Against

For Clarksville, Part 1

An episode of the oneChurch.tv podcast, hosted by Chris Edmondson, titled "Against" was published on April 8, 2018 and runs 37 minutes.

April 8, 2018 ·37m · oneChurch.tv

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Summary

Christianity has an image problem. If you’ve lived in America for very long, I doubt this surprises you. Over the past few decades, Christians have lost their influence in culture because they’ve handled it so poorly. They had power. They had dollars. But instead of using power and the dollars to reach out and love people well...Christians used power to make a point and dollars to demand their way.We created an us-versus-them mentality. The church communicated to unchurched people that we didn’t like them because of what they did. How they looked. How they behaved. How they voted. What they believed. And now people feel minimized—or worse, demonized—by those who love Jesus.What’s interesting is Jesus never did this. Not once. He had all power and He had every legitimate reason to demand His way, but this is not the example He set. Instead, He leveraged His power to love and serve others, and then He told us to follow His example.

Episode Description

Christianity has an image problem. If you’ve lived in America for very long, I doubt this surprises you. Over the past few decades, Christians have lost their influence in culture because they’ve handled it so poorly. They had power. They had dollars. But instead of using power and the dollars to reach out and love people well...

Christians used power to make a point and dollars to demand their way.
We created an us-versus-them mentality. The church communicated to unchurched people that we didn’t like them because of what they did. How they looked. How they behaved. How they voted. What they believed. And now people feel minimized—or worse, demonized—by those who love Jesus.

What’s interesting is Jesus never did this. Not once. He had all power and He had every legitimate reason to demand His way, but this is not the example He set. Instead, He leveraged His power to love and serve others, and then He told us to follow His example.