It's a thought

The unevangelist - "Jesus was a fag"

How are we to conduct ourselves in the face of such, uh, revelation?

What would Jesus really do?

What would Jesus really do? Provocative article. What do you think?

What Jesus saw from the Cross

James Jacques Joseph Tissot (1836-1902)
What Our Saviour Saw from the Cross
Gouache, 1886-1894
The Brooklyn Museum
Hat tip: Locusts and Honey

Wasted on Jesus?

Nice article by Ferdinand Nweke:

“As [Jesus] sat at the table, a woman came having an alabaster flask of very costly oil of spikenard. And she broke the flask and poured it on his head. But there were some who were indignant… and said ‘why was this fragrant oil wasted?’…
and they criticized her sharply.”
(Mark 14:3-5)

The world has not changed. Every time you pour something costly and precious on Jesus, the immediate reaction is, “To what purpose is this waste?” What the master gladly accepts as a sacrifice, the world calls a waste. As far as the people were concerned, the costly oil was misused. If she wanted to give it all away, why didn’t she use the proceeds from its sale to bless some poor people? In other words, there could have been a better use of the precious oil than “wasting” it on Jesus.

There is always an alternative use for whatever you want to pour on Jesus. If somebody with a degree in electrical engineering resigned a lucrative job and packed up to go and settle among the Wolof people of Senegal, the world would ask, “Can you imagine such a brilliant fellow with prospects, wasting his life and calling himself a missionary? What kind of waste is this?” If, however, he becomes an Information Technology guru, walking the financial capitals of the world and flying from New York to Singapore, from Tokyo to Brisbane, it would not be considered a waste.

Many Christians are afraid to pursue God’s high purpose for their lives because of the comments and expectations of others whose opinions belong in the trash can and who have no idea what the Lord has ordained for such a life. The truth is, everybody will be wasted somewhere. It is your choice to determine where and on what. But as for whether or not you will be wasted, it is an inescapable reality. Every life is being spent on something.

Some people are wasted on the pursuit of power, popularity and pleasure. Others are wasted on the mad-rush for money and other mundane matters of life. If your life is not wasted on Jesus, it certainly will be wasted on something less. You can only be emptied on something less than the master because there is nothing greater than him. Some people are waiting until they have been wasted by the system. At that time they will limp to the altar at age 70 singing “I surrender all.” When the best of your youthful resources have been spent pursuing your own personal agenda, what else is remaining to surrender? More, here.

Jesus - took us by surprise?

The Lord of all comes as a slave amidst poverty. The hunter has no wish to startle his prey. Choosing for his birthplace an unknown village in a remote province, he is born of a poor maiden and accepts all that poverty implies, for he hopes by stealth to ensnare and save us.

If he had been born to high rank and amidst luxury, unbelievers would have said the world had been transformed by wealth. If he had chosen as his birthplace the great city of Rome, they would have thought the transformation had been brought about by civil power. Suppose he had been the son of an emperor. They would have said: "How useful it is to be powerful!" Imagine him the son of a senator. It would have been: "Look what can be accomplished by legislation!"

But in fact, what did he do? He chose surroundings that were poor and simple, so ordinary as to be almost unnoticed, so that people would know it was the Godhead alone that had changed the world. This was his reason for choosing his mother from among the poor of a very poor country, and for becoming poor himself.

—Theodotus of Ancyra, a martyred saint from the 4th century

Lucrative Jesus

Goodness, this hurts. Bad. And have you read my latest column on this kind of a subject yet?

With nearly 87 percent of Americans identifying themselves as Christians, experts said, religion has become a lucrative part of American popular culture.

The influence of evangelicals is everywhere in today's society, according to Alan Wolfe, a sociologist at Boston College, but that is because evangelicals are being influenced by popular culture, not the other way around.

"I see them not as shapers of American culture, I see popular culture shaping them," Wolfe said. "Evangelicals are different from fundamentalists who reject popular culture because they think it is corrupt. Evangelicals don't want to reject the world, they want to persuade others to the way of Jesus and engage other people in their religion. Embracing popular culture has allowed them to do that."

Forgetting this characteristic of Jesus?

This is from Michael Duduit on the pastors.com website.

In a Preaching magazine interview, Ed Young, Sr. talked about how he does apologetic preaching in conjunction with "marketplace ministries" at Houston's Second Baptist Church, one of the nation's largest congregations.

He notes: "We've forgotten several things about the characteristics of Jesus. Get in an average church and ask, ‘Name all the characteristics of Jesus.' They'll say he was lovely, he was kind. One thing they'll often forget is he was a friend of sinners. We've forgotten that – how to be a friend to sinners.

"If you minister to people where they hurt, you don't have to worry about a chance to introduce them to Christ; they're going to ask you about coming to know Christ," Young said. "They'll want to go to church with you. But you can't befriend them in some superficial way and ‘hang a scalp' on your wall. So I think the church needs to be there to minister, to love and nurture, and when people come in they find what the world's looking for – life!"

Jesus leaders - what pastors were meant to be

Jim Martin, pastor of Crestview Church of Christ in Waco, Texas:

Many people are cynical about the church. That’s not news. There are many reasons for this cynicism. Some are cynical because of a basic mistrust of the people leading these churches. Some feel burned after learning a leader was living an immoral lifestyle. Others have been burned by placing their confidence in some church leader only to be severely disappointed due to displays of anger, ego, manipulation, etc. In contrast to these experiences, many people today would find genuine Jesus leaders to be quite refreshing.

• We are at our best when we practice what we preach.
  
  
• We are at our best when Jesus – rather than our own ego – is front and center.
  

Rest of article here.