According to The American Standard Dictionary, PR or Public Relations is: “The art or science of establishing and promoting a favorable relationship with the public”

Wikipedia says that Public Relations is “the practice of managing the flow of information between an organization and its publics.”

Many of today’s “Relevant” churches believe that it is up to them to be God’s PR representative.  In fact, church marketing is a booming business.  There are businesses devoted solely to creating websites for churches, blogs dedicated to telling about the best church marketing techniques, and even marketing consultants whose purpose is creating influence for the local church.

There are state-of-the-art mega churches that have the latest technology reaching out to the masses, yet 60% or more of their attendees do not believe that Jesus is the only way to Heaven.

According to www.cia.gov, 78.5% of Americans consider themselves to be “Christian”, yet according to a Pew poll, 70% of Americans believe that there are many ways to get to Heaven.

Obviously this “church marketing” phenomenon is not succeeding in bringing people to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.

By the world’s standards, these relevant churches are doing everything right.  They are leveraging current technology and culture.  They go out of their way to be “seeker sensitive”.  They make sure that they avoid controversial topics like politics, marriage and sin.  Numerically, the churches that use the previous techniques are succeeding.  Spiritually, they are failing appallingly.  Why would that be?

Perhaps it is because Christianity is not a product, it is a lifestyle.  Evangelism is not marketing, it is the natural expression of the joy of our salvation.  And Jesus is not a brand, He is our Redeemer.

Jesus was the only PR Rep that God ever will need and the Bible is God’s press release.

I have a friend who has worked at a donut shop for almost 20 years.  She basically eats, breathes and sleeps donuts.  Remember the old Dunkin Donuts commercial “Time to Make the Donuts?”  You know, the one where the guy wakes up when the rest of us are going to bed and heads to work chanting, “It’s time to make the donuts.”  Well, that is my friend.  She works at a bakery, makes their donuts, then stands at the counter and sells the donuts she made.

A few weeks ago, I asked her if she wanted to go out for breakfast.  And then without thinking I said, “Or we can grab coffee and a donut and then go shopping.”  She grimaced and adamantly shook her head back and forth.

Boy, did I feel silly!  I just offered her something that she has day-in and day-out!  We ended up going to a nice little breakfast nook where she proceeded to get almost every non-donut item on the menu!

That whole experience got me thinking…and here is what I came up with:  The churches that are focusing on “leveraging culture” and being “relevant” are doing exactly what I did to my friend.  They are offering donuts to the donut lady.  They are offering the world to the world.   An unbeliever who is searching for something more won’t want “more of the same”.  We aren’t going to reach a donut-maker by offering them donuts.  We aren’t going to reach the Starbucks coffee drinker by offering them Sunday morning coffee.  We aren’t going to reach the world by offering them the world.  We will only reach them through the Holy Spirit working in their hearts!  We will only reach them with Christ’s love.  And Christ’s love never has to be watered down with Starbucks coffee, jazzed up with a little U2, or doctored up with a techno-colored digitally produced micro-commercial.

The greatest act of love  that humanity has ever seen.

Let’s start with a few definitions

Evangelical: “of Protestant churches emphasizing personal salvation: relating or belonging to any Protestant Christian church that emphasizes the authority of the Bible and salvation through the personal acceptance of Jesus Christ”  (Encarta)

Relativism:  “belief in changeable standards: the belief that concepts such as right and wrong, goodness and badness, or truth and falsehood are not absolute but change from culture to culture and situation to situation”

Anyone who has any true knowledge of who Jesus Christ is would realize that the above concepts CANNOT go hand-in-hand…at least not without tons of compromises.  And yet that is what many “Christian” churches are attempting to do: pair Christianity with Relativity.  Our previous church was slowly starting to do that, which is why it is now our previous church.

If we say that we are Christians, then that means we follow the teachings of Christ.  Jesus Christ, Himself said that He was the Son of God and that He was the only way to get to God (John 14:6-9).  If we follow the teachings of Christ, then His teachings become our code of conduct…our Statement of Faith.

Yet there are some “Christians” who claim that having a statement of faith is wrong.  Why?  Because it “stifles friendships”.  (Are you kidding me?!!!)  I refer of course, to the “Emergent Church” movement.  A group of people so fluffy in their ideology and theology that they flit from idea to idea with each cultural wind gust.  They want to be “friendly” and “people-centric”.   They seek to “love God and love their neighbors”, as long as that doesn’t mean preaching about sin or setting down hard theological or Biblical lines.  To them everything (and I mean everything) is open to  personal interpretation.  Don’t want to believe that Jesus was born of a virgin?  No big deal.  Want to believe that Jesus wasn’t exactly God?  Again, no big deal.  Want to follow one of Rob Bell’s books instead of the Bible?  No problem, that Sola Scriptura stuff is so last century!  Want to re-interpret scripture so that it better fits your sinful lifestyle?  Sure!  Why not? I mean, just because God “frowned” on homosexuality doesn’t mean that we can’t embrace it!

But to me it all comes down to this:  If you truly love someone then you will want them to know the truth, even if it means upsetting them.  If you have the choice between telling someone the truth and angering them temporarly, but allowing them to make an informed choice that will save them from an eternity in Hell away from God, why, oh why would a true follower of Christ choose someone’s friendship over their salvation?

Hubby and I are still church hunting.  And we are becoming more and more depressed with each passing week.  Let’s compare the two types of churches that we have found so far.

Church Type 1:  Culturally relevant, emerging, hip, cool, growing in numbers, but Biblically lacking and not growing spiritually

Church Type 2:  Biblically sound, provides fertilizer for spiritual growth, but legalistic, “dated”, and not growing in numbers.

But we are looking for a third type of church.  A church that is Biblically sound, but not stuck in the dark ages when it comes to things like worship and technology.  A church that encourages spiritual growth as well as numerical grown, but will not compromise the first for the second.  A church that holds to Biblical truth without taking out parts it doesn’t like or adding rules that aren’t there.

Newsweek says, “The percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen 10 points in the past two decades.”  And says that we are facing an “end to Christian America”

According to the 2009 American Religious Identification Survey, not only are more Americans claiming to have “no religion”, but New England, where I live, is now the most secular area in the country.  New England, once the home of both the First and Second Great Awakening is now the home to squishy liberals, quasi-Evangelicals, and ambivilant, apathic areligious.

So I guess that it is no wonder that we are unable to find a good church.  But there has got to be other Christians like us in New England.  Christians who are fed up with the morally relative, culturally relevant, mumbo jumbo that we are being spoon fed in so called Evangelical churches here in New England.

Exemplify has a fantastic blog post today about a new thing that many churches are doing.  It is called Cardboard Testimonies.  It is an amazingly cool thing!  Twenty to thirty people are given a piece of cardboard.  On one side of the cardboard they write a phrase about what/where they were without Christ and then on the other side they write who/where they are now with Christ.  I watched the following video with goose bumps and tears.  God is just amazing!  This is such a simple yet somehow poignant way to express the changes that God has made in lives.

It really has me thinking about what my cardboard testimony would be.

Perhaps it would be:

What would yours be?

One of my recent posts has been found by some to be a bit controversial which was not what I had intended at all for it to be.  The post was simply my thoughts regarding the church we visited and their policy regarding alcohol.  In the post I was questioning my hesitancy to attend a church that forces its members to abstain from alcohol.  I wanted to make sure that my hesitancy was about the legalism and not just the fact that if we attended there that I would never be able to have a glass of wine again.  After a lot of thought, discussion and prayer, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the problem that I am having is with the legalism.

Legalism is just not a healthy practice for a church.

Wikipedia defines legalism as “an over-emphasis on law or codes of conduct, or legal ideas, usually implying an allegation of misguided rigor, pride, superficiality, the neglect of mercy, and ignorance of the grace of God or emphasizing the letter of law over the spirit.”

Reformation Theology defines it as “as any attempt to rely on self-effort to either attain or maintain our justification before God.”

Legalism focuses on one of the many results (symptoms) of a heart condition while ignoring other symptoms (gossip, slander, an angry spirit, a rebellious spirit, etc that cause far more damage with in the church), as well as ignoring the cause (our sinful nature) of the symptoms.

Legalism takes something that is part of our freedom and turns it into chains that shackle and bind us, preventing us to find our freedom in Christ.

Legalism offers false security, but allowing people to think that if they are good enough, then they win God’s approval.

Legalism detracts from the controlling and yet liberating force (the Holy Spirit) that God offers us.

Legalism says that we can’t trust God to help us find a healthy balance of things; therefore a good Christian must avoid anything that could ever possibly be bad.  This avoidance includes, but is not limited to, alcohol, TV, the Internet, movies, music and so much more!

Now, don’t get me wrong.  There are some people who should never ever ever touch a glass of alcohol.  And as mature believes we should not only respect that, but also avoid alcohol when we are in their presence.  But this goes for any other potential vice.  When I was a teenager, I had a friend from youth group who was suffering from a pretty bad case of media addiction; therefore when we hung out we never watched TV or went to movies, nor did we have youth events where TV or movies were watched.  Was that because the whole group had a problem with it?  No.  Was the whole youth group to never watch TV because their friend was watching way too much?  No.  But we respected his struggle and strove to help him.  Eventually with Christ’s help and our support, he found a balance and was able to know the difference between healthy media and unhealthy media.

I have some serious concerns about a church that forbids things that are not forbidden by the Bible.  I have no problem whatsoever with a church teaching about the dangers of alcohol, media, over-eating, etc.  In fact, I encourage it.  My husband and I would tell the kids that it was better to be safe (and avoid something that could become harmful in their lives) than to be sorry (and allow something to push them away from God).  But we never ever set down laws for them that were not in the Bible.

If the teens asked us about alcohol, we would tell them that legal, of age, drinking of an occasional alcoholic beverage was fine, but that underage drinking was not only dangerous, but illegal and sinful and that drunkenness was also sinful.  And we backed it all up with Bible verses that were used in context.

If the teens asked us about sex, we would tell them that married sex is awesome, but pre-marital sex is a sin.  When they would ask us how far is too far, we didn’t set down physical lines for them (that are not found in the Bible), but scriptural ones (that are found in the Bible).  Occasionally a parent would take issue with this and want us to tell their kids that simply holding hands was too far, but since that isn’t Biblical we would not do that.

It was not my husband’s job as youth pastor to make up “thou shalt not”s that aren’t in the Bible.  But it was my husband’s job to deal with the heart condition of the teens in our group.  And that is why those teens are still turning to us for advice even though we are no longer in their church.

Some people need to maintain a strict behavioral code for themselves.  For example, the recovering alcoholic needs to forbid himself from ever consuming alcohol.  The sex addict may need to forbid himself from unlimited access to the Internet.  But it is not up to the church to place those rules on people.  It is up to the church to show its parishioners how to grow into mature believers who can find the proper balance for themselves as individuals in Christ.

First let me say that I don’t watch The Ellen DeGeneres show.  Let’s just get that out of the way.  However, there is a clip of the show that has been going around the internet for a while.  It is really quite funny.  It is of Ellen calling an 80-something year old woman named Gladys and during the conversation Gladys says, “I love Jesus, but I drink a little.”  You can check it out for yourself here.  (FYI – “Gladys” is actually a Texas comedian.)

But that line “I love Jesus, but I drink a little,” brings up an interesting question.  Can you love Jesus and drink?

This past Sunday, My husband and I visited a church that chooses to abstain from alcohol (as well as social dancing).  Their reasoning is valid.  1.) They want to be “in the world not of it” (James 1:27, 1 John 2:15, James 4:4)  2) They want to avoid the appearance of evil (I Thessalonians 5:22)  3) They want to avoid being a stumbling block to others (1 Corinthians 8:9)

I grew up in an alcohol free house (dance free too).  My father, being a pastor, believed that it was better to abstain from alcohol than to occasionally drink and  cause others to struggle with any of the above three things.

When Hubby was a youth pastor we abstained from alcohol because of the above three reasons ans well as 4.) some of our teens’ parents were alcoholics and we knew that it would bother or confuse the teens if their youth pastor drank 5.) alcohol abuse is so prevalent among teens and we wanted to help them to avoid it as much as possible, and 6.) some of the more immature teens had trouble with the “We can do it, but you can’t” part of it.

We don’t see anything inherently wrong with an occasional drink.  Nor do we see anything wrong with some social dancing (ie wedding dances=OK, dirty dancing with strangers at clubs=not OK).  And since Hubby has no longer been a youth pastor we have been enjoying the occasional drink.

But now we have a problem.  We liked the church that we visited on Sunday and could possible see ourselves attending there; however, I don’t know if I want to sign the membership agreement that would say that we could never have another drink again and that we promise to never participate in social dancing.  Abstaining out of personal conviction is one thing, but to force everyone in the church to abstain seems very legalistic and I just don’t think that I am down with that.

If we ever did engage in a ministry again, then we would probably go back to avoiding alcohol except when we are away on vacation with no chance of running into people who know us.  But I want that to be a choice that is ours to make, not a choice that is foisted upon us.

But, so far it has been hard to find a church that we could see ourselves at.  Do we forsake this church because we don’t want to give up something that ultimately doesn’t matter much anyway?  Or is the legalism the thing that we just don’t want to swallow?

I guess that I could have titled this “To Swallow Wine or To Swallow Legalism” because that sums up the difficulty that I am having.  But which am I really having a problem with?  The never being able to have alcohol again or the legalism?  I hope that it is the latter.

Last Sunday, we visited a new church.  It was an interesting experience.  Amazingly enough, we didn’t know any of the worship songs that were sung.  (Hubby and I were both worship leaders at our previous church.)  Worship was 45 minutes long and only 4 songs were sung.  We aren’t quite into that, but people were entering into worship, so that it what really counts.  The sermon was great…and was something that we needed to hear.  It was about forgiveness.

Forgiveness is a necessary thing for Christians, but that doesn’t make it any easier.  Here are two of the things that I struggle with when it comes to forgiving:  1.)  God requires that we ask Him for forgiveness.  So why do we have to forgive even if people don’t ask us for forgiveness and 2.) Does forgiving mean forgetting?

I finally have an answer that makes sense to me.

God offers forgiveness even before we ask.  We just have to ask for it to receive it.  Therefore, I must take the hurt and the resentment and consciously make the choice to forgive the person who hurt me.  The forgiveness is their’s for the taking.  If they choose to receive it and are genuinely sorry for what they have done, then that is when the forgetting comes in.  God doesn’t welcome us into His family until we acknowledge and receive the sacrifice of His son.  We cannot fellowship with God until we repent and receive the forgiveness that He offers.  We are not required to fellowship with a person who continually hurts us and is never truly sorry.

Now here is my practical application.  X hurt me horribly…physically,  mentally and emotionally.  He has never apologized (at least not genuinely) and he not changed.  I have chosen to release the hurt and forgive him.  HOWEVER, since I know that he has not changed, I will still continue to protect myself from him.  I do not forget that he is a very dangerous man, but by offering forgiveness, I am saying that I will not harbor resentment towards him, even if he never accepts my forgiveness.

Here is my next practical application.  For the past few months, I have been very angry at our previous pastor.  He hurt my husband and I and he continues to lead our previous church down the wrong path.  But I am going to choose to forgive him…right here, right now.

Dear Pastor,

You have hurt my husband and I in ways that up until now were unimaginable to us.  You have lied about us, mistreated us, and have attempted to pull our vision away from God and onto you.  But I am choosing to forgive you.

I forgive you for saying hurtful and untrue things about me.

I forgive you for purposely undermining the ministry that God called us into.

I forgive you for taking advantage of us.

I forgive you for using us for your own financial gain.

I forgive you for telling people things that we told you in confidence.

I forgive you tearing us out of the lives of the teenagers who depended on us.

I forgive you for your selfish leadership.

I forgive you for not caring that you hurt us.

I promise that if there is ever a day that you wish to restore the relationship that you so callously destroyed, I will still offer this same forgiveness.

Today an innocent question got me doing a lot of thinking. The younger sister of an old friend asked me, “May I ask why you married him?” She wasn’t talking about my current (and wonderful) husband. She meant the mistake that I made years ago. (Let’s refer to him as“X”)

That is a question that I have asked myself over and over. Why did I marry him? There are many difficult answers to this question.

I married him because he needed me.

I married him because I wanted the family that I never had.

I married him because I thought that I could help him change.

I married him because I had already slept with him.

The first three reasons are internal reasons. My childhood was rough, so I was looking for internal needs to be satisfied. I told myself that he could fill those needs.

The last reason is external. All my life, I was told that good, Christian girls only slept with one man….their husband. So in order to be a good Christian girl, I married the one man that I had slept with. I knew that I had done things a bit backwards, but I thought that was the only way to rectify my mistake. You see, because I needed my internal needs to be satisfied, I gave in to the external pressure. He made me feel loved. He made me feel wanted. So I did it. And once I did it, there was no going back because I knew that I was already damaged goods. “They” (every Christian in my life) had convinced me of that.

Once people started guessing that I was sleeping with X, they started judging and ostracizing me. The Christian non-profit group where I volunteered told me that my services were no longer needed. I was no longer put on the church nursery schedule. People who used to greet me on Sunday mornings disappeared. And when I finally stopped going to church, no one called. Had they called, maybe things would have been different. Had they told me that they still loved me even though I made a bad choice, maybe I wouldn’t have married him. Had they reminded me of God’s grace and mercy, maybe I would have ran to them the first time X hit me. But they didn’t and X made sure that I realized that he was the only person who “truly loved me” and that he was the only person who would “ever want me”. They told me I was worthless.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I am NOT blaming anyone for my choice. I made the choices that I made and I bear the responsibility for them. But I am angry. Angry because the one place that should have been Jesus in skin for me wasn’t. I am angry for all the other girls out there who “they” have made feel like damaged goods.

I can understand firsthand why people sometimes view Christians as judgmental and uncaring. I can also understand how easy it is for people to turn away from Christ because of how His followers sometimes act.

What I can’t understand is why it is so hard for some Christians to offer the same grace, love and forgiveness that Christ offered to them.

I pray that someday, God will allow me show love to someone who is like I was…someone whose actions may be unlovable, but who just desperately needs to be loved…a girl who needs to be loved on, understood and offered grace. What I would give to wrap my arms around that girl and tell her that she is precious. That she is valued. That she is loved, not just by God, but also by me. That she doesn’t have to make the same mistakes that I did.  That she is NOT unforgivable.