This week I caught Rob Bell’s new video titled “Rediscovering Wonder”.  I’ll save you the suspense and let you know there is nothing wonderful about it.  In fact it has left me to wonder if his message is an attack against those in the church who disagreed with his premise in his previous book, Love Wins, when he put forward that God’s love may be so big, he would allow people who are in hell a second chance at salvation, thus adopting the Universalist views on the afterlife.

To most effectively reach our culture with the truth we must get back to the fact that “true spirituality covers all of reality.” (Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto, 19)  Schaeffer explains this well:  “When I say Christianity is true I mean it is true to total reality-the total of what is, beginning with the central reality, the objective existence of the personal infinite God.  Christianity is not just a series of truths, but Truth-Truth about all of reality.” (Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto, 19-21)

Sadly many Christians today do not hold this view, but it must be encouraged and taught.  The battle for a biblical worldview is not confined to younger generations.  The evidence is too broad to suggest postmodernism, religious pluralism, or “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism” is part of a new generational thing.  Therefore, Christian leaders and pastors must encourage and emphasize how parents need to take greater responsibility for there own spiritual life, and of their families. 

Groups of People: followers of Jesus

·         A follower is by definition someone who has given hist/her life to follow Jesus and has put Him first. This assumes a measure of passion for Christ.

Group 4: The Passivist: As long as they attend church, listen to the message, and try to participate in some way, then they believe they are right with God. They tend to think less about the mission of God and more about participation in the programs of the church.

THE FOLLOWING POST CONTAINS SEMI-GRAPHIC IMAGES.  DO NOT READ IF YOU ARE NOT OKAY WITH KILLING/EATING CHICKENS OR IF YOU HAVE THEM AS PETS. (P.S. it's a long entry - no way I could make it shorter).

I’ve tried starting this blog 3 times.  The first time, I ended up writing 14 pages and it will most likely be a chapter in my new book.  The second time turned into a rant against the meat packing industry which I firmly believe in and maybe I’ll post it in the future, but it doesn’t seem to be my way of doing things here– this is my space for storytelling.

This is extremely hard to do in this instance because I don’t feel like I can explain the story of this meal without the “whys.”  But I need to try because platitudes and shouting are not my things.

There are greater points of similarity between the Barna Group and what Smith call’s “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.”  George Barna himself commented on the results of the Barna Group survey concluding  “most Americans consider themselves to be Christian and say they know the content of their Bible, (yet) less than one out of ten Americans demonstrate such knowledge through their actions.” ( www.barna.org. “Barna Survey Examines Changes in Worldview Among Christians over the Past 13 Years”, March, 6, 2009) 

As for the Millennial generation Smith researched he came to a similar conclusion stating “for most U.S. teenagers, their claims to religion’s importance notwithstanding, religion actually appears to operate much more as a taken-for-granted aspect of life, mostly situated in the background of everyday living, which becomes salient only under very specific conditions.” (Smith, 130) 

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