The AP recently ran this story.

DAYTONA BEACH - No hymnals. No pews. No steeple. No stained glass windows. And no women.

This ain’t your grandma’s church.

Organizers of the Church For Men say that guys are “bored stiff” in many churches today. “We try to make it interesting for them. We meet in a gym and we talk about issues that mess men up,” said Mike Ellis, 46, the church’s founder. The Church For Men meets one Saturday evening a month, drawing about 70 guys dressed in everything but straight-laced shirts and neckties. The service features a rock band, a shot clock to time the preacher’s message and a one-hour in-and-out guarantee.

The article goes on to talk about hot rod events, fishing outreach, and one preacher’s idea that men have “the attention span of a flea.”

It is important, even Biblical, for Christian men to build relationships with other Christian men, to the glory of Christ. Our Lord himself modeled this for us by gathering the Twelve, and Paul’s cohort of Barnabas, Timothy, Titus, Silas, etc., shows the mighty deeds that men working together can do for the Kingdom.

But is the church’s problem that it asks too much from men and needs to cater their services so that men don’t know whether they’re at church or at home watching ESPN? I don’t think so. First, the popularity of movements like Promise Keepers and writers like John Eldredge suggests to me that too many churches ask too little of their men. There’s a great deal of work to be done in the Kingdom, and professional ministers can only do so much. God’s call is for all of his people to do works of service, and the skills that men have in business, with their hands, in planning and entrepreneurship, in risk taking and boldness, are integral for much of that work. I have seen that with my own eyes.

Secondly, however, I worry that something is lost when we don’t listen to God’s call to humble ourselves like little children when we come to him. Men are prideful, and we don’t like to leave our comfort zones. The problem, of course, is that the gospel is often uncomfortable. It’s easy to dismiss something we don’t want to do by saying it’s “not for us.” Our consumerist culture has taught us that our desires and our needs should be the most important thing to us. Many of these types of ministry try to put the gospel into a friendly, nonthreatening context, like fly fishing or sports cars. I know that these ministries have worked in many lives, and far be it from me to stand between God and another human being. At what point, though, does the context swallow up the gospel?

There have been many popular Christian men held up as examples for Christians. Many of them lived exemplary lives, while others “talked the talk” without “walking the walk.” Only one person ever showed us how a true man lives, a true man made in God’s image and obedient in every respect to God’s will: Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, the Son of God. May all Christian men look to him for their example and endeavor to conform to his image.

Posted in Men, Following Jesus, The Church in America | No Comments »

The Dallas Morning News religion blog has a strange quote from David Frankfurter of the University of New Hampshire about the current “Jesus tomb” controversy - no attribution as to the source, unfortunately.

It’s remarkable that Christian groups are getting so hot under the collar about the implications of this. Scientific archeology can’t touch religious tradition and conviction unless religions come to depend on science for their validity.

What a bizarre statement. The Christians opposing this “tomb of Jesus” nonsense are defending the historical truth of Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension (and, of course, his non-marriage to Mary Magdalene). But Frankfurter’s position makes sense if you view “science” and “religion” as two independent spheres of knowledge with little or no overlap. (The assumption, to the popular mind at least, is that “science” is “real” while “religion” is “helpful.”)

The Unity of Knowledge
This is not what orthodox Christianity teaches, however. As the Nicene Creed begins,

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.

All of creation - heaven and earth, visible and invisible - is unified, because it was made by the one God. By implication, all of knowledge is integrated. The content of Jesus’ sermons, the historical data of his birth and death, and the molecules forming his flesh are all part of the same, unified reality. We may not know all of that reality perfectly, but Christians, from the earliest days, have firmly connected their beliefs to the historical events of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. As only one example from many, when Jesus’ disciples were selecting someone to replace Judas as one of the Twelve, Peter said,

Therefore it is necessary to choose one of the men who have been with us the whole the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from John’s baptism to the time when Jesus was taken up from us. For one of these must become a witness with us of his resurrection. (Acts 1:21-22)

I am not at all sure what is so “remarkable” about Christians defending the reality of the event that forms the basis of our faith. Like the first disciples, we serve as “witnesses of his resurrection,” through our religion, our science, and through every other aspect of our lives.

Posted in Christian Theology, Science and Religion, Following Jesus | No Comments »