Over Worked, Underpaid, and Loving it

I am trying to post Mondays, but like with all my plans, life gets in the way. A few guys from Mercyhouse helped to build a stage in our church building this week. We were also able to include some of the hardcore kids who have been coming to the shows we host.

In other hardcore news, our church is having a men's retreat this weekend, and another one of the hardcore kids are coming. God is truly moving in the scene. I am so exited for March 17. I realize that it is going to be a lot of work, my wife and I already host 2 house churches, but this third one Saturday night will be worth it.

Anyway, I am giving the sermon this week at church. I am speaking about Mark 4:35- 5:41. You can check it out after at http://www.knowmercy.org/. My Joshua sermons are already up there, as well as our normal pastors sermon series for the last few years. We also have a calendar so you can see how many events we as a church are hosting as outreach into the community. If you really want to you can check out our myspace page too- www.myspace.com/mercyhouse365 . Enough shameless promotion, here is my thought for the week.

I have heard for years that we are in a post modern world, but it hasn't really set in until recently. I think that my generation, I am 27, was really at the turning point from modern to post modern thought, at least I was, so I think that there are things that we can see that the generation before and after can not. Hopefully this will be a boon. Let me explain what I mean.

I was meeting with a guy in my church. and being younger, he is post modern, but he doesn't even realize it. It is all he has known, so even thinking that there are other modes of thought out there is ridiculous to him. Our conversation led to television, and the types of shows that are now on, and the lies that they are selling. But knowing nothing different, he could not discern what I meant.

In particular, we began discussing ideas of masculinity and femininity it T.V. We talked about how the ideals of man and woman have changed, and how there is now a self perpetuating monster that tells girls that women's liberation means that they should show skin, be unhealthily thin, and pleasure men sexually to feel good, and tells men that they should be women. This young man knew that these were broken ideals, but just assumed these were always the ideals. He had no idea that these are relatively new views of men and women.

I don't really know where I am going with this rant, other than this: As a Christian, I feel it is of the utmost importance to know, not only are we broken, but how that form of brokenness can to be the dominant paradigm. If we don't know our history, we will never be able to expose the lies of Satan. Even other Christians are stuck in the period of time that they are stuck in. Our world view is to some extent defined by where and when we exist. TO really effectively witness to a culture for Christ, we must not only know the culture we are witnessing to, we need to know its roots. If we are to expose the evils of our present age, we must know where those evils grew from.

Just as a side note, we must also know the good of a culture, and celebrate the common grace that that culture was able to accept. If we only condemn the others for their evil ways, and don't praise them for their advances, they won't listen.

I digress though. I would encourage you all this week to really look at the culture you are in, and try to step out of it. I you succeed, I think you will find it s easier to connect with people, since you will know really where they are coming from.

Next week I will have morew time, and hope to speak to this alittle more, until then I leave you with God's peace.