Fuel for Discernment

Here's a nifty title: Shot Glass Evangelism

I bet some of you are thinking "Sweet!" and probably some of you are thinking "That's terrible!" I guess it depends on whether you're a presbyterian or southern baptist huh? That is a title of a blog post from a website that "...is a non-interactive newsand comment site regarding the state of the contemporary evangelical church." In otherwords it is basically a discernment site. And if I did not state this in my last post let me state it now; discernment is a great thing. Indeed, it is a necessity in the battle we face everyday. But done with wrong motives and without love it is just as sinful as getting drunk using those shot glasses to shoot your favorite liquor.
The story of that church is found here. If you were to read this short article and look closely at what is going on and why this discernment site chose to write about it you will see what mainly fuels these discernment ministries: contextualization. Tim Keller gives a terrific definition of contextualization. He says, “Contextualization is not giving people what they want. It’s giving them God’s answers which they may not want to questions they are asking in forms and language they can comprehend.”
So these discernment ministries are basically calling out ministers or ministries they feel are changing the Gospel in order to grow a large church or have a large following. And I think that is great they see through some of this and have a desire to spread the news. I just wish we could all model the grace and love of Jesus more when dealing with error. However, having said that and agreeing that passing out shot glasses to bar patrons to increase your church attendance or "impress people" is downright ridiculous, at least these guys were out among the people. Mark Driscoll spoke at a session at one of Piper's national conferences on this very issue. He basically said that if we do not contend for sound Biblical doctrine then when we contextualize we will go wrong and fall into heresy "certainly having new kinds of Chrstians...nonChristians." We will start to do things just because they seem to work while ignoring the eternal implications of some of these strategies and methods.
The above article about that church is a perfect example. The pastor of that church said his goal in passing out the shot glasses was to impress people that do not go to church. Please show me where the Bible commands or suggests we impress people. Please show me where we are to care more about the quantity of souls sitting in our churches rather than their eternal destinies. Let us love people more by caring more about their souls than where their butt is sitting on Sunday morning. And let us go and contextualize and make known the love of Jesus.