Ms. Crankypants

“Five Point Crankiness” December 30, 2010

General things that have made me cranky lately:

1) People put prematurely into leadership at church. My daughter knows a young man (he’s in his early to mid 20’s) who knows virtually nothing … and I mean NOTHING(!) … about the Bible or about the Christian faith. But he’s now been put into a position of upper leadership with both the college aged group and the high school youth group at church. (How stupid is that?)

2) Leadership in the high school youth group at church who are young in the faith and don’t have a clue how to live out their lives as godly young people. For example, one young woman’s idea of a good time is to go to bars, get drunk, and flirt with guys. But because she doesn’t officially “date,” she thinks she’s a good example of a Christian young person. She even leads small groups in both the high school and middle school ministries at church. (Hello?!)

3) Mission organizations that attempt to tack belief in Jesus onto the worship of foreign gods (or “idolatry”). Combining Christianity with other religions is called Syncretism … and it’s completely contrary to the Word of God. They’re not bringing people into the faith — they’re creating new religions instead.

4) Ministries to the “post-modern” world who attempt to become like them in word, action, deed, philosophy, etc., rather than minister to them from the position of propositional truth as revealed in the Word of God. These post-modern Christians discourage knowledge, discourage discovering truth (they don’t believe there is such a thing as “absolute truth”), and actually encourage deconstructing truths that have seen the Church through centuries of humanism, conflicting religious views, and even persecution. The post-modern world (read: post-“knowledge/thinking” world) doesn’t need the Church of Jesus Christ becoming just another option they can tack onto whatever the current wind of thought might be — the post-modern world needs the church standing up for TRUTH! God’s truth. The Bible’s truth. The faith handed down throughout the generations. The old, old story.

5) Pragmatism in the church. The idea that if a ministry doesn’t succeed (ie: “show the numbers”), then it’s dropped like a hot potato. What about missionaries who have struggled for years and years and years with essentially no measurable fruit, but they’ve spent all those years learning the language, translating the Word of God, building relationships, etc.? Planting and watering the seeds that someone else comes along and harvests later?