Sunday’s service was the best one we’ve been to since we moved to Texas. Really. It was.
Sunday school was fine and normal (although, due to my complete inability to allow confusion to reign when the Gospel is muddled by extra items, I may have pushed our teacher a bit beyond where I should’ve. He wasn’t being intentionally misleading or anything. He knows what professors say at school and then says those same things, some of which, at times, can be misleading with regard to the simple truth. Sunday’s confusion stemmed from how justification and sanctification are all mixed up together and I asked ‘in what way?’. Upon clarification, I believe he made an excellent argument for seeing them distinctly. Jud showed me how the profs (and, then, of course, many students) think of this:
The question mark is my own. That’s the part of which I was asking.
But, when clarifying his point, he seemed to speak of this diagram, of which I have a much greater degree of comfort.
Justification happens at a moment. Sanctification continues during life. Glorified bodies are for the afterlife. Seems more fitting to me.
Anyway, this was not the intended topic of my blog, but I love diagrams so I thought I would share.
We got to the service a little late (as we are wont to do). We sat in the very last row, next to an older man who smelled like my granddad. Most the service was pretty normal, but we’d noticed that the pastor was leaving Romans to go to Isaiah for the week and we noted that it was odd.
When he got up to speak, it was like music to our ears. He encouraged people to stop living ‘Metro-plex Christianity’ and indicted us for the fact that DFW has more evangelicals than most of America and the highest crime rate. He said it was time to stop living off the laurels of the past and to be proactive in our community today. He called for a fast. He told those who didn’t agree with him that they would probably feel more at home in another church family. He kicked the crap out of us for not being engaging citizens with intentional relationships. It was awesome. We’ve missed feeling convicted.
If you’d like to take a listen, here you go.
So what are you going to do to be an ‘engaging citizen’ and make a difference? We went to the movies last night and were distressed by all the college kids laughing each time someone in the movie got shot, not to mention the 100,000 uses of the F word. How numb we’ve become! How do I make a difference, instead of being tempted to run and hide in a Christian bubble?
what did he mean by “metro-plex Christianity?” I guess I should listen to the sermon.
-KIT
P.S. I agree with your diagram choice as well.
While I didn’t listen to the sermon, I’d have to say that is disturbing to listen to people (especially Christians) talk poorly about their brothers in the world and not take action to help them. We’re fortunate to have found a church, St. Mark’s Episcopal on Capitol Hill, that puts an invaluable price on community service (i.e. soup kitchen volunteering, mentoring, obvious missions, etc…). They’re very pationate about helping the poor in DC, of which everyone knows there are many. It’s nice to hear that our pastor “kicked the crap out of (people)” for not being engaged in their communities.