Armybarmy Blog

October 30, 2003.
Greetings in Jesus’ name, friends.
October 27, I read an interview on a book marking the persecution of Christians in America (http://nationalreview.com/interrogatory/limbaugh200310270821.asp).

In an excellent promotion of home schooling, the interviewee quoted Charles F. Potter, who wrote Humanism: A New Religion. According to Potter, the key to controlling the culture was to indoctrinate the children - in public schools. He wrote, "Education is thus a most powerful ally of Humanism, and every American public school is a school of Humanism. What can the theistic Sunday-schools, meeting for an hour once a week, and teaching only a fraction of the children, do to stem the tide of a five-day program of humanistic teaching?"

But that is not my point, or my whole one. Just a week plus ago I wrote a slate of blogs on how we are to engage the world through cultural windows to win them to Jesus. The problems of separation or cooptation aren’t entirely in our hands. The decisions can’t always be made in the heat of the moment. Some of the more fundamental positions must be fought for, not just decided upon, in this spiritual warfare.

We’re being marginalized on all fronts. “The attack against Christians is occurring in many areas, including public education, the universities, the public square, government property and institutions, the mainstream media, Hollywood, the courts, and even the private sector and in our churches. I would say that the majority of examples can be found in the public schools, though the public square is a close second.”

We need to fight for the right of living godly lives in North America. We need to read and listen with a critical eye. We need to be Biblically literate people, or we have no basis for dissent. We need aware, prepared minds and voices to stand up against the attack.

Where are those minds and voices?
Posted by Stephen Court

October 29, 2003.
Greetings in Jesus’ name, friends.
I stumbled across the Four Resolutions of one of my heroes, John Wesley, the other day. How’s this for hardcore?

1. To use absolute openness and unreserve with all I should converse with.

2. To labor after continual seriousness, not willingly indulging myself in any the least levity of behavior, or in laughter; no, not for a moment.

3. To speak no word which does not tend to the glory of God; in particular, not to talk of worldly things. Others may, nay, must. But what is that to thee? And,

4. To take no pleasure which does not tend to the glory of God; thanking God every moment for all I do take, and therefore rejecting every sort and degree of it which I feel I cannot so thank Him in and for.

I’m not up to that, yet.
Posted by Stephen Court

October 28, 2003.
Greetings in Jesus’ name, friends.

Here’s an account of a nurse who took part in a partial-birth abortion, as she testified to US Congress in 1993:

“The baby's little fingers were clasping and unclasping, and his little feet were kicking. Then the doctor stuck the scissors in the back of his head, and the baby's arms jerked out, like a startle reaction, like a flinch, like a baby does when he thinks he is going to fall.”

“The doctor opened the scissors, stuck a high-powered suction tube into the opening and sucked the baby's brains out. Now the baby went completely limp.”

And the doctors were not tossed in prison for murder. Strange.
Posted by Stephen Court

October 27, 2003.
Greetings in Jesus’ name, friends.

Our comrades-in-arms, Captains Curtis Cartmell and Rachele Lamont-Cartmell, have recently landed in Melfort Saskatchewan. Their new website is up and running (melfortrevival.com).

It is a sharp, clean, informative site (give it a hit). Curtis explains their ministry model on one of the pages. Here is an excerpt:

“We believe that our role as officers in the Salvation Army is less about being a "Commanding Officer" and more about being an apostolic overseer. Our role is to serve the local leaders and build them up into the best leaders to serve Melfort for years to come. This approach allows the corps to remain strong and vision consistent rather than falling apart and changing every time the officers are moved.”

I love it for two reasons. I love the system, which is clearly Biblical and avoids the confusing ‘pastor’ tag. Each corps should have a plurality of shepherds (‘pastors’). So when the corps officer calls herself pastor, she tends to cut off some gifted shepherds from exercising their gifts. She also tends to call herself ‘pastor’ without thinking out her gifting, her commissioning, and the New Testament offices. So she can unintentionally slap a ceiling on the growth of the corps, by pressing out the other offices (e.g. prophetic and apostolic).

I also love the guts that these guys have to go public with it. I’ve heard a few others in the Army use these kinds of terms, but not in public. These guys are Biblically structuring for revival and the complete blessing of God. This becomes a model for us.

Now, whether or not a recasting of the understanding of ‘corps officer’ to fit the Biblical apostolic overseer label would solve the problems to which I’ve alluded above, is cud for another blog, another day.

Oh, and I think my wife’s thing yesterday was more accurately the difference between discontentment and disillusionment.
Posted by Stephen Court

October 26, 2003.
Greetings in Jesus’ name, friends.

I’ve heard that a Salvation Army publication has an ongoing feature on ‘what I would do if I was general.’

Nice idea. I played that parlour game back in the early days of armybarmy.com when blogs hadn’t been invented yet, but we struggled on with something called a discussion board.

I don’t want to get into that today. Other than William and Catherine Booth, by the time you become general it is a little too late to make some of the changes that need to be made.

The Officer magazine (current issue) notes two trends in The Salvation Army: 1. a bit of a retro movement; 2. an ‘underground army of disaffected Jesus-lovers who’ve given up much hope in the movement.

Of the former group this is suggested:

“Perhaps the ‘Williams Lake’ phenomenon is the pre-eminent example, with a Journal of Aggressive Christianity, an armybarmy.com web site, and now a War College in Vancouver, but this invocation of our roots is an increasingly widespread phenomenon and one likely to exert considerable influence on the shape of the Army to come. They are willing to risk the opprobrium of a ‘nutty fringe’ for the sake of the gospel.”

As for the two groups, my wife notes that there is but a thin line separating disenchantment and discontent.

So, getting back to the ‘general’ decisions, too many of the important changes will take longer than any one person will have in office, and some of the important changes needn’t wait for the rare person reading this who happens to be a general (present or future).

So the proper question is not ‘If I was the general, what would I change?’ but ‘I am a soldier. What will I change?’ And what can non-generals change? Culture.

There is, apparently, a phenomenon spreading that can exert considerable influence on the Army to come. Let’s radically commit to this movement within a movement, this nutty fringe phenomenon, to exert a worldwide influence to shape the Army of the third millennium.

What are the characteristics of this ‘forward to our roots’ movement? To steal from my October 4 blog, mercy and grace, repentance and faith, blood and fire, death and glory. And ‘capture, train, deploy’ as a modus operandi. And ‘it’s Jesus or hell’ as a salvation pitch. And ‘win the world for Jesus’ as a mission. And war as a vocation. And so on. We call it primitive Salvationism, defined as chari-flavoured, mission-focused heroism.

My comrades in Vancouver recently started doing weekly open airs at a notorious drug park. I made the mistake of adding ‘weather permitting’ to a description of their good work. It turns out that teeming torrential downpours are permissive of open airs. That will change heart sets. That will change habits. That will change a culture.

Not many of us will be general. Let’s pray for the General. And let’s fight for the transformation that he cannot accomplish on his own. And then the prophecy of another General, Catherine Booth, can be fulfilled: “He shall reign, from the river to the ends of the earth. We shall win. It is only a matter of time. I believe that this Movement will inaugurate the great final conquest of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Posted by Stephen Court

October 25, 2003.
Greetings in Jesus’ name, friends.
I am the blessed father of a little warrior. He often fills his time these days running purposefully back and forth arranging spices. This activity engages his imagination and attention.

My wife figures that God sometimes looks down on us engaged in similar behaviour- all excited and involved in something we think is very important and effective, but is really akin to rearranging the spices.

The upside is that she sees Him applauding us just like we applaud our son.
Posted by Stephen Court

October 24, 2003.
Greetings in Jesus’ name, friends.

I missed my slot with GAP today, demonstrating in favour of rescuing unborn babies from genocidal slaughter, so I thought I’d try to make up for it with this blog.

The big thing in the States this week is the passing of a bill against partial-birth abortion. It only needs the pro-life president’s autograph to become law. And the pro-abortionists are out in full force. Yesterday I noted the declension from an appreciation of sanctity to a concern for quality of life. It all comes from a deflection of attention away from God. But on this next bit, from Dr. Warren M. Hern, the director of an abortuary in Boulder, Colorado, I don’t even need to comment. So without further ado, here goes (from slate.com yesterday):

“Earlier this year, I began an abortion on a young woman who was 17 weeks pregnant. Because of the two days of prior treatment, the amniotic membranes were visible and bulging. I ruptured the membranes and released the fluid to reduce the risk of amniotic fluid embolism. Then I inserted my forceps into the uterus and applied them to the head of the fetus, which was still alive, since fetal injection is not done at that stage of pregnancy. I closed the forceps, crushing the skull of the fetus, and withdrew the forceps. The fetus, now dead, slid out more or less intact. With the next pass of the forceps, I grasped the placenta, and it came out in one piece. Within a few seconds, I had completed my routine exploration of the uterus and sharp curettage. The blood loss would just fill a tablespoon. The patient, who was awake, hardly felt the operation. She was relieved, grateful, and safe.”
Posted by Stephen Court

October 23, 2003.
Greetings in Jesus’ name, friends.

Wow. I read a powerful article called AUSCHWITZ IN AMERICA by William Federer this week (you can find it from worldnetdaily.com).

It is pretty lengthy, or I’d give you the whole argument. But he compares Hitler’s Third Reich with America today. Ouch.

The declension from a common acceptance of the sanctity of life to a concern for the quality of life marks the key comparison. Nazi trends towards atrocity were birthed in this pre-Nazi conceptual change. Instead of acknowledging an individual’s worth in light of moral and religious values, they tied that worth to contribution to the state. Claimed Malcolm Muggeridge, “the origins of the Holocaust lay, not in Nazi terrorism or anti-Semitism, but in… Germany’s acceptance of euthanasia and mercy-killing as humane and estimable.”

And then, Muggeridge turns his guns on his mid 1970s western readers:

"It took no more than three decades to transform a war crime into an act of compassion, thereby enabling the victors in the war against Nazism to adopt the very practices for which the Nazis had been solemnly condemned at Nuremberg."

Wow.

Federer turns to President Theodore Roosevelt for a sense of perspective on this issue. In 1909 Roosevelt prophesied:

"Progress has brought us both unbounded opportunities and unbridled difficulties. Thus, the measure of our civilization will not be that we have done much, but what we have done with that much. I believe that the next half-century will determine if we will advance the cause of Christian civilization or revert to the horrors of brutal paganism. The thought of modern industry in the hands of Christian charity is a dream worth dreaming. The thought of industry in the hands of paganism is a nightmare beyond imagining. The choice between the two is upon us."

In his State of the Union address in 1905, Roosevelt stated:

"There are those who believe that a new modernity demands a new morality. What they fail to consider is the harsh reality that there is no such thing as a new morality. There is only one morality. All else is immorality. There is only true Christian ethics over against which stands the whole of paganism. If we are to fulfill our great destiny as a people, then we must return to the old morality, the sole morality. ... All these blatant sham reformers, in the name of a new morality, preach the old vice of self-indulgence which rotted out first the moral fiber and then even the external greatness of Greece and Rome."

Our society is at the axis of change. Either we blink and say ‘No!’ when ‘death with dignity’ is trotted out when the plug is pulled on the marginalized, or we medicate our morality to numbly nod at news of another forward step of the Hegelian utilitarians at the cost of unborn or nearly completely lived lives. Either we choose the righteous standard of the sanctity of life or we succumb to the nightmares of the brutal horrors of paganism in the hands of an industry and technology I doubt the President could have imagined.
posted by Stephen Court

October 22, 2003.
Greetings in Jesus’ name, friends.
The recent SALVATIONIST (October 11) reported some research on Prayer.
Here are some highlights:

1. A 30-year-long California study of 2,600 people showed that prayer improved the immune system and lessened depression/anxiety.

2. Psychologists from Sheffield Hallam University and Ulster University studied the church attendance, prayer and faith of 474 UK students. Those who prayed daily or often, and attended church, were found to be less depressed and anxious and felt better psychologically than those who rarely prayed.

3. In 1988 a 10-month double-blind study by San Francisco cardiologist Randolph Byrd involved 383 coronary patients. Half were prayed for by Christians, half weren’t. The patients not prayed for needed five times more antibiotics and developed three times as many complications.

4. In 1998 a 12-month study of 1,000 coronary patients at the Mid-American Heart Institute in Kansas City was conducted, and the findings supported Byrd’s earlier study.

5. Dr Elisabeth Targ conducted a double-blind study on 20 Aids patients in the mid-1990s, and a further study in 1998 on another 40. Unknown to the patients, 40 people were praying for them from a distance. The patients receiving prayer spent less time in hospital and developed fewer Aids-defining diseases than those without prayer support.

6. Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons conducted a distant praying study involving 219 women undergoing IVF treatment at Cha Hospital in Seoul, Korea, with people praying for them in the USA, Canada and Australia. Half the prayed-for group became pregnant, while a quarter of the not-prayed-for group conceived.

7. In 1997 in Arnold, Nottinghamshire, 15 local churches and the police combined prayer and practical action. Juvenile crime, antisocial noise, verbal abuse, petty damage and car break-ins dropped by 15 per cent.

8. When Manchester police combined prayer and social action, crime on the Swinton Valley Estate in Salford dropped by 45 per cent.

Yahoo. You can probably add your own anecdotal support for these findings. If not, get experimenting!
Posted by Stephen Court

October 21, 2003.
Greetings in Jesus’ name, friends.
I recently read this account (NRO, October 6, 2003) of René Montes de Oca Martija.

This man is a dissident in Cuba, an official of the Human Rights party.

He was out of jail for a short period and was asked about his doings. It turns out he was hard at his opposition activities. As the interviewer commented, “It's an amazing thing about these Cuban dissidents: The second they get out of jail, they go right back to what they were doing before, knowing they will be rearrested and imprisoned. René has been in and out of jail all of his life.

The interviewer asked him, "What motivates you to take the risk of being imprisoned once more?" He answered, "I've lived in a prison for 40 years." (René was born in 1963.)

I throw this out to you for two reasons: 1. those of you thinking of a cruise or vacation to Cuba might want to think twice; 2. how about this guy as an example of fearless, heroic, daredevil fighting for a warrior of Jesus Christ. He’s at his thing the minute he is released, knowing that he’ll be back in prison for it. Meanwhile, too often, too many of us, weigh the consequences of our spiritual warfare, consider the other’s feelings, maintain our ‘witness’, protect our reputation, nurture the relationship, and cowardly do nothing.
Posted by Stephen Court

October 20, 2003.
Greetings in Jesus’ name, friends.
My friend Tara is a student at The War College. In conversation yesterday she let slip this classic line:

“Sometimes I crave the luxury of a nice hot shower.”

That puts things in perspective, doesn’t it.
Posted by Stephen Court

October 19, 2003.
Greetings in Jesus’ name, friends.

I’m not a big politico or anything but I saw these stupendous poll results this week from Fox News:

“Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say they believe in God (by eight percentage points), in heaven (by 10 points), in hell (by 15 points), and considerably more likely to believe in the devil (by 17 points). Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say they believe in reincarnation (by 14 percentage points), in astrology (by 14 points), in ghosts (by eight points) and UFOs (by five points).

Wow. The poll also confirms the common perception that half of Americans attend church almost weekly, and that 92% believe in God. In Vancouver, where I fight, I understand that 7% attend church.
Posted by Stephen Court

October 18, 2003.
Greetings in Jesus’ name, friends.

As I’ve suggested in the preceding days, the postmodern level playing field provides unprecedented opportunity to engage the world through cultural windows.

This is not a new method. Jesus used it regularly. Not only did He tell stories using the characters common in His day- the farmer, the tax man, the religious man, the robber, the Samaritan, the merchant, judge and widow- to teach eternal truths. Metaphors "make the familiar strange”; they break open "our structures of expectation" and "make us receptive to new and fresh insights” (Leonard Sweet).

Jesus even used the news of the day to apply divine truth to people’s lives (the example of the guys who died under the fallen tower). Throughout the years, great preachers have used the common cultural capital to deliver the Gospel to hearers. A century and more ago, the common cultural capital was literature and poetry. And so you will read in the dusty old sermon collections of Spurgeon and Moody and others multiple references to books and poems in their preaching. That won’t work today.

Even quoting the best seller of the year will leave most of your audience in the dark. You’d have to re-tell the tale to most people with whom you converse. The common cultural capital of our generation is movies (and to a lesser extent, music). Movies transcend national boundaries. You can talk to most anybody about the popular movies of the year and both of you are on the same page.

We’re about infiltrating the culture in an intentional manner.

So, instead of a list of rules to follow as we live in the world, we want to provide you some tools to engage the world through cultural windows.


Cultural Windows

It is through cultural windows that we can find common ground with someone still living without Jesus. Cultural windows generate shared experiences through which those in darkness can peak or peer and see the light of the Kingdom of God. Movies deal with issues of loss, hope, failure, ecstasy, restoration, forgiveness, loyalty, companionship, love, doubt, disbelief, loss, perseverance, and faith. And so they are windows through which we can point to the Light.

Some things are up for grabs. For example, do we need to use certain traditional, theological terms with independents? Must we drop ‘sanctification’ on them, when ‘pure’ or ‘free’ will do? Must we meet on Sunday morning at a big church when Saturday evening in my living room might be more inviting? Must we thoughtlessly continue religious norms for the sake of tradition? Of course not. We need to think about why we do what we do. Why don’t I drink (if you don’t drink)? Why don’t I do drugs (if you don’t)? Why don’t I fornicate (if you don’t)? Why don’t I support the pro-abortion position (if you don’t)? At least two things will happen when you ask these kinds of questions.

One, you justify your lifestyle.

Now don’t get me wrong. I didn’t suggest that you would rationalize it. But there is little noble to do the right thing for the wrong reasons. For example, if you are against abortion on demand, that is good. But if you are against abortion on demand not because it kills an unborn baby but because it costs the healthcare system a lot and it increases the difficulties for the mother to carry a baby to full term in the future, that isn’t so noble. So, thinking it through and asking questions helps you to do the right thing for the right reason. Second, it frees you to shed obsolete sub-cultural accretions that are proving to be obstacles to you engaging the general culture.

Of course, this is the direction we’re heading in this post-modern age. Loyalty to organization is being replaced by loyalty to relationship. In practical terms this means that my colabourer in the Gospel in Vancouver and I may have more in common than we individually do with some in our own movements because we share common mission. The fellowship is in the fight. As we shed those oddities that make us different, we get closer to the pure, unadulterated model of Christian that will be attractive to independents. That is not to slam the counter-cultural Christianity to which some are called. It is to recognize that in different parts of the Body, different body parts look and act differently. On different fronts, the war in fought with different weapons, tactics, and strategies.

We’re not selling a wholesale adoption of the world here. But truth is truth, wherever it is found. And truth comes from God. We’re advocating a critical application of the truths we find for the warfare in which we fight. A good warfighter will use the natural lay of the land to her advantage. She will note customs and practices, geographic landmarks and physical realities, and passions and habits of her front, and adapt her tactics to exploit them for her purposes. And so this battleground that is the world is littered with stuff, specifically with a common cultural capital, that we can adapt and exploit for our Kingdom purposes.

I’m promoting aggressive engagement in the world. I’m not inciting violence here. What I dream of is a generation of Christians who don’t blindly accept the subliminal inculcation of the news, music, television, and movie media. As Francis Schaeffer taught, “God is here and He is not silent.” God is around. God is in music. God is in television. God is in the movies. God is in the meta-stories of our lives. And we need a Christian worldview that frames our encounter of these things, aggressively asking, ‘Where’s God?’ and persistently looking for cultural windows- shared emotions and common experiences- through which to engage the world.
Posted by Stephen Court

Greetings in Jesus’ name, friends.
I'm sorry. I am usually a one-a-day blogger. But this news just came in and it is screaming out for rebuttal. So you get two today.

When does it all end?
First, the courts in Vancouver started turning a blind eye to drug arrests.
Then they replaced street addictions with prescribed addictions (and in so doing, tied the addicts to our neighbourhood, geographically).
Then they sponsored needle exchanges.
Then they set up a de facto ‘no arrest zone’.
Then the feds decriminalized marijuana.
Then the city opened a ‘safe injection site’.

And now, it’s free heroin! The Globe and Mail broke the story on Thursday. They want to give the heroin out free! It is mind-boggling, mentally-staggering, to think that we’re going to these ridiculous ends. The ‘reasoning’ is that by providing the drugs free to addicts we will exclude the criminal element and, in so doing, clean up the neighbourhood.

Man o man.

I’ve got a better idea. You see, it starts with a small group of highly trained and motivated subversives called Salvationists. And, under the radar, they start little cell groups that meet in people’s rooms throughout the neighbourhood. And these cells foster authentic Christian community. And when this thing catches, it becomes contagious. It starts attracting the least likely people, and many of them. Cells multiply, and as they multiply, so does their influence. People’s lives are transformed and they start transforming others. Pretty soon, enough people are getting saved that the cumulative effects of paid employment and drug-free living, and law-abiding, and blessing and not cursing, and rented residences, and the abundant blood of Jesus all over the streets morphs the notorious downtown eastside into the miraculous downtown eastside.
Posted by Stephen Court

October 17, 2003.
Greetings in Jesus’ name, friends.

As I concluded yesterday, we are all about community. The emergence of cell churches around the world marks the success of deeply rooted relationships. That is one of the reasons I refer to your pre-Christian friends as independents. The fundamental distinctive about them is that they are disconnected with God and so unconnected at a meaningful level with others. At an existential, soul level, they are desperate, lonely independents. Postmodern culture is peopled by independents vainly searching for belonging.

Worship is an excellent postmodern connector. On a good day, an experience-hungry worshipper, wrapped up in the music, participates with a mass of others in singing and dancing, encounters God, and, in some places, is enveloped in a multi-sensory extravaganza that includes olfactory, visual, and tactile elements.

The late John Wimber, who helped shape this generation’s worship through his Vineyard movement, said “Our heart’s desire should be to worship God; we have been designed by God for this purpose. If we don’t worship God, we’ll worship something or someone else.”

The postmodern world is replacing rationalism with existentialism. People are not much willing to enter into extended conversations based on logic and linear thinking. Rather, they seek to experience the truth of the issue within the context of their personal lives. In short, when it comes to religion people are more inclined to seek out answers with their hearts and less with their minds. They want to experience the life-giving vitality of religion first. Then they may be willing to discuss the reasons behind the religious experience.

John Piper’s truism, ‘Mission only exists where worship doesn’t,’ catchy and pithy, seems to fail at only one point- during a real worship service. On the one end, the postmodern urban generation really goes for a little vertigo, as suggested by Paul’s church meeting outlines of 1 Corinthians 14:24,25, in which the unbeliever is convicted by God, experiences a little vertigo, hits the deck, and worships God, exclaiming, “God is really among you!” (see also Psalm 40 and Acts 16 for support of the evangelistic impact of worship). On the other end, worship is part of the battle (Mike Bickle says, “We must seek to be extravagant worshippers as well as to be anointed servants of God fulfilling the Great Commission. I believe that the more we worship, the more we will fulfill the Great Commission with apostolic power from heaven.” Mike Bickle, THE PLEASURES OF LOVING GOD, 2000, p193).

And so Leonard Sweet’s anagram, EPIC, is fulfilled in worship. Curious independents catch all four of the elements:

Experience- half an hour of standing, swaying, waving, dancing, kneeling, and prostrating, all while singing along with words on a screen and a live band matches the conditions of experience.

Participation- see experience. This is not a concert that independents watch. They are not spectators. They are surrounded with people and join voices with a crowd to a live accompaniment in singing songs to Jesus.

Image- this works on a few levels. The word ‘worship’ is growing to connote the image of an intense, eye-closed, arms-outstretched, hands-up-and-open person lifting praise to God. But images on screens play in and out of the dynamic. And by peaking around a myriad of snapshots impress up on the memory.

Connected- we are not alone. The music and the crowd carry us spiritually toward the throne of God. We are part of a choir singing to an audience of One. And when we actually find the groove, we can connect with that One in a way that satan can never imitate (Leonard Sweet, “A Spiritual Exegesis of Y2K and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire”).
Posted by Stephen Court

October 16, 2003.
Greetings in Jesus’ name, friends.
I want to pick up where I left off yesterday (so if you missed it, start there!).

Cloistered or Compromised?

There is another extreme to which some Christians rebound in reaction against the cloister. This school plunges right into the culture. The infiltration is complete, as the trappings of traditional Christianity are discarded lock, stock, and barrel. These Christians absorb the look, the feel, the smell, the nomenclature, the vocabulary of the world system.

Tragically, in the extreme, these Christians are also saturated by the thought processes, the values, and the worldview of our society. If it looks like a monkey, feels like a monkey, smells like a monkey, and sounds like a monkey, maybe it is a monkey! And so infiltration becomes cooptation. The spy goes native. Kevin Costner went native in DANCING WITH WOLVES. His character renounced his mission and became native. Without endorsing his mission, we see that we actually became an enemy of it. This is the ultimate danger of the Christian who takes the culture plunge- renunciation of and inevitable opposition to the original mission.

The via media, the middle way, proposes engagement without compromise, infiltration without cooptation.


Tools, Not Rules

I’m not suggesting a superficial incursion into the popular culture based on a set of rules I give you. It is a lot more difficult than that. In fact, there will always be tension living as Christians in the western world. My friend, who has had some overseas mission experience, once suggested that it is easier to live as a Christian on the mission field than in North America. As a missionary, you have to make the decision once to pass up the luxurious trappings of first world society. You buy a ticket and leave, once and for all, the outward temptations of commodities and commercialism and comfort. Staying here to live and fight, you have to make that decision of rejection many times every hour! This is not to belittle the sacrifice and commitment of missionaries but to recognize the different battle that we face in North America.

A Generation That Hears With Its Eyes And Thinks With Its Feelings

“How do you communicate to a generation that hears with its eyes and thinks with its feelings?” (Ravi Zacharias, “An Ancient Message, Through Modern Means, To A Postmodern Mind, 1998).

The postmodern evangelistic playing field is a level one. A culture that hears with its eyes and thinks with its feelings is wide open to the phenomena associated with the Gospel. What Christians read about shadows and handkerchiefs healing people, what we see concerning New Testament signs and wonders, what privilege we enjoy to hear God, all of these things and more appeal to the postmodern appetite for the experiential.

We are actually ahead of the game from a phenomenological position in that Jesus can actually deliver on the goods. While the world’s technology can conjure up digital magic, as evidenced in The Matrix trilogy, and while New Age titillates the senses with malevolent encounters, the reality and power of Jesus towers above them.

It is also level because of the lack of a consensual authority. While this threatens the mindset of modern Christians, it really is to our benefit in this new theatre of war called postmodernism. Half a generation ago we battled to replace a consensual authority with our alternative authority. We tried to overthrow ‘science’ and ‘reason’ to set the Bible in its rightful place (Ravi Zacharias, “An Ancient Message, Through Modern Means, To A Postmodern Mind, 1998).

Our failure in this revolt was mitigated by the palpable failure of ‘science’ and ‘reason’ to deliver on its promises, relegating generations to despair. Even when the American Dream was realized, it only furnished an empty framework, a house of cards. G.K. Chesterton prophesied about our generation when he suggested, “Meaninglessness does not come from being weary of pain; meaninglessness comes from being weary of pleasure.”

And so while Christians failed to turn back the clock to the pre-renaissance consensual authority of the Bible, we have been given an opportunity to reach a disillusioned generation hungry for exactly what Jesus can bring.

Now, even in my evangelizing, I’ve sensed the shift from rational approaches to experiential models. Whereas in the 1980s and early 90s I scoured the university campus armed with my Four Spiritual Laws and well-rehearsed Gospel apologetics, these days, I am more inclined to walk the streets meeting homeless people and drug addicts with whom I offer to pray that God will demonstrate that He exists, that He cares for them, and that He has the power to intervene in their lives. The prevailing mindset has changed right under our noses.

And the leading source of significant influence in our society today is not the church! Pollster George Barna reports that research is revealing that the leading influencers in American society are, “movies, television, the Internet, books, music, public policy and law, and family. The Christian Church, his research shows, is not among the top dozen influencers there days- a far cry from the way things used to be” (Barna Research, “Barna responds to Christianity Today Article,” September 17, 2002).

A cursory glance at the history of the God at the Movies over the last half-century is a depiction of the progression from the literal to the figurative, from the narrow to the broad. Most independents in the 1950s would be invited by zealous Christians, at least that minority that attended movies back then, to see literal portrayals of Christianity. The original blockbusters, THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, BEN HUR, THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD, and other religious epics, were straight up. They told the story as you could read it. Characters wore robes, spoke in vaguely platitude-speak, and were pretty faithful to the text.

Within a decade some proto-postmodern evangelists were inviting their independent friends to ON THE WATERFRONT and COOL HAND LUKE to use the cultural windows of Brando and Newman’s messianic characters to reach truth. But most people in that era were most impacted spiritually through films such as QUO VADIS and KING OF KINGS. Generation X pointed away from JESUS OF NAZARETH and JESUS to the Messiah embedded in the spirituality of STAR WARS or PLANET OF THE APES. Those of the Millennial Generation might choose SEVEN or THE MATRIX (Matt McEver, “The rise and fall and rise of Movie Messiahs”).

And this is all part of the transition from rationalism to postmodernism. During this shift, society gained its religious training not so much from Sunday School or Bible Study as from television and the movies (see THE GOSPEL ACCCORDING TO TONY SOPRANO). These media are the means by which most of the population has learned vaguely to conceptualize God (Matt McEver, “The rise and fall and rise of Movie Messiahs”).

Rick Joyner, a recognized prophetic voice in North America, has suggested that because the Church has been so slow to listen to God through His Word, God has increasingly chosen to speak through the movies. It could be partly due to the fact that most Christians engage in more movie-watching than in Bible-studying.

Another advantage of Christianity in this millennium-three war is that one of the exposed desires in the postmodern heart is belonging. Each of us has it. And each of us who are Christians has fulfilled that desire.
Posted by Stephen Court

October 15, 2003.
Greetings in Jesus’ name, friends.
Yesterday, the Matrix: Reloaded DVD was released, just a scant three weeks before the final installment of the trilogy, REVOLUTIONS, hits theatres.

For some Christians this marks another day of boycott. For us, it is another opportunity to engage the world through cultural windows. Leonard Sweet makes this assertion:

We are in the midst of a spiritual awakening and the Christian church is not leading it.

God is hot with Hollywood.
God is hot with the rich and famous
God is hot with musicians
God is hot with publishers
God is hot with pollsters
God is hot with atheists
God is hot with politicians
God is hot on the Internet
God is hot o the lecture circuit
God is hot on Madison Avenue
God is hot with corporate America and management consultants
God is hot with broadcasters
God is hot with scientists

“A spiritual tsunami has hit postmodern culture. People want to know God. They less want to know about God, or know about religion than know God. People want to experience ‘The Beyond in the Within’.” (Leonard Sweet, SOUL TSUNAMI)

He’s right.

Christians often feel like we’re living in a different world than the rest of humanity. Our society, once undergirded with a common Christian cultural capital, is now largely ignorant of the Gospel. And what it doesn’t know, it doesn’t like.

We’ve shivered from one mistaken extreme to the other. In history some have cloistered themselves such that the world cannot influence us at all. If you think that throwing out cable and passing on the movies is old-fashioned you should think of the Christians who sold everything, moved out of town, and lived in caves, sat on poles, and withdrew from the world so that they were contaminant-free as far as the world is concerned.

Now, of course, they had two enemies remaining- the flesh and the devil. While some consider the world an enemy, others (see Yuill, THIS MEANS WAR, and Francis Frangipane) see it as the battleground. So they retreated from the battleground, but the enemies remained the same. This is not to discredit the desert monks, from whom we can learn a lot about commitment and sacrifice and intimacy, and by whom their contemporary Christian community was challenged and inspired. However, they did not engage the world.

How can you win a war when you retreat from the field of battle? How can you win the world if you are not in the world?
Posted by Stephen Court

October 14, 2003.
Greetings in Jesus’ name, friends.

Each weekday morning we corporately pray the Bible out loud for half an hour at The War College. We use PRYAING THE BIBLE to extract sets of prayers and we were recently doing the wisdom prayers.

In several of them we cry out for understanding. My revelation is that for me to understand something I need to stand under it.

So I was declaring to God that I was going to stand under His discipline, His shepherding, His correction, His love, his compassion, His mercy, his grace, His purposes, His anointing, His blood, His salvation, His will, etc.

May you understand God better today.
Posted by Stephen Court

October 13, 2003.
Greetings in Jesus’ name, friends.

Acts 26:17b,18: I am sending you to open their eyes, turn them from darkness to light, from the power of satan to God, so that they might receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who have been sanctified by faith in Me.

How’s that for a commission? That’s Paul’s. That’s mine. Is it yours?
Posted by Stephen Court

October 12, 2003.
Greetings in Jesus’ name, friends.
If you loved yesterday, you’ll like today’s.

I just started reading the dictionary (yes, I do that). This one is called The Dictionary of the Apostolic. When I got to ‘apostle’ I had to stop to blog it.

Check this first meaning of apostle in this dictionary: Greek word ‘apostolos’, meaning a delegate, an ambassador of the Gospel, officially a commissioner of Christ.

Get that? A commissioner of Christ.

This is good. It is important that our movement being growing, that our commissioners be apostolic and not managerial, that we be Biblically governed and not bureaucratically administered.

Add this to your explanation when people ask you how commissioner fits in with Colonel and General and Captain.
Posted by Stephen Court

October 12, 2003.
Greetings in Jesus’ name, friends.
People in covenant community often wear identifying articles of clothing as a sign of covenant. This happened back in the Old Testament and it happens today.

The uniform is a sign of covenant.

This is big- catch it. It’s not just a decision-free set of attire for Sundays. It isn’t just seasonal fashion-weathering clothing. It isn’t just a beacon for the spiritually hungry. It isn’t just an identification with The Salvation Army. It isn’t just a protection in the back alleys. It isn’t just a sign to everyone that you are a warrior of Jesus Christ. It isn’t just a walking billboard that you haven’t sold out to the designs and whimsies of the world. It isn’t just a notice that you are available. It isn’t just a spiritual safeguard for you, making you visibly accountable for your actions.

It is also a sign of covenant. You are in covenant community with others who wear it. Wow. This is big.
Posted by Stephen Court

October 10, 2003.
Greetings in Jesus’ name, friends.

So, we used to use a Navigator CD to create Biblical discussion guides for our cells. The best cell-based churches in the world use the same material in their cells.

That got unwieldy so we’ve moved over to Serendipity Bible for Biblical discussion guides.

Last week the first question, a light ice-breaker, asked, “Have you ever run away from home?”

One of our cells never got beyond the first question. Several of the people there ran away from home for good when young. Orphanages, foster homes, dysfunctional families, residential schools- all of it got mixed in to a vulnerable, emotional discussion. Of course, prayer was the main element of the meeting.

How interesting it is that a nice, light, ice-breaker for the middle class is a kick-in-the-guts peeler for the poor. I’m glad that Jesus has a bias towards the poor.
Posted by Stephen Court

October 9, 2003.
Greetings in Jesus’ name, friends.

Twice in the last day someone has quoted Francis of Assisi, saying, “Preach the Gospel at all times. Use words if necessary.”

Now, this is one of the more respected Christian sayings. It is right up there with ‘Cleanliness is next to Godliness’, ‘God helps those who help themselves’, ‘If it’s God’s will it will happen’, and ‘What’s done for the band is done for the Kingdom’ (I used to be a bandsman).

Really, though, it belongs with another set of sayings, not as famous:

To humans:
Live- breathe when necessary.

To hockey players:
Score- shoot when necessary.

To married couples:
Procreate- have intercourse when necessary.

And so on.

If you haven’t caught me yet, this is what I’m saying- Francis’s famous quote is meaningless.

It is impossible to live without breathing. You can’t score without shooting (Wayne Gretzky said that he missed 100% of the shots he didn’t take). And procreation naturally happens through intercourse.

And so it is impossible to preach the gospel without using words.

Come on. Get all uptight at me.

Tell me that by your loving life of integrity you preach the Gospel and influence people for Jesus.

I tell you that you don’t preach the Gospel, and if they don’t know you’re a Christ follower, then your influence isn’t towards Jesus.

The good news involves conviction of sin, atonement for sin, repentance of sin, renunciation of sin, forgiveness of sin, and reliance on Jesus. You can’t preach that without words.

All of your good stories to the contrary inevitably get to the point of words (e.g. I helped an old lady across the street and she thought I was a nice person and asked me my motivation for such a charitable act. And I told her…- there you go- words!).

Be clear that I’m not slamming Francis. If he wants to greet the birds good morning, and walk out of town naked, that’s up to him. All I am saying is that to preach the Gospel at any time, you need words.

So speak up (or write up).
Posted by Stephen Court

October 8, 2003
Greetings in Jesus' name, friends.

I have two goals in life:
1. win the world for Jesus; and,
2. love Jesus more than anybody else does.

I know that General Burrows decries the 'sin of comparison' but it is not like that. It is more like Colonel Arnolis Weerasooriya, who read biographies of the greathearts and determined to love his Saviour more than they did, and then looked around at the noble hearts in his city and, again, learning from their example, committed to loving Jesus more than they did.

The upside is that we compete to love God more. If we lose, we still love God more than we would otherwise.
Posted by Stephen Court

October 8, 2003.
Greetings in Jesus’ name, friends.

Some of our guys got egged on the weekend during a pro-life demonstration. My friend emailed, noting, “Eggs- how appropriate.”

Glory to God.
Posted by Stephen Court

October 7, 2003.
Greetings in Jesus’ name, friends.

Last night my buddy Peter joined me after cell to catch the end of the Monday Night Football game. We headed into the Co-Op lounge (cable television) to find a group watching the bottom of the ninth of the last divisional play-off game.

When that ended, most of the people left. One man stayed and flipped to MNF. The Super Bowl champs (TB Bucs) were up big. The Colts threw an interception that was returned for a TD and he left for bed.

So we had the helm (we controlled the channels of the tv).

There were four minutes left and the Colts were down by 21 points. They had only one time out left. We assured ourselves that they could come back.

Well, what do you know? They did. Today’s news calls it the greatest comeback in history. And that gentleman missed it because he threw in the towel too early.

Imagine that?

I wonder how many spiritual battles were lost because we threw in the towel too early? I wonder how many souls were not saved because we didn’t persevere? I wonder how many victories were forfeited because we just couldn’t believe that God could pull it off? I wonder how many cities were lost because the attackers folded up and went home just before breaking through?

Let’s not throw in the towel. Let’s not give up hope. Let’s not miss out on the victory of our God and King. Let’s reflect glory to Him.
Posted by Stephen Court

October 6, 2003.
Greetings in Jesus’ name, friends.

Jesus is a merciful High Priest. He enables us to approach the throne of grace with confidence. We enter not based on our merit but on His mercy. He delights to give us the kingdom. He actually takes joy in pouring our peace, righteousness, and joy into our lives through the Holy Spirit. And we know that the Holy Spirit is given to the believers. That means that one key way that the Holy Spirit does His thing is through us.

What does the Holy Spirit do? He preveniently graces people. How? Often through us. He convicts people. How? Through us. He regenerates people. How? I don’t know- miraculously. He speaks to people. How? Sometimes through us. He teaches people. How? Sometimes through us. He guides people to truth. How? Sometimes through us. He sanctifies people. How? Well, sometimes, inspired by our testimony. He anoints people. How? Often through the laying on of our hands.

How amazing it is that we can be co-labourers with God! How wonderful that we can fight for the King of Kings!


Let’s keep perspective today. Let’s not be unaware of the devil’s schemes. They’re as old as a serpent in a garden. Let’s not turn back, having put our hands to the plough. Let’s not be distracted by the fleeting pleasures of sin. Let’s not compromise for something fake and temporal.

Jesus is Lord. And it is Jesus or hell.
Posted by Stephen Court

October 5, 2003.
Greetings in Jesus’ name, friends.

General Burrows wraps up her RE:VIVE Vancouver campaign today. She said this:

“If people of this world are deaf to God it doesn’t mean that God is dumb.”

God speaks.
Yah.
Posted by Stephen Court

October 4, 2003.
Greetings in Jesus’ name, friends.

General Eva Burrows is in the midst of a campaign called RE:VIVE Vancouver. Today she recounted how she was asked what she wanted on her tombstone. She replied, “She pleased God.”

I’ve played this game several times over the years in retreats and Bible studies and all. But this is how I responded today:

mercy and grace
repentance and faith
blood and fire
death and glory

Hallelujah!
Posted by Stephen Court

October 3, 2003.
Greetings in Jesus’ name, friends.

General Clarence Wiseman once explained that the uniform makes you visible and available.

Of course this is true. People can see that you stand out from the crowd, that you publicly identify with Jesus Christ. And they believe that you’ve made yourself available to them, to help them or pray with them or speak life into their lives.

These are good. But there is another thing that it makes you- accountable. When you are wearing it, you are less likely to break the law, treat people ungraciously, or act in otherwise ungodly ways. It helps keep you from sinning.

So, visibility, availability, and accountability- Three good reasons for a Salvation Army uniform.
Posted by Stephen Court

October 2, 2003.
Greetings in Jesus’ name, friends.

My friend Michelle dropped a great line on me today. Earlier this week she’d been involved in a street-level engagement with the enemy. She kicked a demon out of the park where she was evangelizing. The demonized person left.

Afterwards, during our ubiquitous debriefing (deploy and debrief!) she commented, “Can you imagine that I used to think I could settle with being an officer wife?”

Preach it.
Posted by Stephen Court

October 1, 2003.
Greetings in Jesus’ name, friends.

One of the Methodist greats said, ‘the blood only covers what you uncover’.

Every knee is going to bow. It’s your choice. Yours can bow today. Or they can bow on judgement day. But every knee is going to bow.

Why not uncover your sin now so that the blood can cover it?

The difference is discipline or punishment. If you uncover your sin now, then you will get discipline and the blood will cover it. If you don’t uncover it and God does, then it is punishment.

So, blood covers what you uncover.
Every knee bows, either now or later.
If it bows now, you get discipline. If it bows later (judgement day) you get punishment.
Posted by Stephen Court

September 30, 2003.
Greetings in Jesus’ name, friends.

Yesterday I contrasted circumstance and providence. Today it is arrogance and confidence.

I used to want to be well known among demons. I figured that they knew Jesus and they’d heard of Paul (as you remember from Acts). But then I had an encounter with a few and it wasn’t the most glorious occasion. So I pulled in my horns for a bit.

The danger is one of arrogance instead of confidence. Confidence means ‘with faith’.

I’m over the pulled-in horns thing- have been for awhile. The key for me is to avoid arrogance and yet possess confidence. If I go in ‘with faith’, I’m covered.
Posted by Stephen Court