Modern BelieverCulture Changes. God Doesn't.

Lifelight just announced their new location, which will be just east of Worthing, SD, which is a short drive south of Sioux Falls.

View Larger Map

It’s 225 acres of farm land, which will now need to be developed with everything needed to put on a massive concert each Labor Day weekend. Just a few of the things they’ll need are:

• water
• electricity
• bathrooms
• access points
• stages

Initially they are asking for people to help them with $600,000 of funding to develop some basics, but ultimately the cost to develop it all will run into millions of dollars. With this amount of land, they can now move from 100,000+ concert goers to potentially over a million. They also have a vision to make the site a year round ministry place, instead of just one big weekend a year.

Also announced was a new band for 2010. After many years of trying to get them, Lifelight will finally be host to the David Crowder Band.

If you want to give to Lifelight, follow this link.

As a geek, this article really speaks to me. The Church is increasingly lagging when it comes to technology. Instead of showing others how to use new technology to reach people, we’re taking our sweet time, only adopting something when people start moving to something else (how many of you are still showing VHS instead of DVD).

There I was at the Pantheon. The building originally dedicated to all gods by the Romans and later used as a church. It holds the record for the largest unreinforced concrete dome. It exactly as high as it is wide, seemingly no simple feat at that time. Awesome.

I could go on and on, but here’s the point: in antiquity it was the church that was the “backbone of technological innovation,” to apply the words of Klaas Verbeken to a different subject. New technologies and systems were developed so that they could be used to glorify God.

And here we are all those years later. And who is one of the greatest users and innovators of all things techie? The porn industry. Tink betamax vs. vhs, blueray vs. hd-dvd, etc.

What a bummer. It’s as if the devil has stolen the playbook of the early church and has caught on to its effectiveness.

Oh, you’re still reading? Go find a youth pastor and ask him what the kids are into these days. Put the priority on incorporating that yesterday.

I love Twitter.

Twitter has connected me to thousands of people from around the world. There’s only a handful that I have meaningful conversations with day after day, but all the tweets are of value in one way or another. But in the rapid fire world of 140 character replies, are we always paying enough attention to how we respond to others?

Take Chris Pirillo. He’s a very well known geek, and he hadn’t been to Church in awhile. He was invited to one to speak about social media, and being a geek, he tweeted about it on the way home.

Visit his blog, read through the responses he got to a simple tweet, and think about how you respond when a non-believing friend tells you they went to Church.

We are living in a day of unprecedented learning. For all the pitfalls and traps there are to fall into on the internet, it was created for education. Never before have so many people had so much easy access to so much information. If you have the desire to learn, you can access all the lectures and assignments from MIT (the degree will still cost you).

With the spread of academic knowledge, however, also comes the rapid spread of those denouncing all forms of religion.

Everywhere you go on the internet today, and I mean EVERYWHERE, there are debates going on about Christianity, and these debates can get incredibly heated. Some of the best minds and some of the best educated people in the world claim to have the answers. Atheists, skeptics, philosophers, preachers, bloggers and other self-appointed religious experts are constantly battling for the intellectual high ground.

…..

When skeptics attack most religions, they DO indeed have the intellectual high ground. For when one closely examines such “faiths” as Islam or Hinduism one does find that logic, reason and real, hard evidence are directly contradictory to these religious systems.

However, Christianity is the one faith that is different in this regard. It is our assertion that there is absolutely no conflict between Christianity and the truth.

Are you equipped? Do you have the knowledge, the knowledge of truth, to be able to back up your beliefs? If we are doing our part to further the Gospel, then it’s inevitable that at some point we will be faced with the tough questions requiring us to think a little harder than we’d like. Follow through to Evidence For Christianity to find some places online you can get some more info about it all.

In yet another cultural fail, an increasing number of couples are getting married, without the guy ever asking her father for permission. I’m an old fashioned kind of guy, and can’t imagine marrying a girl before getting her dad’s permission (better yet, before you start courtship). Prodigal has a great piece on this.

In thinking about all of this, I realized something: as a Christian, God is your father. Not just your father either, He is also your love’s father. If we, as humans, ask for the blessing of a human being (who is not able to wield any kind of supernatural blessing-power); should we not ask the blessing of our heavenly Father, the creator of the universe, first before all others? This requesting of God for His blessing and for the hand of the woman in marriage (because, ultimately, she belongs to God just as everything else does) should not be an event characterized by sheepish asking or sly wordplay — it should be an occasion of joy and of peace.

I think deep down inside, we all realize that we are go hold God above our wives and families. In practice, how many of us actually do? Something to think about as your day goes on. What can you do to help your spouse grow in Christ?

I’ve been through basic training. I won an all expenses paid trip to Iraq for a year. I’ve been in some crazy situations with some really tough guys, and some really wimpy guys. I’ve been there with a few Godly men, but mostly not. Growing up in modern America, and the portrayal of men on TV, there is a picture of what the modern man looks like. However, that contrasts with what the Bible shows.

Abraham—at an age when he’s supposed to be collecting social security—leads an elite team of commandos to rescue his inbred cousin Lot. Phinehas the priest takes a spear and impales an Israelite and his “from the wrong part of town” girlfriend, and God blesses him for it! David decides to go above and beyond the 100-foreskin requirement to marry Saul’s daughter, Michal, and decides to cut 200 Philistine foreskins!

…..

The final picture of war we have in our Bibles is when Christ returns, wielding a sword that comes out of His mouth, splattered with the blood of His enemies before He tosses them into the eternal lake of fire and sulfur (Revelation 19).

Al Lobaina discusses Jesus At War over at The Resurgence. It brought back the thoughts that I’ve often had of Jesus. Commonly portrayed as a slender guy, I wonder if that’s really accurate. He walked everywhere, and he was a carpenter before there were power tools. Wouldn’t you think he’d be ripped, even kind of a hunk? After all, he is the Son of God.

As you look around at today’s culture, and compare it to the Godly men in the Bible, what do we need to be doing now to get back to where we need to be?

U2 just finished performing an epic concert at the Rose Bowl, which was also broadcast live on YouTube. Known for sonic excellence, U2 has been cranking out hit songs for nearly 30 years. Few bands can rival the fan following that they have, and Bono is renowned for his efforts to help third world nations.

Their current tour features a dream they’ve had for 2 decades, a 360° concert. I have several friends who journeyed to Chicago to watch them perform, and every one of them is still raving about it. An incredible amount of planning was put into this show, and has only recently become technologically possible.

U2 at the Rose Bowl (photo by Mark Krynsky)

Tonight’s show featured Bono leading the crowd in a portion of Amazing Grace. U2 has many songs featuring Christian themes, and in their early years, Bono and The Edge even took time away from the band because they were conflicted about rock and roll and God. Despite their familiarity with God though, they are still a secular rock group, and sometimes make choices reflecting that (includes pics of girls in bikinis).

But we all make mistakes, and U2 still plays amazing music. What if somebody was able to get through to the band, and help them get convicted, to understand all that God is, and start making worship music? What if U2 started playing to crowds approaching 6 digits, and leading them in the same music you sing Sunday mornings? What if Bono not only did all he does for third world nations, but did it in the name of God?

Alright, every blog needs a first post, so this will be ours.

We’re still working a few kinks out, playing with a few design aspects, rocking some social media (yay Twitter! Come follow us!), and finishing up a few things here and there, but we hope to launch on October 26th. That’s correct, next week Monday!

After hanging out on Twitter for a couple years, gaining some great friends, meeting amazing people who always help others, and discovering some fantastic content from across the web, a calling was felt to help bring this content to others! It’s tough being a Christian in today’s culture. It’s even tougher if you’re trying to live a Christian life pleasing to the Lord. It’s tougher yet if you work in ministry, volunteer in ministry, or are trying to reach out to help those around you.

But what if there was a place on the web that you could go to find helpful resources? What about a place that can encourage you? Give you inspiration to try something new? Or a place to learn what has worked for others, and how they did it?

We hope to be such a place. We’ll be scouring the web for fantastic content that can help you as a believer in this modern culture. We’ll only be giving you tidbits of it, instead giving you a link to see it in all of the original glory the author brought it out as. We want to make it easier for you to grow in your walk with the Lord. There’s already not enough time in the day, let us help by gathering the best content from around the web in one spot. Let us find it for you.

We aren’t perfect though. Maybe you find something great that you think we should know about. Send it in! Send us a message with a link on Twitter, or zip us a quick email ( tips@modernbeliever.com ). We’ll be sure to take a look at it. We’ve got a good start on monitoring sites with a track record of amazing stuff, but don’t be afraid to send in your suggestions!

You might not agree with everything that gets said here, so feel free to leave a comment, we’d love to see it! We all grow in Christ with FRIENDLY debate and discussion. If something gets out of control we won’t hesitate to shut down the comments on a post, but as good brothers and sisters in Christ, it shouldn’t ever come to that.

So be watching, Modern Believer is coming soon! Hopefully we can be a small light in this world, helping other lights to shine brighter! Pray for those behind this site to stay motivated and alert, and to follow the Lord’s guidance. As we put some ads and sponsorships up, please click through to them. It is going to take a lot of time and money to keep this going, and we’ve got bills to pay just like everyone else.

Tell all your friends that Modern Believer will be up and going soon!

In Christ,

Shawn

PS Jesus <3 You!