Where does your chuch fall

I recently wrote a blog post about the emergent church and the problems that come from this newly growing church. In this post, I hope to make it a little clearer where this church is located in the big picture. Mark Driscoll divides all churches into four "lanes." The first lane he says are called Emerging Evangelicals. They believe in God's word but they are more of a "hip" church. Lane Two would be House Church Evangelicals. They believe the same way, in God's word but they tend to get rid of pastors and do little churches. Then Lane 3, the Emerging Reformers. They are in God's word and support famous evangelicals. Worship is free and is more charismatic. The last lane, Lane 4, the Emergent Liberal. They tend to question some of the teachings of the Bible.
My church, I believe, would most likely fall under Lane 3. I wouldn't say it aligns with all the same beliefs of the 3rd lane, but it is very similar. What lane would you say your church falls into?
This lead me to think, if I could create a perfect church, what would it look like? Well, I think it would look a lot like mine right now. A group of Christians coming together, worshiping the name of the Lord, and being taught to weekly from the Word of God. If I could change anything about my church, it would have to be the worship. My church is so big that the worship service has to be so organized. Sometimes I feel like it is too organized.

So again I ask you, where does your church fall?

Detecting the Lies

One of my great Bible teachers once told me to never believe something someone says about your faith or the Bible, unless you can prove it yourself. I grew up listening to the messages and teachings of Rob Bell. In my Bible classes, we would spend hours listening to this interesting man as his words went right over my head. Everything he said made since to a degree, but I hadn't really started to think about what he said about Christianity until now.

He does a great job presenting his opinions through his 10 minute long videos about different topics. He makes them personal and applicable which grabs the readers attention. When listening now to one of his videos, you can not really notice anything wrong with what he teaches because it is very similar to what most Christians believe. But, if you have learned to detect phrases or words, you will notice how different his beliefs are then for example, my beliefs.

This week I was challenged to really study Rob Bell and the way he teaches. I watched one of his videos, called Shells. It talked about how its not okay to be busy because Jesus was not busy. As he recounted many Bible stories, Bell came to the conclusion that if we are so busy with our lives, we will never be able to do what  God wants us to do or earn the prize at the end. Kind of makes since right? Well if you listen really closely, he makes a statement that made me feel weird. He said, "Jesus can't do everything for everyone." This statement believe it or not, was his big thought behind his video. There are just loads of things wrong with this statement, but the problem is, if you don't catch this, you might believe it. This is what is wrong with his teachings, he puts so much truth into his videos that when he slips a lie, you don't realize it. How sneaky is that?
Some might wonder why we can not just watch videos like this and be satisfied with our weekly intake of the gospel. Well what I just said proves why and because God calls us to fellowship with others.

So the thing I challenge you to do is really study what people tell you and not to just believe something because a fellow Christian does. Make it personal because in the end, that is what will save your life.