I hope we all learn something new. We have to get back to the basic principles... the basics. It is so easy. Let's take a look at these 3 Principles one more time and let's go deeper.
- Gospel - (loving God)
- Church - (loving our brother and sister in Christ)
- Culture - (loving our neighbor)
When we mess up and do not love God, or our brother, or our neighbor, we fall into different categories that I will outline in this post.
These categories are: PARACHURCH, LIBERALISM, and FUNDAMENTALISM.
In what category do you fit in?
Hopefully in neither of these. Let me explain.
Gospel+Culture-Church=PARACHURCH
You have the Scripture. You have the Culture. But, you do not have the Church.
There are some people that are hurt or frustrated with the church that they start a ministry without having a local church to refer them back to. "Young Life" falls into this category. Also, any organization or outreaches that do not have a local church as a backup. This is good. It's O.K., but the people that go to these meetings are not motivated to evangelize and have little knowledge on biblical stuff (Theology).
PARACHURCH loves the Gospel and loves the Culture, but does not love their brothers.
Culture+Church-Gospel=LIBERALISM
You have the Culture. You have the Church. But, you do not have the Gospel.
These churches are so relevant... that they are so into the culture in the church. Everything they do is based on what is going on in the world at that time. The negative thing that this brings is that they do not base anything on Scripture. And anything that does not begin with Scripture is bound to start wrong already. Their belief is to bless people and not confront their sin with love.
LIBERALISM loves the Culture and loves the Church, but does not love the Gospel.
Gospel+Church-Culture=FUNDAMENTALISM
You have the Gospel. You have the Church. But, you do not have the Culture.
This is where I can relate the most. Haha! These people have the gospel down. They study like crazy and they are always at Church. So you know they got Scripture and Church. The only thing is that they cannot relate to lost people. They cannot relate to this Culture. When they teach "love your neighbor"... they often mistake that for "love your brother." There is not a genuine love for the lost. They judge people's appearances.
FUNDAMENTALISM loves the Gospel and loves the Church, but does not love their neighbor.
The new Christian has to be taught these 3 Principles. We have to be in touch with the Gospel, attend our Church, and relate to this Culture. To that I say, AY BAY BAY!!!
Failure to not aquire at least one of these principles forces you to go to the extreme of being strict and legalist or head the other direction, by preaching a watered down message with no substance (Scripture).
Let's nail all these principles.
I hope you learned something. Let me know what you think...
Ay Bay Bay!
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