Just when you think you’ve seen it all, the pied pipers of the mile-wide, inch-deep church in America drop one rung lower on the ladder as they continue to lead the masses of goats down the broad path of destruction.
I thought the pragmatism of Laodicean evangelism techniques couldn’t shock me anymore but this article from the New York Times has left me speechless. Here are a few quotes form the article:
Recruitment efforts at the churches, which are predominantly white, involve fight night television viewing parties and lecture series that use ultimate fighting to explain how Christ fought for what he believed in. Other ministers go further, hosting or participating in live events. The goal, these pastors say, is to inject some machismo into their ministries — and into the image of Jesus — in the hope of making Christianity more appealing. “Compassion and love — we agree with all that stuff, too,” said Brandon Beals, 37, the lead pastor at Canyon Creek Church outside of Seattle. “But what led me to find Christ was that Jesus was a fighter.”
The sport is seen as a legitimate outreach tool by the youth ministry affiliate of the National Association of Evangelicals, which represents more than 45,000 churches.
Nondenominational evangelical churches have a long history of using popular culture — rock music, skateboarding and even yoga — to reach new followers. Yet even among more experimental sects, mixed martial arts has critics.
I can’t even begin to imagine what will come next in the name of “evangelism.”
For more, checkout this post too.
Christ Alone Wyoming 
Our church elders encourage the men to read a book a month, related to the calendar quarter theme we are covering in our monthly men’s meetings. This month is Kenneth Myers’ “All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes – Christians & Popular Culture”. He nails down the influence pop culture has on Christians and the inherent danger in allowing that to happen.
People who embrace things of the culture and try to wrap a Christian label on them are doing the same thing as does the cult of Rome! We are NOT to be conforming the church and her sheep to the pattern of the world – which is at war with God. Folks who turn the church into a circus will have much to answer for, I do believe. People who are born again by the Holy Spirit do not need to be wooed by fleshly methods – they will be hungry for the things of God and need to be taught from His Word about Him – and about man.
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I believe I saw something similiar to this about 2 1/2 years ago. It was something on HBO I think that was interviewing a “Christian” group and how the physical pain that Jesus took was a means by the “faith” we should have in Him.
It showed the leader of the group getting hit in the back by a paddle or something repeated times and shouting out loud about being able to bare this pain because Jesus went through his physical pain.
I guess it has escalated to “fight clubs”.
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A fight Club in a church..Hahaha! I just have to laugh it out. American churches just got too much time on their hands. While churches in other parts of the world, are persecuted. Here we are promoting fight Clubs because Jesus was a fighter.
You want to prove you’re a fighter and a man? Go to missions, to the most desolate 3rd world country you can get into and fight for the gospel there. Better yet, go to a muslim country and preach the gospel there. That will shape you up in no time. I’m sorry but the modern American Christianity is a joke. It hurts me to say it, but we here in the west are so out of touch of the reality. The American church’s hunger for entertainment is insatiable. The virtue of the modern evangelistic methods are nowhere to be found in the word of God. It’s so man-made, man centered, carnal….”too earthbound” as Ravenhill once said.
I know I’m preaching to the choir…
But my biggest concern is….this is the same garbage that we ship to the other parts of the world -the same poison…
Nevertheless…we serve a Living and Sovereign God.
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You wrote it better than I could have done Neil.
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Ummm! won’t be long till we are back in the coliseum.
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When I read the statement by Ryan Dobson in the article – “We’ve raised a generation of little boys.”, I had to wonder how many of these “men” that they are creating with this effort would walk up to a stranger on the street and share the gospel or walk into the middle of a square, open their bible and start preaching.
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