Changing (and declining focus on God) of Christian institutions

Changing (and declining focus on God) of Christian institutions

Given that early Ivy League universities (Harvard, Yale, Brown, etc.) started out as missionary training schools / schools to educate people towards God, but now not quite missionary training schools anymore

that the Student Volunteer Movement started out being an incredible student missionary sending movement but petered out after a turn to the “social gospel” ending up disbanding itself in the mid 20^th century

that the YMCA (still a great organization) started out with a vision for winning souls to Christ, but not so focused on the “C” in YMCA

that many older denominations and seminaries now are not much focused on God as revealed in the Bible

how do we as followers of Jesus continue to serve God through and in institutions (which can be very effective tools for God) and help prevent them from forgetting their initial focus that seems so easy?

Hypothesis one is that ambitious people (Acts 20:29-32) come and take over

Hypothesis two is that there sometimes feels like an unhealthy creation of a separation between “spiritual” work and “secular” work where the “model” of a spiritual man has taken the form of a vocational minister (many who are good followers of Jesus) instead of other people (engineers, lawyers, bankers, professors, journalists, etc.).

I really wish we had more followers of Jesus in PhD and JD programs (the pipeline for university professors and politicians) and in journalism and media degrees (the pipeline for influential people in the media and entertainment).

Women in Teaching / Pastoring / Leadership in churches

What are your thoughts on the following passage from 1 Timothy 2?

 11A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. 13For Adam was formed first, then Eve. 14And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. 15But women^[a] will be saved^[b] through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.

By authority, does the Bible mean spiritual authority? How about ministry roles? How about Bible studies?

Growth of church planting movements

Growth of church planting movements

When I think about breakthrough growth in the church, I think of events where the Holy Spirit works in individuals lives to quickly/rapidly reach non-Christians, resulting in quick and significant numbers of people come to God.

When I read about these circumstances, I come up with two questions

1) How come these movements do not continue on and end up looking more like standard churches?

Examples:

-          For instance, City Church (in SF), Calvary Chapel (the denomination), and likely other churches grew out from small Bible study groups; at what point did they stop growing as rapidly?

2) For these rapidly producing groups, how can infrastructure/institutions be a support/enabler to these organizations instead of the manifestation of these organizations (e.g. if they grow to be large, that they still be as organic and rapidly reproducing?)

Offshoring back-office missionary org operations to low-cost countries like India or China?

What is your thoughts on this?

Major corporations have been offshoring operations (IT call-in help desk, application development, even basic HR and Finance operations) to India, China, Phillipines, etc. The cost of offshore entities are anywhere from 20-40% that of the US. (e.g. someone in India working on app development may earn $10K/year versus someone who earns $50K/year here.

It would be great to see missinoary orgs start building capacity for centers in India or China which do financial, document, etc. processing as well as web design for orgs like OMF, Wycliffe, etc.

One question someone may pose is, does everyone who runs the back-office work for a missionary agency need to be Christian? Its interesting when we look at 1 Kings 5:3-6, it notes on Solomon hiring the Sidonians from Hiram (a foreign king) to help in the getting lumber for building of the temple.

Some questions I can see are:
- What % of missionary org back-office operations (IT, web design, Finance, HR, etc.) are paid for through direct individual support from churches (e.g. the person raises support to work at the missionary org, thus is already paid for).
- What do you do with individuals in the US whose jobs are being "offshored"? Put them in another capacity? Manage the offshore resources?

Would love to hear peoples' thoughts on this :) 

Formula for A Burning Heart, AW Tozer

Formula for a Burning Heart – A.W.TOZER

1. Get thoroughly dissatisfied with yourself.
Complacency is the deadly enemy of spiritual progress. The contented soul is the stagnant soul. When speaking of earthly goods, Paul could say, “ I have learned … to be content”; but when referring to his spiritual life, he testified, “I press toward the mark.” Stir up the gift of God that is in thee.

2. Set your face like a flint toward a sweeping transformation of your life.
Timid experimenters are tagged for failure before they start. We must throw our whole soul into our desire for God. “The Kingdom of God suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.”

3. Put yourself in the way of the blessing.
It is a mistake to look for grace to visit us as a kind of benign magic, or to expect God’s help to come as a windfall apart from conditions known and met. There are plainly marked paths which lead straight to the green pastures; let us walk in them. To desire revival, for instance, and at the same time to neglect prayer and devotion is to wish one way and walk another.

4. Do a thorough job of repenting.
Do not hurry to get it over with. Hasty repentance means shallow spiritual experience and lack of certainty in the whole life. Let godly sorrow do her healing work. Until we allow the consciousness of sin to wound us, we will never develop a fear of evil. It is our wretched habit of tolerating sin that keeps us in our half-dead condition.

5. Make restitution wherever possible.
If you owe a debt, pay it, or at least have a frank understanding with your creditor about your intentions to pay, so that your honesty will be above question. If you have quarreled with anyone, go as far as you can in an effort to achieve reconciliation. As fully as possible make the crooked things straight.

6. Bring your life into accord with the Sermon on the Mount and such other New Testament Scriptures as are designed to instruct us in the way of righteousness.
An honest man with an open Bible and a pad and pencil is sure to find out what is wrong with him very quickly. I recommend that the self-examination be made on our knees, rising to obey God’s commandments as they are revealed to us from the Word. There is nothing romantic or colorful about this plain downright way of dealing with ourselves, but it gets the work done. Issac’s workmen did not look like heroic figures as they digged in the valley, but they got the wells open, and that was what they had set out to do.

7. Be serious – minded.
You can well afford to see fewer comedy shows on TV. Unless you break away from the funny boys, every spiritual impression will continue to be lost to your heart, and that right in your own living room. The people of the world used to go to the movies to escape serious thinking about God and religion. You would not join them there, but you now enjoy spiritual communion with them in your own home.
The devils ideals, moral standards, and mental attitudes are being accepted by you without you knowing it. You wonder why you can make no progress in your Christian life. Your interior climate is not favorable to the growth of spiritual graces. There must be a radical change in your habits or there will not be any permanent improvement in your interior life.

8. Deliberately narrow your interests.
The Jack-of-all-trades is the master of none. The Christian life requires that we be specialists. Too many projects use up time and energy without bringing us nearer to God. If you will narrow your interests, God will enlarge your heart.
“Jesus only” seems to the unconverted man to be the motto of death. But a great company of happy men and women can testify that it became to them a way into a world infinitely wider and richer than anything they had ever known before.
Christ is the essence of all wisdom, beauty and virtue. To know Him in growing intimacy is to increase in appreciation of all things good and beautiful. The mansions of the heart will become larger when their doors are thrown open to Christ and closed against the world and sin. Try it.


9. Begin to witness.
Find something to do for God and your fellow men. Refuse to rust out. Make yourself available to your pastor and do anything you are asked to do. Do not insist upon a place of leadership. Learn to obey. Take the low place until such time as God sees fit to set you in a higher one. Back your new intentions with your money and your gifts, such as they are.

10. Have faith in God.
Begin to expect. Look up toward the throne where your Advocate sits at the right hand of God. All heaven is on your side. God will not disappoint you.

If you will follow these suggestions, you will most surely experience revival in your own heart. And who can tell how far it may spread? God knows how desperately the church needs a spiritual resurrection. And it can only come through the revived individual.

from - http://jaesonma.blogspot.com/