I am a dangerous man...right?

I recently ran across a comment that rattled my cage.  

"To do them justice, the people who crucified Jesus did not do so because he was a bore. Quite the contrary; he was too dynamic to be safe. It is has been left for later generations to muffle up that shattering personality and surround him with an atmosphere of tedium. We have declawed the Lion of Judah and made him a housecat for pale priests and pious old ladies."  - Dorothy Sayers

I have said in the past that "the church should be the safest place in the world!"   I still think it should be a safe place for young adults starting families, a safe place for single parents, and a safe place for the hurt, broken, and bruised.  However, I am now convinced that the "center of God's will" for your life is the most dangerous place in the world!  It may seem paradoxical, but let's take this discussion one step further.

Men and young adults are drawn to adventure and reckless behavior at times.  They love taking risks!  Think about this...these things are actually frowned on in the local church.   Most congregations offer a safe, nurturing community--an oasis of stability and predictability.  Studies show that women and seniors gravitate toward these things.  What happens to the "risk taking" man?

Most men readily acknowledge the goodness of the Christian faith, but they are not swept up in it because church life is so soft and sweet. The secure womb that is today's church fails to match the adventurous spirit found in most men.  I ran across the following statistic (can't remember where) that illuminates the plight of men in the church.  On any given Sunday there are 13 million more adult women than men in America's churches, and 6 million married women are worshiping without their husbands--that's one out of five. As many as 90 percent of the boys who are being raised in church will abandon it by their 20th birthdays--some never to return.

So men and women readers, I need your help.  How are we going to create a local church that "dangerous men" will connect to?  I look forward to hearing from you.  Let's discuss how we can reposition men of God for impact in the local church.  How will ministry to men evolve?  

Comments

[Doctor Who]

Every intellectual and cultural battle is won or lost in the assumptions. He who defines, wins. The controversy between evolution and Biblical creation is about much more than fossils and ape men. It concerns the basic presuppositions by which our society will answer questions concerning life, law, and human relationships. Most importantly, it is a battle over lordship: Who is Lord — God or man?

For much of this century, Darwinian evolution has appeared victorious in the cultural battle. The theory of evolution has done far more than just reshape America’s biology textbooks, it redefined the nature of the debate. Darwin offered modern man the same question which the serpent posed to Eve: “Hath God said?” thereby declaring man the ultimate source of authority.

The results have been devastating. Our society has declined to the point where Christianity is excluded from the public arena, parents may kill their own nine-month baby in the womb, and the lawfulness of homosexual marriage is openly debated by legislators. Many Christians disapprove, but when challenged to defend their position, are quickly silenced by protests that morality is not the proper domain of politics.

The way in which a society addresses such controversies is directly related to how it answers the following three foundational questions:

(1) Can man legislate morality?

(2) If so, by what standard should man legislate?

(3) Does this standard evolve?

The answer to each of these questions is determined by one’s approach to origins. By convincing large numbers of Christians that law is morally neutral, that human reason is the arbiter of truth, and that standards change as cultures mature, Darwinism has neutralized the restraining influence of Biblical Christianity on culture. While many Christians resist formal acceptance of the evolutionary hypothesis, they have implicitly accepted the assumptions on which the theory rests.

Can Man Legislate Morality?
It is impossible to pass a law which is free from moral implications. The real question is not whether man can legislate morality, but which system of morality will be legislated. All laws are either explicitly moral or procedural to a moral concept. Even laws requiring traffic lights are an imposition of morality. The purpose of traffic lights is to stop people from having accidents, thus protecting property and preserving life. This is a moral concept which presupposes that (a) order is good and chaos bad, (b) property rights should be honored, and (c) life preserved. Each of these principles is rooted in the Genesis account of origins: (a) God the Creator, who declared His work “very good” (Genesis 1:31), is not the author of confusion (I Corinthians 14:33); (b) He commanded man to bring order to Creation by taking dominion over the earth, thus laying the foundation for property rights (Genesis 1:18); and (c) He established the sanctity of life as the first principle of lawful government (Genesis 9:5,6). These are the unspoken moral assumptions behind a traffic light.

Of course, law can neither save nor sanctify. God intends civil law to be a restraint against evil, not a source of spiritual deliverance (Romans 13:4). Ironically, it is the evolutionary humanist who argues for salvation by legislation. Because man’s problems are believed to be environmental, not sin-related, the evolutionist hopes to solve them through government programs and better education. In such a world, the State, not Jesus Christ, is honored as the true redeemer.

By What Standard Should Man Legislate?

There are only two standards by which man can govern: the law of God, or the will of man. America’s Founding Fathers understood that there is no middle ground. They declared their allegiance to the Creator and acknowledged that He had established a law-order with transcendent moral principles: We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.

By so stating, the Declaration of Independence drew from and incorporated into the charter of our nation a one-thousand year western legal tradition firmly rooted in the Genesis account of origins. For decades American law students learned the Genesis foundation for law from Sir William Blackstone, whose Commentaries on the Laws of England was their primary text. The Commentaries were not merely an approach to the study of law, they were the law.

1. The Blackstone Tradition
Blackstone predicated his entire analysis of law on the superiority of special revelation (the Bible) over general revelation (nature), on the reality of a literal twenty-four hour, six-day creation week, on a literal Adam and a literal Fall resulting in the corruption of human reason, and on the Dominion Mandate of Genesis as the foundation for the law of property ownership. Blackstone affirmed the authority of Scripture as the only legitimate foundation for society, and he specifically refuted the idea that laws could evolve as societies change. He wrote:

Men do not make laws, they do but discover them. Laws must be justified by something more than the will of the majority. They must rest on the eternal foundation of righteousness. . . . The doctrines thus delivered we call revealed or divine law, and they are to be found only in holy scriptures. . . . And if our reason were always, as in our first ancestor before his transgression, clear and perfect, unruffled by passions, unclouded by prejudice, unimpaired by disease or intemperance, the task would be easy. . . . But every man now finds the contrary in his experience, that his reason is corrupt. . . .

The foundational common law doctrines pertaining to the laws of contracts, property, torts (personal injury), and evidence find their origin in the first eleven chapters of the Book of Genesis. Genesis reveals the authority of God as lawgiver (Genesis 2:17); the meaning of justice and mercy (Genesis 3:15); the significance of marriage as the first institution (Genesis 2:21-24); the necessity of atonement and restitution for crime (Genesis 2:17; 3:17; 9:6); the nature and meaning of covenants (Genesis 9:12,13; 15:18); the jurisdiction of the state to execute murderers (Genesis 9:6); the jurisdiction of the family to raise children (Genesis 1:28; Malachi 2:15); the jurisdiction of fathers to direct families (Genesis 3:16; 18:19); the jurisdiction of man over the environment (Genesis 1:31); etc. Despite the enormous influence of Blackstone’s distinctively creationist approach to law, his writings have been relegated to obscurity in most law schools. In the July 1978 edition of the American Bar Association Journal, noted historian, Henry Steele Commager, summarized what happened: “[They] substituted the operations of the law of evolution for the laws of God.”

2. The “Scientific” Approach to Law
There proceeded during the 19th Century, under the influence of the evolutionary concept, a thoroughgoing transformation of older studies like History, Law, and Political Economy; and the creation of new ones like Anthropology, Social Psychology, Comparative Religion, Criminology, Social Geography. . . . (Julian Huxley) A millennium of Christian legal tradition came to an end in 1870. In that year, Christopher Columbus Langdell, newly appointed Dean of Harvard Law School, began a revolutionary approach to legal education which specifically discarded the Genesis foundation of law in favor of a philosophy rooted in Darwinism.

Langdell abandoned the historic method of teaching Christian principles of the common law in favor of the new “case-book method” which directed the student to discover law through the constantly evolving opinion of judges. Langdell described the relationship between science, law, and uniformitarianism in the preface to the first “case-book” ever published, his Cases on Contracts:

Law, considered as a science, . . . has arrived at its present state by slow degrees; in other words, it is a growth, extending in many cases through centuries. This growth is to be traced in the main through a series of cases; and much the shortest and best, if not the only way of mastering the doctrine effectively is by studying the cases in which it is embodied.

Legal scholar, Herb Titus, explained that Langdell “believed that the cases were the ‘original sources’ of legal doctrines and principles: the case gave birth to a rule of law, which slowly evolved through a series of cases into a full-fledged legal principle.” Langdell began a century-long tradition whereby judges no longer viewed themselves bound to interpret pre-existing laws. They may now decide what laws should be. Thus, Langdell answered the question, “By what standard should man legislate?” by pointing to the autonomous reason of man. Do laws evolve?

The Langdellian legal revolution proved to be the single greatest influence on American law since the publication of Blackstone’s Commentaries in 1765. In the years that followed, the introduction of the case-book method, scholars and jurists would continue to integrate evolutionism into the American legal system. While Langdell’s primary influence had been to create a distinctively Darwinian methodology of legal education, the job of reshaping the conclusions of law in the image of evolutionary humanism would be left to his student progeny and intellectual successors.

The single most influential jurist of the Twentieth Century was United States Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. His massive treatise, The Common Law, supplanted Blackstone’s Commentaries as the premier text for law students. Holmes taught “the life of the law has not been logic, but experience,” and argued that it was the responsibility of courts to direct the evolution of law. Because right and wrong do not exist in any absolute sense, judges must determine which standards are most appropriate at a given point in the evolution of a society. For three decades, Holmes brought his distinctively Darwinian bias to the Court. He spoke candidly: “I see no reason for attributing to man a significance different in kind from that which belongs to a baboon or a grain of sand.”

A consistent evolutionist, Holmes declared that “the sacredness of human life is a purely municipal ideal of no validity outside the jurisdiction.” He authored the landmark decision in Buck v. Bell upholding a Virginia eugenics law mandating the involuntary sterilization of people the State deemed undesirable. It is better for all the world if, instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. Holmes and his contemporaries laid the foundation for legalized abortion, no-fault divorce, the legalization of homosexuality, and the rejection of the Framers’ vision for Constitutional interpretation. Today, most courts have embraced an evolving standard for Constitutional interpretation, rejecting the notion that the Constitution must be interpreted in light of the meanings intended by the Framers.

Conclusion
For evil to triumph in the cultural battle, it is not necessary that the theory of evolution gain wide-spread acceptance, only that the assumptions behind the theory do. The battle between evolution and creation is comprehensive because it is a battle over lordship. The source of law will always be the true Lord of that civilization. Standards will never evolve because the Lawgiver never changes (Hebrews 13:18). His moral law for man can never change because it reflects the immutable character of a righteous, holy God. This standard was established from the beginning, is revealed in Scripture, and is eternally binding on civilizations. While specific application of these principles may change from culture to culture, the principles do not. Consequently, debates pertaining to separation of morality and politics, children’s rights, overpopulation, environmentalism, homosexual marriage, education, capital punishment, and the purpose of the criminal justice system can only be properly addressed by building upon a Genesis foundation. Only armed with this foundation can Christians speak authoritatively to the defining issues of our day.

[Doctor Who]

1. On the day Continental flight 1713 crashed, it had been snowing all day in Denver. Due to cancellations on other airlines, the flight was almost full, 77 people had boarded. The captain of the plane did not seem worried when a flight attendant questioned him concerning the competence of his 26-year-old copilot who had just completed DC-9 flight training 8 weeks earlier. He assured her that he would be at the controls. He wasn't. On top of that neither pilot had any experience flying is severe weather conditions. They failed to visually check the wings and have them deiced every 20 minutes before take-off. According a Reader's Digest article, instead of checking the wings, "they fell into a pattern of aimless chatter with sexual innuendoes about one of the stewardesses. Their last 30 minutes of conversation, saved for posterity by the cockpit voice recorder, are more remindful of two adolescent boys on a camp-out than of two professionals charged with the safety of eighty men, women and children."

As a result of their incompetence and lack of teamwork, Flight 1713 crashed seconds after take-off. 28 people lost their lives, including both pilots.

Leadership and teamwork are essential in piloting the big planes. An experienced captain trains his co-pilot through difficult situations. They work as a team, correcting each other's mistakes, checking each other to ensure safety.

The plane crashed because the captain entrusted too much of his authority to the co-pilot. He failed to check the wings. Catastrophe struck, not because of poor weather, but poor leadership (Point Man, pp.157-160).

2. A marriage is a lot like flying a plane. The husband and wife are in the cockpit, captain and co-pilot. Behind them, in first class, are kids and grandparents. In coach are friends, extended family, church family, school, work and social contacts. Below in the cargo holds are a couple of vehicles, a house in need of a new furnace, pets, golf clubs, etc...

3. In this family plane, Dad, you are the captain. God has given you the role of guiding it through free-easy flying and turbulent dangerous situations. He's also given you a co-pilot in your wife. She has a vital role, but she is not the captain. You are. The Bible says that you are "the head."

4. Flight 1713 crashed because the pilot did not take his role as captain or "head" seriously. Marriages and families crash and burn all around us because men and women either do not understand or do not apply the biblical principles of marriage. I'm preaching to the men today. I want you to understand how important you are. Unless you taking "headship" seriously, you family will crash and burn.

5. Since the Bible is God's Word, let's ask of it three critical questions: What is Headship? Why are Husbands Head? And How are Husbands to Function as Head?

I. What is Headship?

A. What headship is. When God spoke through the Apostle Paul in Eph.5:22, He said, "The husband is the head of the wife as also Christ is the head of the church." God inspired Paul to use the Greek word kephale (kef-al-ay'). Basically the word means a ruler or chief.

B. What headship involves.

1. Headship involves AUTHORITY. God has given husbands authority in the family.

They have the final call. President Harry Truman used to have a sign on his desk that said, "The buck stops here." He ultimately had authority in his administration. In the family, the husband has the God-ordained position of the final call in the decision-making process.

2. Headship involves RESPONSIBILITY.

a. He has a responsibility to LEAD. Like a coach, he calls the plays. He plots the course and makes the strategy. Steve Farrar's vivid picture is that of a platoon point man on patrol. Dad's God has given you the responsibility to lead your family through the dangerous jungle of this world. You wife and kids are counting on you.

b. He has a responsibility to PROVIDE. No matter the culture of the 90's, God intended the husband to be the breadwinner of the family. To Adam was given the responsibility to provide for his family's physical needs (Gen.3:17-19). 2 Cor.12:14 says, "For the children ought not to lay up for the parents, but the parents for the children." In some homes, it is necessary for the wife to work. However, more often than not, the wife works outside the home so that there can be a new car, a bigger house, etc... To couples with young children, I say, "Is a newer car really worth those precious formative years in the lives of your children?"

c. He has a responsibility to PROTECT. There is probably not a man here who would not instantly give his life for his family. We would protect them from attack with our lives. How well do we protect them from what comes through the TV set? How well do we protect them from what they may read or hear in public school?

d. He has a responsibility to PREPARE. Our little girls and boys are growing up all too soon and will be pushed out in a the world where the enemy will harm and deceive them. For those of us with young children, we must realize that they are the priority!

e. He has a responsibility to NURTURE. As husbands and fathers, men are to nurture their children. Eph.6:4 says, "And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord." The most important priorities for your family should not be sports, awards, scholarships or graduation. Rather, they should be salvation and discipleship. The man who fails to lead his family spiritually fails in everything.

f. He has a responsibility to DISCIPLINE. Prov.13:24, "He who spares his rod hates his son, But he who loves him disciplines him promptly." Children need to know the boundaries. The worst thing any parent can do is try to be a friend to their child.

Men, I'm not just giving you an idea about what you should be doing... you are responsible to God for your family. As the captain, the head of your family you will answer for your responsibilities.

C. What headship isn't.

Some of you wives may have turned me off. I know I sound a bit old-fashioned. You think this headship/submission thing went out with hula-hoops and eight-tracks. Let me suggest that the reason you may not like what I'm saying is because you don't understand. You are confusing headship with authoritarianism.

1. Jot down these signs of authoritarianism.

a. He makes all the decisions without the input of the wife.

b. He tightly controls all family money and watches critically over his wife's spending.

c. He never says, "I was wrong" or "I am sorry."

d. He disregards suggestions and pleas from his children.

e. He has an intense need to control those closest to him.

2. God never intended the wife to be the slave of the husband. God never intended her to do all the cleaning, cooking, shopping, and ironing, wait on him hand and foot from the moment he walks in the door and then be a fantastic lover at the end of the evening.

3. Headship isn't intimidation. Imagine the disaster in the cockpit when a co-pilot is too intimidated by the pilot to tell him that the wings are icing up or a critical gauge is not operating properly.

4. Yes, the husband is the "head of the wife." Yes, to wives God says, "Submit to your own husbands as to the Lord." However, 1 Pet.3:7 says, "Husbands, likewise, dwell with them with understanding, giving honor to the wife, as to the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be hindered."

II. Why are Husbands Head?

The prevalent marriage philosophy today is that marriage is a 50/50, absolutely equal partnership. In many circles, to suggest that the husband should be the head of the home is the equivalent as dragging your wife around by the hair and grunting. Marriage statistics also tell us that over 50% of marriages end in divorce. Obviously, the 50/50 philosophy does not work well. Let's examine three reasons why God gave husbands the role of headship.

A. First, headship is LOGICAL.

1. Let me suggest a paraphrase of our text, "Wide receivers, submit to your quarterback, as to the Lord. For the quarterback is the head of the wide receiver as Christ is the head of the church..." (NFL version!).

Imagine a scene from a Dallas Cowboy offensive huddle. Troy Aikman gets the play from the sideline and gives it to the team. As he comes to the line, he realizes that the called play will not work against the defense. So, he calls an audible. Imagine if Michael Irvin said, "That’s the stupidest decision I've ever seen. I'm not going to run that play. I'll run the one we called in the huddle." Imagine if every member of the offense decided their own plays. They might run 11 different plays at once! Stupid! Yet that's the system with which many families operate.

2. In every organization, there must be a system of authority. There must be a head. Without headship, there is chaos.

a. Pick any team sport... someone has to call the plays.

b. Imagine how effective an army would be without a chain of command.

c. Imagine a corporation without a CEO to call the shots.

d. Imagine our country without a president.

3. Logic clearly implies that there must be a place where the buck stops. Some guys are putting untold stress on their wives and children because they refuse to take that logical place of authority.

4. Some men complain that their wives nag them. You whine because your wives spend your money and make the decisions. Have you ever stopped to wonder why she's calling the plays? Maybe it's because you won't.

B. Second, headship is BIBLICAL.

1. When Eve enticed Adam to sin, he did it. When God came to settle accounts have you ever noticed, he bypassed Eve and when straight to Adam first. From the beginning, God has held husbands accountable for their families.

2. In our text we learned that the husband is the head of the wife "as.. Christ is head of the church."

3. 1 Pet.3:1 says, "Wives, likewise, be submissive to your own husbands, that even if some do not obey the word, they, without a word, may be won by the conduct of their wives."

4. Wives, you may not appreciate the biblical principle of headship. You may think it is out-of-date and out-of-touch. You may believe that I am being insensitive and harsh. However, to disregard this teaching of Scripture is to disobey marriage and to put the longevity of your marriage in danger.

C. Third, headship is FUNCTIONAL.

1. Basically, it works! I can introduce you to couple after couple who have applied these principles. They've raised great kids and celebrated 40, 50 and some 60+ years of happy healthy marriages.

2. On the other hand, I can point you to couple after couple who have disregarded these truths and in their disobedience to God found their marriages, their children, and their lives crashing down around them. Divorce is spelled D-I-S-O-B-E-D-I-E-N-C-E.

III. How are Husbands to Function as Head?

A. Husbands must accept the responsibility of headship.

1. 1 Tim.3:4-5 says that a church leader is to be "one who rules his own house well, having his children in submission with all reverence for if a man does not know how to rule his own house, how will he take care of the church of God?"

2. You don't have to become the head of your home, you already are! God is not telling us to evolve into leaders, He's telling us to act like the leaders we already are.

My two girls are fascinated with the fact that I was ever a child. As they look at old photographs of me when I was their age, they have trouble believing their 6'2", 205-pound father could have ever been their size. You see, their perception of me is not that of a man who has been given authority, but to them I am authority. My size, my voice, my personality all portray leadership to them. God made them that way. If I fail to act as a leader, I not only fail them, I fail God.

3. Whether we like it or not, God will hold us responsible for our families. Eli was a great man of God among the people, but God held him responsible for his son's great sins (1 Sam.3:1,12-14).

4. The greatest need of this country is for Christian men to stand up and be counted. We've got to take a public stand for God, but we mustn't be like Eli, we can't forget our homes.

B. Husbands must realize their headship will be challenged.

1. Our authority will be challenged by our children.

a. We've all cringed to be around children whose parents refuse to discipline their children.

b. All children test their parents authority. When we draw a line of obedience, we must old them to it.

2. Our authority will be challenged by our wives.

a. Guy's our wives will not always understand or approve of our decisions. Sometimes we are wrong. We need to listen to them. More often than not, when I've taken time to listen to Deb, her perceptive wisdom has saved my bacon.

b. On the other hand, there are times when the buck must stop with us. There are times when we must make decisions of which our wives do not approve. At those times, in a kind way, we must remind them that we are the ones who answer to God for our families so we must ultimately make the final decisions.

3. Our authority will be challenged by the world.

a. Recently, there has been a major movement to give children the same legal rights as adults. Many European countries have made corporeal punishments such as appropriate spanking illegal. There are many liberal politicians who work hard to see such limits put on American parents.

b. Such philosophies not only violate the Word of God, they make no logical sense!

c. I'm not talking about restricting laws that prevent child abuse. I'm all for taking children away from dangerous environments. However, there is a big difference between abuse and appropriate discipline.

d. Dads, we have to discipline our children fairly and stand up to such nonsense in our government.

C. Husbands must model their headship after Christ.

1. Let's go back to our text for this last thought. V.25 says that husbands are to love their wives (and their children) "just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her."

2. Jesus loved the church so much, He died for it. Acts 20:28 speaks of "the church of God which He purchased with His own blood."

3. In other words, men, when you don't know how to exercise your headship, when you don't know how to lead your wife and kids, look to Christ and His relationship to the church. Ask yourself this question, "What would Jesus do?"

Steve DeVore is an exceptional man who built a multi-million dollar corporation on the principles of role modeling. His company, SyberVision produces instructional videotapes on everything from golf to skiing to weight loss. He got the concept while in college. He was watching a professional bowling tournament on TV when the thought struck him that if he could emulate the movements of the professional bowlers, he could achieve similar results. He jumped in his car and headed for the local bowling alley. For the next 30 minutes he did "just as" he as seen the professionals do. He bowled nine straight strikes and recorded a score of 278. The key was he did it "just as" the professionals.

Men, if we will do "just as" Christ. If we will hone in on His example of love and sacrifice, we can guide our family 747s smoothly, even through the most turbulent weather. Our Lord is in the control tower, guiding us and our co-captains. Trust Him!

If you've never met Jesus Christ personally, all that I have said is irrelevant. You and your wife are alone, flying through stormy skies. Won't you trust Him today?

[Ben Sanders]

Jeff, I don't know if I ever had that lack of danger - even though I grew up in the church. The great majority of my main leaders were guys who I had no doubt were "manly".

My Great-Grandfather was a cowboy who rode with the Texas Rangers on occasion, he actually died with shotgun rounds still in him from a gunfight years before. Even after he became a preacher, there are tales of him pausing a sermon to punch out a couple of troublemakers throwing tomatoes into the tent.

My Grand-Father was a pro boxer and all around tough guy - still is. We have video of him as a pastor wrestling with a visiting preacher just for fun. I believe he played a major role instilling a very competitive spirit in me at a young age. We (my cousins and I) were encouraged to compete physically with each other and he enjoyed every minute of it.

My Father was a big guy who walked softly but carried a big stick - I was brought up on stories of his strength and having to stand up for himself in a fight and so on.

I had pastors and preachers who were former football players, bikers, and all around tough guys.

By the same token, I also know how they received the Holy Ghost, and how their life was turned around. But they never shied away from the past, and there was always this edge that said "I can be tough if I need to be - so don't get too froggy with me"

I guess what I am getting at is that within moral reason, we cannot be afraid to be men and do things that men like to do. If some punk kid thinks I have gone soft just because I am not out running with the gang anymore, well - I don't mind taking him down a couple of notches ... in Christian love of course :) Nothing wrong with loving people, but every once in a while you have to be able to bump a couple of heads around.

[Ben Sanders]

OK- two postings count as a ramble (see Dr. Who previously) but I can't help it. I can't stand all this "let's be soft and loving" business all the time. For EVERYTHING there is a season.

Jesus was not a wimp - he was a tough as nails carpenter (pre-nailgun)who knew how to take care of business (temple cleansing) and he picked guys to start his church who were no pushovers either. Peter cut a guy's ear off while standing up to a Roman legion with a single sword! Paul began his career kicking in doors and killing people ... later he was not afraid to knock on doors and help people live.

Somehow we have to get the message out that it takes tough men - men who aren't afraid to work or get in the world's faces and make a difference.

[Hugh]

I believe Men in the world are tired of seeing Sauls of Tarsus. Religious men who are hungry for power, driven by their own ambitions and have forms of godliness with no power. Men are hungry for Stevens, who was a man full of the Holy Spirit, full of power, full of wisdom, and full of faith. These men had warrior spirits that revolutionized every place they set their foot on. Men like Steven in Acts 6 are needed in the hour we live in. These men are trouble makers to the old religious sytems of dead orthodoxy, and status quo.Men are looking for troublemakers in the church who disrupt kingdoms of darkness in their families, churches, and cities. I believe men are looking for other men who are truly living for something that is worth Christ dying for. I am convinced that Saul became Paul for two reasons: He first had a revelation of the Majesty of Jesus on the road to damascus,(acts 9:3) and secondly he ran into a real Christian named Stephen. (acts 7:58). Where are the Stephens of Abundant Life Church? Will they please rise?

[TJ]

Jeff, not sure I can add to Dr. Who's treatise but I will say this, you're perfectly right! I think there is a balance b/w the wildly adventurous and UFC Jesus and the baby face, Michael Bolton Jesus you see in paintings in Dentists' offices. True power is having the ability to abuse it, but the wisdom not too. Jesus was probably built like Kimbo Slice but had the restraint of Ghandi.

The modern church lacks adventure. It doesn't challenge the post-modern man. It says, "come, dress up, sit down, listen, and give money." The four things on guy wants to do.

Ok, I'm shutting up before I become Dr. Who Jr.