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well

Who's Tending Our Well?

I get worried that evangelicalism increasingly lacks a center.

I don't mean in an ultimate, spiritual sense. The issue of who owns the church—while disputed in human courts—is terribly clear from the founding documents. Jesus has been making do with jars of clay for a long time, and if the church hasn't driven him to (in Anne Lamott's phrase) "drink gin from the cat bowl" in the first two millennia, he's probably not getting nervous now. Still.

I know the word evangelical is just about shot in our broader culture. But no good replacement has come along yet. And many of us long for a sense of Christian identity that is clear and crisp and compelling and non-anxious and carries the easy confidence of grace-filled conviction.

There is an old metaphor about two methods Australian ranchers use to keep cattle on their property: they can dig wells, or they can build fences. It seems like some of the loudest voices in evangelical circles spend most of their time fretting about the placement of the fences. Those tending the well are less conspicuous.

This metaphor doesn't mean we should be fuzzy about theological commitments. It doesn't mean we don't need mutual accountability. It calls for a right sense of priority and mature judgment, because our clarity needs to be greatest around what is most central.

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  • Evermyrtle

    Rev. 3: 15-16
    15. I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot, I would that you were cold or hot.
    16 So then because you are luke warm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth.

    The further we travel along in time, we grow farther and farther from the truth, as a whole. We still have many devout Christians but many also that are "lukewarm" we worry about what people think of us if we get too devout. As long as time last there will be devout Christians, no need to think we are going to fade away. When we come to the point that it looks like it is the end for GOD'S people GOD will send HIS SON back for those left living, as well as the dead IN CHRIST..

  • lambsev

    From the article: "I know the word evangelical is just about shot in our broader culture. But no good replacement has come along yet."

    Some one teaches that evangelists are church planters. I am quite enamored of this view.