Discipleship + Salvation

The sad reality of discipleship in our time is that it is divorced from mission. Discipleship is often divorced from mission because it is divorced from the awareness of who God is and what it means to claim that Jesus is the Christ — the living Messiah of God. Discipleship grows out of the awareness that salvation begins a process of submitting our lives to the Lordship of Christ. When this process does not follow the event of salvation, then we fail to follow Jesus in life.

This comes from a blog post written by the prolific Len Hjalmarson, in which he says that the Gospel isn't just 'Jesus saves' but also 'Jesus is Lord.'

He also notes:
Our practice of discipleship is often lacking because we have separated a personal event from a public process. But discipleship is never a private process; if it was a private process the early Christians would not have been martyrs.

The Presbyterian Stats

A report has just been released by The Presbyterian Panel, a research group that serves the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) [PCUSA].

The panel's report is presented as a "Religious and Demographic Profile of Presbyterians, 2008." The report contains relatively few surprises, and is filled with data about the beliefs of Presbyterian laypersons and clergy.

Albert Mohler, who is no doubt regarded as a Conservative in the Christian scene (though with kudos and plenty of insight and wisdom) opens his blog post on the topic with these words:

"Liberal Protestantism, in its determined policy of accommodation with the secular world, has succeeded in making itself dispensable." That was the judgment of Thomas C. Reeves in The Empty Church: The Suicide of Liberal Protestantism, published in 1996. Fast-forward another fourteen years and it becomes increasingly clear that liberal Protestantism continues its suicide -- with even greater theological accommodations to the secular worldview.

His focus is on this point: the most significant theological question concerned the exclusivity of the Gospel and the necessity of belief in Jesus Christ for salvation. On that question there was great division, with over a third (36%) of PCUSA church members indicating that they "disagree" or "strongly disagree" with the statement that "only followers of Jesus Christ can be saved."

A much more detailed look at the stats involved appears on the GA Junkie site (GA for General Assembly, of course, and a site focused on the politics of Presbyterianism in the States). This writer looks at the actual question asked (Please indicate the extent to which you agree or disagree with...the following statement: only followers of Jesus Christ can be saved) and debates the case from there.

I won't go into the details of his arguments here, since they take up a fair amount of space on the original post, and he has a better head for interpreting statistics than I do.

Suffice to say, the two different perspectives expressed are both worth considering, and are perhaps not that far apart. And how does it all apply to the NZ scene?

It's worth noting the following (from Mohler's footnotes): The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) was formed in 1983 as the union of the Presbyterian Church in the United States and the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America and is headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky. It is the largest Presbyterian denomination in the United States. More conservative Presbyterian bodies include the Evangelical Presbyterian Church [EPC] and the Presbyterian Church in America [PCA].

Is Christianity in NZ changing?

New Zealand blogger, A J Chesswas, has an interesting blog called Put up thy Sword! which I sometimes catch up on. While I was searching for something else today, I came across a fairly lengthy post on his site (it was written back in March) in which he discusses another blogger's post discussing The Changing Face of Christianity in New Zealand. (Unfortunately, the original blog is only accessible if you've got a Wordpress account.)

The post is divided into five sections:
Evangelism becomes a dirty word
Salvation takes on extra dimensions
End-time fever dies down
The extremes become more attractive
New lingo, same deal.

Chesswas looks at each of these areas in turn, asking whether they are just different of another person's growth in Christ, or whether they're actually changes in the way we view Christianity. Worth a look.

Memorizing Scripture

Years ago I became convinced that learning portions of the Bible was a good thing to do. I can't even remember how this came about now. However, it's stood me in good stead over the years, particularly in those dark times in the night that most of us experience at some point, when it's too cold to get out of bed, but your brain is fizzing...!

Keith Mannes writes on this topic in the Leadership Journal, and confirms my feelings about the value of memorizing scripture. And for him as a pastor, it has the additional value of giving him confidence with his parishioners in being able to quote Scripture without having to look it up.

Click here to read the article, My 3.5 Salvation.