Over the past few days I've though long and hard about blogging on this subject. I consulted my wife for her opinion and I talked to a friend about it and I decided that I should. The subject I have been thinking about a lot lately has been Christians being followers and not leaders, Christians being pew listeners and not Bereans (Acts 17:11). As I look around the Christian landscape this is most prevalent in the way we view those on that are trying to engage the culture. Let me give a little background on this subject and how I view it. I attended Grace Community Church in Sun Valley (John MacArthur's Church) for about 19 years. This was a great place to hear the Bible taught. To be able to hear on of the most prolific expositors of the Word in one service and then to go to a Sunday school class and hear another very qualified pastor teach again had a profound impact on who I am today as a believer. Over those 19 years I took what Pastor MacArthur and our Sunday school pastors said and searched scripture myself. I purchased commentaries and asked for books for my birthday and Christmas. I was devoted to understanding what it was that these men were so passionate about. At the same time I noticed that there were two other groups of people at Grace, The MacArthurites (people who only attended because Pastor John was there), these people stood out because if John was not in the pulpit church became glorified babysitting for the kids so that they could go to breakfast. The other group I just called Gracites (these people viewed Grace as the Camelot of Christian churches). These people loved Grace Community Church, nothing wrong with that on the exterior, but what you wouldn't see is that if churches did not "do" church the Grace way then they were made fun of and often seen as poor churches........never mind what was being taught from the pulpit. I now attend a church where the pastor, Scott Ardavanis, is the old college pastor from Grace. Placerita Baptist isn't exactly the same in many ways other than the teaching is amazing. So as you ca see I have been blessed by great teaching. The pitfall in this bubble of great teaching is that it is far to easy to become a pew sitter, a not thinking for yourself bible memorizer and a person who calls the views on varying things their own because they are said from the pulpit instead of researching those views before calling them their own. We live in an age where we take for granted that which we are being taught. We are no longer Bereans in our churches.
There is another realm that this is going on in and that is the blogosphere. There are many far more educated men than I putting out information on the internet via blogs that I do not fully understand. It has always been my opinion to never talk about a belief of mine until I fully understand what I believe. A wide seminary professor told me once when we were talking about the rapture of Christians (Pre-mil, Post-mil.....)that he would not tell anyone his views until he fully understood his views. Great advise.....I took this into my Christian walk in many ways for you see in all that great teaching I was getting I did not fully understand what I was being taught. So how does this pertain to the blogs that are out there? Easy we as Christians have the ability to view deep theological articles on the academic arguments that are currently out there. We as Christians can find our favorite theologian on the internet via a website or podcast.....if your lucky you might get a vodcast of them. We as Christians can read blogs from these men and develop beliefs on topics that our parents would have never dreamed of. The problem is this though, the same pew sitter from the church, the same person that I saw at Grace Community that was there solely because of Pastor John are on the internet and are just blindly believing what is being said because of who is saying it. The problem here is that we have a group of Christians out there developing opinions on things such as the post modern church and various pastors based on what these men say and not based on anything they have researched or listened to. Why are we as Christians not being Bereans?
So what is the problem? The problem is when, like this week, men take the style of a preacher and slam him in there blog. When they tell the pew sitters that are reading there blog that the style of a person's preaching is more important than the content of his teaching. It is so easy for us in the "orthodox" camp to through stones at those who are doing ministry in a different way and who are reaching out to those in our culture that we "orthodox" Christians can not reach. I listened to the preacher who I saw slammed this week at a conference, ironically on the subject of Text and Context, and he just drilled the pastors who where listening to him on the importance of the cross. He spoke about how the "post moderns" are harming the cross and that without the cross we lose salvation and redemption. The style was not Pastor MacArthur's, but the context was dead on. So what is the deal with this pastor? Style! The blogosphere is creating a bunch of people that are pretending to be educated on varying theological topics based on an article they read. Why are we not being Bereans?
Here is the challenge. Dare to be a Berean. Dare to challenge what is being taught. Not in a rebellious way, but in a way that educates yourself. The challenge is to be a Berean...."Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so."
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