Friday, October 06, 2006

Go Tell It on the Mountain ... Or anywhere else, just not here

Today was a reading day. My seminary's alumni magazine had a cover story on evangelists. The local paper carried a piece on an evangelist that is taking over one of our city parks for the next couple of days to reach young people with the "message of Jesus" via music, extreme sports and feel good sermons. The state Baptist paper featured the Baylor University commissioned study that revealed God is viewed four ways: authoritarian, benevolent, critical or distant. Even the national weekly called (appropriately enough)The Week captured that story.

After a morning of "monitoring the pulse" of my audience, I had this need to go wash my hands.

Yuck! We've Christianized and Baptized to the point of t-shirt evangelism as fix-its for life. I can't be a part of this. If it works for others, fine, have at it. But I'm not into the asshole, buddy, judge or asteroid God of the survey, so I can't share the joy of "telling that story to the nations."

Twice this week I was asked my view on scriptures. For the first time -- out loud -- I answered honestly. If you too care to know, ask me. That's about as evangelical as I can get.

7 comments:

juli said...

shhh....don't let them hear you.

kidding. this makes me miss you. terribly.

KC said...

miss you too. can't wait to see you. Sunday, right?

Anonymous said...

I went out there today to watch the extreme sports. In the middle of the show they had a skater/pastor give the "message". Then Stephen Baldwin invited anyone who wanted to accept Jesus for the first time to come up on stage and they would be prayed for. Then they threw out free T-shirts to the crowd.

I was too far back to get a t-shirt.

KC said...

James, I have many t-shirts. Visit me and you can pick a favorite to take home!

I visited the event today as well and to be fair, they are really doing what it is they're doing the best way it could be done. I was impressed. I didn't want to stay but nonetheless it was impressive.

I'm not changing my mind about evangelism these days however. I'm just trying to be fair.

ELS Houston said...

i realized beforehand that i'd given up the interpretation that "something's wrong here." made hanging there much more enjoyable.

a part from the evangelizing that was going on, i was pretty impressed. and even the evengelzing wasn't so bad. i'm sure that it made a difference in some people's lives.

kirk franklin is the crazy bomb and deserves all the attention he gets...singing or not. but, michelle, my bell, you better go on find y long lost sisters.

some chick said...

i'm sorry, did someone say stephen baldwin was there? i think just threw up a little.

KC said...

Stephen Baldwin, Kirk Cameron . . . kinda makes you wonder if the acting gene and the Christian gene just don't mix?