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A La Carte (9/23)
- 09/23/09
- 6
Falling in Love with the Church
Derek Thomas on this always-important topic: “Something is terribly wrong when professing Christians do not identify with the church and love being a part of her. Something is wrong when professing Christians fail to be passionate about every aspect of the church and long to invest themselves in her, taking all that the church represents and does to heart.”
Recycling Bibles
Do you have any Bibles you could share? Next week, the Bible Foundation is kicking off their October Bible Drive (that they’ve held annually since 1992). According to their press release, “People around the world are begging for Bibles. Even damaged and parts of old Bibles have use and value.”
How Monogamous Men Can Rescue Civilization
Joe Carter, writing at First Things, quotes scholar Pat Fagan who says “culture of the traditional family is now in intense competition with a very different culture: The defining difference between the two is the sexual ideal embraced. The traditional family of Western civilization is based on lifelong monogamy. The competing culture is polyamorous, normally a serial polygamy both before and after the first marriage, but also increasingly polymorphous in its different sexual expressions.”
The Era of Age Segmentation
This interview is very interesting. Kara Powell talks about the harm that has come about through youth ministry being separated from the larger church and says that the future of youth ministry is to re-integrate it into the wider body. Let’s hope she is right!
Zondervan Partners with Logos
Zondervan is bringing a vast numbers of valuable resources to the Logos system. If you’re a Logos user, this is big news!
Derek Thomas on this always-important topic: “Something is terribly wrong when professing Christians do not identify with the church and love being a part of her. Something is wrong when professing Christians fail to be passionate about every aspect of the church and long to invest themselves in her, taking all that the church represents and does to heart.”
Recycling Bibles
Do you have any Bibles you could share? Next week, the Bible Foundation is kicking off their October Bible Drive (that they’ve held annually since 1992). According to their press release, “People around the world are begging for Bibles. Even damaged and parts of old Bibles have use and value.”
How Monogamous Men Can Rescue Civilization
Joe Carter, writing at First Things, quotes scholar Pat Fagan who says “culture of the traditional family is now in intense competition with a very different culture: The defining difference between the two is the sexual ideal embraced. The traditional family of Western civilization is based on lifelong monogamy. The competing culture is polyamorous, normally a serial polygamy both before and after the first marriage, but also increasingly polymorphous in its different sexual expressions.”
The Era of Age Segmentation
This interview is very interesting. Kara Powell talks about the harm that has come about through youth ministry being separated from the larger church and says that the future of youth ministry is to re-integrate it into the wider body. Let’s hope she is right!
Zondervan Partners with Logos
Zondervan is bringing a vast numbers of valuable resources to the Logos system. If you’re a Logos user, this is big news!
I am a follower of Jesus Christ, a husband to Aileen and a father to three young children. I write books and blogs for fun while doing web design and consulting for a living. I worship and serve at 
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Comments (6)
Re: monogamy.
I’d argue that in previous generations the foundational relationship was “long-lasting marriage” but often with tacit promiscuity. This model provides many of the same benefits as “real” monogamy, but is obviously inferior. The difference between it and the current model is basically honesty. People now days are less willing to stay in loveless sham marriages because they fear the social repercussions of separation.
Marvin Olasky in his book about the history of abortion in the United States estimates that in 1850 there were 60,000 prostitutes in the U.S., each of whom had approximately 30-40 sexual encounters per week. The total U.S. population in 1850 was about 23 million. So, about 11.5 million men, though only a portion of those would be sexually mature. We’ll say maybe…8 million. That yields 13.5 encounters with a prostitute per man per year. Now, obviously some men were patronizing prostitutes more than that and others not at all. Almost surely the majority weren’t patronizing prostitutes at all. But that’s still a startling level of extra-marital sex for a society which was ostensibly founded on “traditional monogamy”.
If we suppose that no man visited prostitutes at a rate higher than once per day, then that implies a minimum of 3.7% of the sexually mature male population who used a prostitute’s services in a given year. And that’s based on every user of prostitutes doing so 365 days a year.
Anyway…my point is just that it’s not the case that “in the past everybody was in traditional monogamous relationships and things were great.” There may not have been “serial monogamy” prior to marriage, or lots of divorce and remarriage, but there was still a massive amount of infidelity going on.
On Falling in Love with the Church article, I might ask Derek to define “church”. I think the early Christians were made up mostly of cell groups than brick and mortar institutions. I personally have seen tithe go much further, directed entirely into a ministry for the lost, than in funds for the building and staff costs.
Re: The Era of Age Segmentation
I, too, hope that this “era’ is on its way out. It certainly does not seem to fit the Biblical model of discipleship. However, this article seems to appeal mostly to pragmatic research and experience to support the claim that age segmentation is not good for the church. With this as the basis, it’s only a matter of time until another study or model suggests a more successful way of doing things. Is is not the American Church’s commitment to pragmatism over truth what got us here in the first place?
On the age segregation issue, the author of the article is right about this being a problem; I didn’t read the whole thing, but as I read her suggestions about teens serving as greeters, five adults in the church committing to one youth, taking on intergenerational justice projects, etc. as solutions to the problem, I felt exhausted. I think the biblical pattern is that parents in the church take Psalm 78, Deuteronomy 6, and Ephesians 6 to heart; the efforts of pastors should be towards equipping parents, especially fathers, to do this. I’m glad more and more people are recognizing the wrongness of separating the church the way we do, but let’s turn to God’s word for the true solution.
ch:
Excellent reminder. Thanks!
Thoroughyl enjoyed the interview on age segmentation and forwarded it onto the relevant parties at my congregation. Had to read that last link twice before I realized that Zondervan was not partnering with small, multi-colored, connectable bricks!