Focus on the Family’s Boundless Line blog had an interesting post on why men dislike attending church. The post featured an except of an interview with author David Murrow, author of the book How Women Help Men Find God.
To appeal to men, Murrow suggested the church should make preaching short, make services more God- and mission-focused, and avoid “Jesus is my boyfriend” type music. Continue reading
As a Filipino Christian blogger, I would like to ask the following questions: Does evangelical churches in the Philippines particularly urban churches know the difference between a celebrity and a true shepherd of God? Has many would rather have a feel-good preacher in the pulpit than a deep and unapologetic teacher of God’s word? Has some churches, not majority had become too focused on the “Who’s Who” list of personalities that enter their church door?
Unfortunately, many (not all) expect pastors to be psychologists, CEOs and super stars. Many (again, not all) also adulates how their church has become a pre-show of ASAP every Sunday and considers celebrity members a bragging right and a sign of church success. The “Star Center” complex in some Filipino churches has to stop. It is toxic and destructive. It leads to self-absorption and swallow theology – it has no place in the church. If many think that the pastor is the “main attraction” and the best place to see Filipino celebrities is in church, the church has serious image problems that require a hard dose of self-reflection and sound-Biblical wake up call. The True North is the only star that needs to be in the spotlight at local churches.
I accepted an invitation to be a regular contributor/blogger for the Manhattan Declaration’s new blog site. The Manhattan Declaration is a 4,700-word declaration defending the sanctity of human life, traditional marriage and religious liberty in the United States. The declaration was released on November 2009 in New York City and to date has almost half a million signatures in support. Moreover, the Manhattan Declaration is a growing grassroot movement of people taking a principled stand on critical moral issues.
Though the development of the declaration was motivated by the moral problems the United States face today, Filipinos and evangelical Christians and Catholics around the world can also learn and approve its call for Christian consciousness. Sanctity of life, traditional marriage and religious liberty are important issues all Christians alike should be aware of and should be defending. Debates on these issues may not yet be as heated in the Philippines compared to the US; but it can be someday if Filipinos loose their understanding of absolute Biblical truth or fall into postmodern ideology.
As a Filipino-American and most of all as a follower of Jesus Christ, I read, signed and will blog for the Manhattan Declaration because I stand behind God’s words on the three main issues addressed by the Declaration and I want to stop the looking down on Christianity by the secular and liberal bent of the US.
You can visit the Manhattan Declaration’s web blog here.
Read and sign the Manhattan Declaration here.
I was glancing through a Filipino church’s website and noticed on the church schedule a Taglish Service. I checked the websites of other urban churches in the Philippines and saw what used to be the Tagalog afternoon service is now labelled as “Taglish.” People (including me) have been using Taglish in churches for a long time, but officially labeling a service as “Taglish” is new to me so please forgive my ignorance or commentary if you go or your church has a Taglish service. I still can’t get over the stereotypical story of a kolehiyala’s encounter of a popular street food in UP Diliman every time I think about “taglish.”
Though Taglish is accepted and widely used in everyday conversations it hasn’t been recognized as an official language in the Philippines. However, it seems that Taglish has become an effective way to share the message of Christ thus Taglish services are popping out in metropolitan Philippines today.
I have no objections with the use of Taglish to reach people for Christ. My issue is the extinction of the the national language (which I think is unintentional) that help establish a church’s national identity and heritage to the public specially to young people and non-Filipinos.
As Christians we should honor our country. But how can we make sure this ideal is preserved and passed on to the next generation if the national language has lost its place in the Filipino church? Sana man lang sa label ma-recognize ang national language natin.
My friend was right on the popularity of Taglish in Filipino churches, “tama lang ang contexualization, pero eron sigurong hangganan ito lalo na kung nakakasama sa kultura at edukasyon.”
Do you agree? Does your church has a Taglish service? What are the feedback or how effective is it?
Di ko alam kung paano minana ng Philippines ang paniniwala kay Santa Claus pero karamihan ng mga bansa sa buong mundo ay may sariling version ng Santa o naniniwala sa isang “gift-giver” tuwing pasko. But do you ever wonder kung anong tunay na itsura ni Santa Claus? Click here to find out and more importantly try to read who the real Santa Claus is – Saint Nicholas, a former bishop from Turkey who loves children and witnesses Christ’s love for others.
I love what the ailing 93-year-old Family Rosary Crusade TV host, Ramon Magsaysay and Catholic mass media awardee Father James Reuter has to say about the people he served for more than 7 decades.
“I had been asked on many occasions why I have been in the Philippines for 71 years and my answer is, the Filipinos are the most lovable people on the whole face of the earth… I find the Filipinos I talk to are closer to God and it really touches me when people come to me. I am always wishing that I was so close to God as they are. I am far closer to God (through) the people here in the Philippines… I learned from actual experience here in the Philippines that if you truly give anything you will receive so much. So I would say it is a blessing to be here. And it is a blessing to help those who are in need,”
And finally…
“For everyone in the Philippines, right now the test is to help those who are in need, to help those who need help. It is not enough that we are grateful for the gifts that God has given us but we have to reach out to others as far as we can.”
Any faithful servant of God nearing the end of his/her life reminds me of the verse below that best sums up Fr. Reuter’s service to God through the Filipino people.
“I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness …” (2 Tim 4:7, 8)
My big boss Chuck Colson was interviewed by TIME recently and he had some interesting things to say about the current Christian church. Thought what he said was so important and applies not only to Western churches but around the world. He talks about how churches today can and are failing society by loosing its sights on its true purpose of making people holy and disciples of Christ. I’m posting the whole article so you can read it for yourself. I would like to hear your reaction.
Thursday, Sep. 24, 2009
Q&A: Religious Leader Chuck Colson
By Amy Sullivan
Chuck Colson has spent a lifetime atoning for his involvement in the Watergate cover-up. The founder of Prison Fellowship has spent more than three decades working with prisoners in more than 100 countries, and he has mentored generations of conservative Evangelical leaders. This month he launched the Chuck Colson Center, an online research and education center that he calls “the Lexis-Nexis of resources on the Christian worldview.” The last of the original religious-right leaders still actively engaged with the movement, Colson spoke with TIME about his latest endeavor, why he thinks churches have failed society and the biggest mistake the religious right made.
You say you’ve been wanting to create this center for decades. What first prompted the project?
It goes back to the earliest days of our prison ministry. At the end of the first year, we’d gotten to all 42 federal prisons. But in that time, they’d built 10 more. As fast as we would get a Bible study started, they’d build a new prison. I realized that we could be working in the prisons forever and doing good work, but it wouldn’t matter if we didn’t address the bigger cultural questions, the things that were causing crime. So many of these kids in prison came from broken families. They were products of a failed worldview — that modernity would make everything better.
But most of your resources are for pastors and others in the church who could have been teaching another kind of worldview all along. Why do you think they have failed to do that?
The church has fallen into a therapeutic model. It believes its job is to make people happy and take care of their problems. It’s a feel-good kind of Christianity. I don’t think the job of the church is to make people happy. I think it’s to make them holy.
Is part of the problem the fact that so many Evangelical churches focus almost exclusively on getting people to the moment of being saved and don’t give them the tools on how to actually live as Christians?
That’s it. [Megachurch pastor] Bill Hybels was right two years ago when he released a study about the people coming into his church. It turned out he had been great at recruiting people, but they hadn’t grown and matured once they were there. He had every reason to be really concerned about the methodology of his own church. If you go to his church now, you’ll see a lot more teaching going on, a lot more discipleship.
But what you’re advocating is a tougher form of Christianity. Is that too much of a challenge for many people?
A lot of people don’t want to bother with it. [Many] people have reduced the whole Christian faith to just a relationship with Jesus. That strips the faith of its doctrine, its sovereign nature. The biggest problem is getting people to be serious about what they profess to believe.
In recent years, religious leaders have often preached about how to apply a Christian worldview to, say, making a political decision to vote for a certain kind of candidate.
We made a big mistake in the ’80s by politicizing the Gospel. We ought to be engaged in politics, we ought to be good citizens, we ought to care about justice. But we have to be careful not to get into partisan alignment. We [thought] that we could solve the deteriorating moral state of our culture by electing good guys. That’s nonsense. Now people are kind of realizing it was a mistake. A lot of people are going back and saying, “Let’s just take care of the church and tend to our knitting.”Both positions are wrong. There’s an intelligent way to engage the culture in every area, including politics. But you can’t fix politics or culture unless you fix the church. What we’re seeing in society today is a direct consequence of the church failing to be the church.
Has there ever been a time when you think religious people got the balance right by engaging without becoming entangled?
Yes. What happened in 18th and 19th century England, with the Wesley Movement and with William Wilberforce, was ideal. Wilberforce and others formed hundreds of small societies for improving human welfare, preventing cruelty to animals, reforming poorhouses and prisons. And there were great Christian leaders in politics as well. In that period, Christians were not divided by political parties.
Christians aren’t divided by political parties today, and yet there is definitely division. It’s not unusual to run across liberals who say there’s no way Jesus would ever be a Republican, or conservatives who preach that it’s not possible to be both a good Christian and a Democrat.
That’s dreadful. It’s so much bigger than politics. Jesus would have seen the Republican and Democratic parties like the money changers in the temple. They just didn’t get it. Now, I’m going to vote for a pro-life candidate if given the choice. But that has nothing to do with partisanship. Democrats do a lot of very good things that we should be supporting. And I say that as a conservative.
This article caught my attention today. True Love Waits, an abstinence before marriage ministry is making significant impact to Filipino youth. They say the ministry have reached out to almost 2,000 Filipino students and have reported 432 profession of faith to Christ recently.
This is great news and a good reminder that we need more ministies like TLW in the Philippines (see Basta Love Life and Lambat) that knows the importance of teaching Filipinos develop a Christian worlview in all aspect of their lives.
A sobering report showed that of 1.7 million babies born in 2004, almost 8 percent were born to mothers aged 15-19 or almost 30% of Filipino women become mothers before reaching their 21st birthday. In 2000, young mothers gave birth to 818,000 babies a ratio of 1 of every 10 babies born to a teenage mother. The next census will be in 2010 and its not too late for ministries and the local church to step up its game to teach young Filipinos how to live their love lives according to God’s principles and stop or at least slow down the growing number of teen pregnancies.
(Image from Children at Heart Ministries)
Ignatius from travis hawkins on Vimeo.
Here’s a funny video that MAY reflect a trend or an unhealthy church culture in the Philippines if Pinoy church leaders forget their true purpose and distinction from the world. Enjoy!
This is a video we produced for a free event for youth ministers. It was conceived as a satire for what I consider to be an unhealthy “rock star” culture that has been growing inside Christendom, as well as an encouragement for the unheralded heroes on the front lines of ministry. Shot by Taylor Robinson and George Wiley, with video post by Jason Poole and audio by Eric Chapman and Nate Dregger. The role of Ignatius is played by our friend Josh Keefer.
As a book and product marketer for BreakPoint and Chuck Colson, I get free books in the mail all the time either as a gift or for review. Some are worth reading but most sits on my desk collecting dust mainly because the theme doesn’t interest me – these books will end up in a balikbayan box to be sent to my pastor friend in Manila. The US has so many Christian resources for everyone, books, DVDs, curriculum, etc. and my hope is that Americans will not take these for granted and realize how blessed they are to have tons of choices on church and Christian resources.
One thing I don’t like living overseas is my limited access to books written and published by Filipino authors. Especially now that Christian book publishing by Filipinos has grown a lot since I left the Philippines many years ago. How I wish I can easily drive to a National Bookstore or Power Books and browse new titles from our very own authors. That’s why I am happy to see this list (thanks Kevin!) of the best selling Christian books of 2008 by CSM publishing. This is a good way to support our authors. Aside from purchasing their books we can help by spreading the word about their published work. I haven’t read any of the books on the list, but from the information I got from the website, one or two on the list interest me. Please just check the website for the description of each book I have no time write them all down:
Top 10 Best Sellers by CSM Publishing:
#1 A 2 Z Creative Teaching Methods, by Lizette Knight and Sonia Silbor
#2 Till Debt Do Us Part, by Chinkee Tan
#3 Called To Excel, by Rex Resurreccion
#4 Yes! I’m a Pastor’s Wife 2nd Edition, by Leah Marasigan Darwin
#5 Basta Lovelife, by Kevin Sanders
#6 Asian Adventure, by Various Authors
#7 Young Women on the Journey, by Various Authors
#8 Walking On: The Best of Women on the Journey, by Various Authors
#9 True Love Waits Student’s Workbook, by Various Authors
#10 A New Breed: Call for a New Generation of Pastoral Leaders by Philip Flores
By the way, if you have any book recommendation by local authors (Christian or non-Christian) or if you know other sources of Filipino books or local publishers that I can browse online, please let me know. I’ll share my book recommendations next time.
The Living Rice 