Outside the Gates
“What does it mean to follow the Lord outside the gates to the places of exile” the authors of Seeking a Lasting City ask? Today’s post-modern world is also post Christian. We are no longer in Christendom, the Church is not longer the dominant culture. As the authors discuss, we have two choices. One, to retreat and insulate ourselves. However, the clear and major flaw with this tactic is that it is not biblical. The church is not the end in itself, but the Church represented by the Body of Christ is commanded to take on the Great commission, to preach the good news to the world, and to go to the nations and make disciples. Option two, regain political power, marketing the church to the dominant culture. I see several major flaws with this approach. There is the obvious threat of gaining the world and losing our soul as discussed by the authors. Additionally, as we saw so many time since the Garden on Eden, when we focus on our selves, when we try to take control, our pride is out downfall.
I love the bracelets that many youth groups wear today, WWJD. What would Jesus do? I believe that is a question that many of our church leaders as well as every member of the Body of Christ should mediate on. What would Jesus do? The authors go on to talk about a church outside the camp. Where we accept marginal status, and North America becomes a mission field, and we are the missionaries.
Dr. Collins presented the question to us, will we live Acts 29? Will we step outside the gates, will be the church? What if Central Christian Church were as popular on Saturday nights as Caesars Palace? What if the Body Of Christ were willing to live in a distinct way from the world while still living in the world?
The answer is not pro-choice, but purity. We do not need harsher prison sentences, but families of who model love and compassion. We must stand and fight the real enemy. We do not need to wage a war on drugs, but a war on Satan. It is time to stand and depopulate the gates of hell, and repopulate the Kingdom of heaven.
Wake up Church. Not church with a “c” – the building or the organization… but Church with a “C” – the Body Of Christ. George Barna’s book “Revolution” is about a movement in America. We are people who want more of God, much more, in our lives. And we are doing whatever it takes to get it. Redefining the Christian faith and the Church in America. It is an explosion of spiritual energy and activity, we are calling it the Revolution- an unprecedented reengineering of Americas faith dimension! What makes revolutionaries so startling is that they are confidently returning to first century lifestyle based on faith, goodness, love, generosity, kindness, simplicity, and other values deemed “quaint” by today’s frantic and morally untethered standards.
This is not a defeatist retreat of an underachieving low capacity mass of people! It is an intelligent and intentional embrace of a way of life that is the only viable antidote to the untenable moral standards, dysfunctional relationships, material excess, abusive power, and unfortunate misapplication of talent and knowledge that pass for Life in America these days. Many revolutionaries have tested the alternatives an found them to be woefully inadequate! Now we have gratefully and humbly accepted the opportunity to do what is right, simply because it is right, even if it is not original or culturally hip! Mr. Barn boldly asserts that there is not such thing as going with the flow.
You either stand for Jesus, or you stand for everything he died to repudiate.
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Read other articles under the topic “History of the Church Papers”
* A people of Exile
* The Priestly Kingdom
* The Holy Spirit
* New Age
* Outside the Gates
* The whispers of the evil one
* Christian Culture vs. Christianity
* The search for meaning
* Martin Luther
* Getting back to the future
