to worship in the context of the actual church, with real adults. They were deliberately entertained instead, and thus they were conditioned to think that way. They grew old, but they never grew up, and now even as adults, they want to continue to play at church, but outside the mainstream of the historic church. (My friend characterized the emerging church worship style as “Church services for the ADHD generation.” Read the Christianity Today account of Emergent’s national convention and you will understand why he said that.)”

There is an ongoing discussion along these lines here and sure enough, some of ECMish comments were made.

Church for the ADHD generation–sad but true.

Stranger Things Have Happened [2]

Part 1

A while back I was at one of the activities the kids participate in—one of the long ones because I had a book. I was having a hard time reading it, though, because of the other people. I don’t mind people most of the time. These were talking though. (The gall! Talking People!) As hard as I tried to concentrate on what I was doing, I overheard something that I had heard before a long time ago. My Mom was a single Mom for a short time and, oddly, she never really complained in my hearing. One Christmas, though, I heard something though that radically changed my view of the situation. A comment was made about something unlikely—I don’t know, pygmies on the moon or something equally bizarre. “Oh I don’t know…it could happen,” was the optimistic reply. “What,” I hear Mom’s sarcastic voice say, “we could all fall in love and be happy?”

That will be the day was left unsaid in a torrent of female laughter.

So here I was in the middle of this situation where I didn’t actually appear to be listening—but I was and hearing two conversations. Awkward at best, but I felt the need to speak up. “Stranger things have happened,” I said to the girl who was channeling Mom. We had talked a bit before during that long kids activity and so she knew something about what I stand for with regard to marriage there was a slight pause. Perhaps a nod, I’m not sure—Hey if can happen to me it can happen to anyone. I’m so disagreeable I don’t even like myself sometimes.

Some unusual statistics from Technorati. As of yesterday there were 931,297 posts tagged Romance and Relationships in English. The bar chart over on the left of the screen shows between four and five thousand posts per day. Every day. Looks like at least twelve of those are by Christians. Some random links I clicked even in the “with any authority” part of the search–around 97K–were mostly garbage. Several of the posts I read in the search for Christian content merely used the name of Jesus as an expletive. The percentage of content in blogs regarding Christian Relationships is something like a ten thousandth of a percentage point. “Not Clinically Significant” is what you’d read if this were a laboratory analysis of this concept.

So why is it that yesterday near enough to a million people decided to write a post that could be tagged Romance and Relationships and yet most of them were of the “MY needs aren’t being MET” variety?

Part of the problem, I think, is the stigma associated with the Evangelical view of marriage. Not that its wrong, its just been made fun of for so long by the feminazi regime and mocked by the same-sex crowd for so long that the idea of marriage has been beaten to a pulp of tax and health insurance benefits. Someone has picketed Mark Driscoll for making statements about it. Preachers cringe when they step into the pulpit with a sermon on Marriage. Big surprise folks: God invented marriage and laid down some rules.

The bible tells us:

Ephesians 5:22 – 24 (NASB)
22Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself being the Savior of the body. 24But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything.

OK? This isn’t something I’m making up here. Yes I’m a husband. No I’m not rubbing your nose in it if you’re a female. The bible says you ought to be subject to your husbands if you’re a wife. But that’s the easy part if the husband has read the whole context of the passage:

Ephesians 5:25 – 24 (NASB)
“25Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, 26so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless. 28So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; 29for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church…”

How did Christ love the church? He laid down his life for her. Yes he died the horrible death of crucifixion in her place but he also laid down his life for her in a day in and day out sense. He got up each morning with the intent that he was going to do that day with all of His will and actions what he was planning to do on a cross at Gogotha and he put one sandal in front of another until He got there. Day by day he laid down his life. Everyday. Men, that is what we are required to do in a marriage relationship. We lay down our lives for our wives. We don’t complain about it, we don’t fuss about all the other things we’d like to be doing. You and I are commanded to “love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her”. When a man can do that then a woman can do her part as well.

THAT my friends is “Manning up”.

Girls, don’t laugh as you read this. Yes we men are as hard-headed and self-indulgent as you all are if not worse most of the time. I know it’s hard to believe but there are men out there who can do this if you do your part. Go to church and find one—that’s where he’ll be.

Related Links:
Nathan Casebolt’s Waterless Places linked to this post. I just happened to read them the week before the events in part two took place.