Flonk! (aka Passion)

I know. You're thinking, "What the heck does Flonk mean?" To be honest, I'm not sure I can answer that. It's a catch-all word. "I had a flonkin' day today!" "Would you get your flonk over here!" "What the flonk?!"

It can also be a fun way to elaborate a person's name. I, for instance, have been dubbed by a couple of buddies to be "Marquistaflonk." Those buddies are Chad Brinkerflonk and Wes Flonkson--and they are the creators of "flonk."

Ultimately, "flonk" is excitement. "Flonk" is zeal. "Flonk" is passion!

And Wes and Chad are full of passion. They're a couple of guys from my old youth group at Glenkirk Church in Glendora, CA. They're in college now and are spending a year at the University of Kentucky, an hour and half from my house. About once a week, they come up and hang out with Robin and me. They tell us about all the crazy things they're doing in college with Campus Crusade for Christ--and they get me to do crazy things I would never do, if not for their bad influence (e.g., things involving IceyHot...)!

But I absolutely love these guys. Not simply because they're a ton of fun, but also because they're passionate--especially about their relationship with Jesus. I love sitting on our front porch with Chad and Wes smoking cigars and talking theology/spirituality/
ethics/morality/etc./etc/etc....

Wes told me tonight that he started a blog a few weeks ago that he calls "Passion." And, fittingly, the URL is wwwflonk.blogspot.com! "Flonk" says it all!

He's only posted once so far, so I told him I'd send people his way as motivation to write more. I'd love it if you'd give him a quick visit and drop him a brief comment. If you're so inclined, tell him what excites you. Tell him what delights you. Tell him what drives your passion!

Flonk you very much.

I can't get over this...

Ok, this is the same picture as my last post. I gotta tell you, the more I look at it, the more amazed I am at how incredible this picture is! How did they take the picture for the front and back computers, which are at an angle to us?! Man, this is just amazing!

Church Outreach on My Space?

Church Marketing Sucks recently posted an article on doing outreach using My Space. The author (guest blogger, Joe Suh) is the co-founder of MyChurch.org, a My Space lookalike that seems to be designed for building community among Christians. The article also touts MyChurch.org as being a vehicle for reaching out to non-Christians, although as one commenter named Matt states, "It seems to me that MyChurch.org is about as effective for outreach as a church advertising on Christian Radio."

The article is worth taking a look at. It's actually sparked a pretty intense debate regarding the validity of using My Space for outreach purposes. That debate alone makes this something worth reading. Check out this article and the debate that continues to rage here.

P.S. Take a closer look at the picture at the front of this post. Did you notice what's so cool about it?

More Bad Theology

Michael Foster has been leaving some pretty stimulating comments in my post about "Bad Theology and Salvation." In that post I said, "All that's required for salvation is faith in Christ--even if the theology about Christ may be off-base." To which Michael responded:

I have a hard time accepting this in light of the following passage:

"I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed."

Here's what I think Paul is saying. First of all, the primary onus is on the teacher, not the followers. The ones who Paul says ought to be "accursed" are not the Galatian believers, but those who preach a "gospel contrary to the one we preached."

Face it. People are gonna have bad theology. Even good, loving, Christ-like believers will get some things wrong. Some will get things way wrong. But I don't think Paul is cursing those people. Paul is cursing leaders who lead people astray with bad theology.

And I don't think Paul is telling the Galatians that they are losing their salvation--he is saying, "Don't have bad theology! Trust what we taught you. And don't believe these new teachings which are contrary to what we taught you."

But the fact that the primary responsibility lies with the leader raises another point. Just because someone can have bad theology and still be saved, I don't think that excuses their bad theology. As Christians grow spiritually, that bad theology needs to become good theology. That's where we as leaders come in--part of our job is to help people develop good theology.

We need to help people understand that God is sovereign. We need to help them understand that we were enemies of God because of our sin. We need to help them understand what was accomplished through the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, and what continues to be accomplished today through his Body in the power of the Holy Spirit.

So, here's what I think in a nutshell: I don't think we need to have good theology to be saved. God's grace isn't about theology, it's about faith ("whoever believes in Him should not perish," not "whoever believes the right doctrines should not perish"). However, as Christians we need to strive to develop what we would call good theology.

And if you're a teacher or leader who is teaching bad theology--yikes...

Helping Paths Cross

I've been a little slow in taking my turn to post my continuing thoughts on the Presbytery of Cincinnati's Transformation Proposal. Russell Smith has a couple of posts with his thoughts so far (here, here, and here), and I've got a couple of posts about this as well (here and here).

On Monday night, I attended a focus group for anyone wishing to provide feedback to the Transformation Team. It's kinda sad to say, but I was only one of six people who took the time to attend this meeting. Granted, they've got a couple other focus group meetings on the calendar, but it's still disappointing.

Anyway, one of the thoughts that occurred to me during this meeting has to do with the "permission-giving" design of the proposed structure. As I've mentioned in the past, I love that we're striving to be more permission-giving. One of the statements about this proposed structure is that this Presbytery would be one "that is not afraid to risk how ministry emerges, is done, or is financed." Let me give a loud Pentecostal "Amen" to that!

One of the challenges as this structure emerges will be to connect people who have mutual ministry passions. We may have one person at Union who is passionate about providing help to single mothers. There may also be someone at Covenant First and one at Heritage.

But let's suppose that none of them are go-getters. They're not going to start making phone calls or publicizing this potential ministry; they just have a desire to help single moms. If, however, they knew that there were others in the Presbytery who also were passionate about this, they might together begin to form this ministry and obtain the support it needs from the Presbytery.

One of Presbytery's roles in all this will be to connect people who may not otherwise cross paths. How this can be done is up for discussion. Could there be a presbytery-wide survey of what people are passionate about? Perhaps Presbytery could then work to connect those with common passions.

That's one idea. I think the Presbytery generally will have to continue to work to create a culture of cooperation and connectedness.

I'm curious to see what will happen.

Bad Theology and Salvation

Our little group of "pastors, leaders, and dreamers" that used to meet at Barnes and Noble every Thursday has morphed into a more intentional discussion group that meets once a month at Cincinnati Christian University. Today was our first meeting. It was good!!

All of our regulars were there, plus two others. It's pretty interesting how group dynamics change just by adding one or two new personalities.

Anyway, we started talking about what it means to be "ecumenical" vs. "non-denominational" and how the more mainline/liberal theologies tend to prefer the word "ecumenical," while more conservative/evangelical types like the word "non-denominational" better.

Pretty soon we were talking about what the essentials of Christianity are and what happens if someone doesn't believe certain essentials.

To which I raised the question, "Can a person be saved and yet have bad theology?"

That's easy to answer when you're talking about something like infant baptism. If you come from the Anabaptist side, you might say that, yes, a person can still be saved even if they were only baptized as an infant. If you come from a more Reformed perspective, which holds that infant baptism is a sign and a seal of God's covenant with humanity, it really doesn't matter if someone else thinks you can't be baptized as an infant. They're just wrong on the issue, but they're still saved.

But what about issues like the resurrection or the virgin birth--so-called "closed hand" issues? Can a person who believes that Jesus' resurrection in the New Testament was really a metaphor for the spirit of Christ and his teachings being resurrected in the community of early Christians--can a person who holds that belief on the resurrection be saved?

Or can someone who doesn't believe in the virgin birth be saved?

I think that they can. Nowhere does the Bible say, "To those who hold to good theology and true doctrines, to them he gave eternal life." It says, "To those who called on his name, he gave the power to be children of God." (That's a rough paraphrase from John 1.)

All that's required for salvation is faith in Christ--even if the theology about Christ may be off-base.

This, of course, opens a whole new can of worms--one to which I haven't yet given enough thought. But let's open the can, anyway.

If a person can be saved even if they have bad theology (as I propose in all my wisdom and authority), does that mean that Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses can be saved? Or other theologies that might be branded heretical or cultic?

I don't have the answer to that....

Punk Theology

Just found a new blog called Never Mind the Bibles: A Theology of Punk. It seems to be a book in progress (that, I guess, may or may not end up published on paper), but it looks pretty interesting. Haven't read the whole thing yet, but I've gotten through enough of it that I thought some of you out there might be interested in it.

Let me know what you guys think.