Exegesis Has Not Been A Silver Bullet

From Feb 07...more ramblings

Some might be concerned that someone who just shows up at a family-intregrated church might mis-understand why or what we are doing and talking about and then "might miss-apply what was presented because it wasn't fully developed". This is already rampant throughout the Christian body as a whole. It is at the heart, one of the things that I try to address.. So like Voddie said regarding answering objections to the family-intregrated model "The current model works so well..." Aint, as Voddie would say.

We know that no matter how well you cover and lay out something, that we as sinful, saved human beings can still corrupt it. A train of biblical thought can begin from one Sunday and be added to for the following weeks, but if each week you must retrace all that you have established before, you will have a very hard time progressing to anything. Anyone can ask questions if they don't think something is kosher. But I do think that all trains of thought must be shown to be biblically based before you go on and not just taken for granted.

We have to see and understand the why we should do this, for future generations, and over what it should apply too, everything, while still building onto the starting point, that He is God and how honoring the first commandment should affect how we think, by giving examples. Boy, that last sentence. :P

Exegesis. With the wrong worldview we can exegesis from here till the cows come home and we can still totally miss what God wants done. 25, 50, 100yrs of what "we thought" was exegetical work has us with families segregated, youth groups, no multi-generational vision, a Christian body that is self-absorbed as individuals, and impotent as far as affecting the culture around us and for the most part swimming along with the culture, but regreting that these people are going to hell, and we wish they could be saved too.

At the Church, we are just starting to position ourselves to change how we think, and then apply it to the culture of our homes. We must first stop and rethink how we think! We must first define what thinking God's thoughts after Him looks like, sounds like, etc. We will have to define it by His Word, At this point in time it's more of just trying to get people to say... wait a minute.... You have to first be convinced that something is amiss and needs to be changed. Like convincing someone first that they need to be saved.

Greg Bahnsen spends a whole book actually spelling some of these concepts out. Their was no one passage from the Word that he could use to do it either but rather he had to weave the common thread together. Some people will need to read a book like that, others won't, but rather will be able to just say "oh, I get it" and move forward.

We moved to the family-intregrated model church but did we bring almost all of the same mindsets as everyone else had around us from the places we left? I am barely beginning to grasp this myself but I can see it enough to help others see that we need to stop and go hmmm.....