I’ve always thought that using Cheers as a model for a church plant would be pretty brilliant.

Making your way in the world today takes everything you’ve got. 
Taking a break from all your worries, sure would help a lot. 

Wouldn’t you like to get away? 

Sometimes you want to go 

Where everybody knows your name, 
and they’re always glad you came. 
You wanna be where you can see, our troubles are all the same 
You wanna be where everybody knows Your name. 

You wanna go where people know, people are all the same, 
You wanna go where everybody knows your name. 

I’ve always thought these lyrics were Chrstian and that no one was aware of it. When we talk about community we talk about these ideas. We like that we share the troubles, that our time together is a nice getaway. And more important, everybody knows your name. 

People don’t care about theology as much as they care about being loved. 

What would a community look like on this model?

We share a few drinks and share a few stories. We talk about our faith. We do not have to agree. 

The rule is: Never do anything that prevents you from sharing beer and wings. Follow those rules and you’ll have your community.

Earlier today I came across a friend online that I haven’t had the chance to hang with in this decade. It is always interesting to see how a friend’s life has changed and even how much I have changed during this time. Back in the day we were all in youth group together. We saw each other every few days, went on trips, and everyone was really close. This is the same experience most kids have during their student years.

My friend had stumbled on some CVC posting via links in my facebook account. I’m sure by the looks of CVC I look like a wise cracking heathen far from God. The truth is that is I care passionately about the gospel; I care about the church, I want God’s people to rise up and do the right thing. Most people don’t realize that. They just know the sarcastic guy cracking wise. So I want to change that and let you in on what I have been working through during my years of ministry and during these last two years at Culture Versus Christian.

Everyone has a story of hurt in the church. Most think that they have had the worst experience. I thought the same thing for the longest time. Friends fail, Christians fail, Ministers fail. The details are not important and to this day could still cause pain to others. Let’s just say that bad things happen in churches. Horrifying things. Sad things.

My first lesson as a young adult was that I could put no faith in people, even those called Christian.

About this time in life I started playing drums in a Christian band. You know what I found out? Friends fail, Christians fail, Ministers fail. And I’m included in that number. You see, when you’re in a Christian band you think that you’re doing every bit of it for Jesus. It is not true. Some things I did for me; like get that one girl’s phone number. Signing autographs fed my ego. Being in a band points people to you. Sometimes it is hard to be pointing at Christ. Friends fail, Christians fail, Ministers fail, and I fail.

I was Christian cool. I had the WWJD bracelet; I could give you the run down of popular CCM bands and had a Christian T-Shirt for every day of the week. It probably would have been better if I read more scripture and learned more about the teachings of Jesus because I was turning into the same hurtful type of douche bag that I hated.

I started to see how judgmental Christians were. Myself included. I got angry. My church was falling apart, the band was gone, and all of this ministry we all talked about seemed pretty fruitless. I wasn’t leading anyone to Christ.

Then I started seeing the Christian industry for what it was. A whole business had been built around music, clothing, trendy books, etc. Christian television was a joke. Some say ministers excel because they are called by God. Some of these guys excel because of clever marketing. I noticed a trend. This Christian Industry was always asking me for money.

About age twenty I started working in youth ministry. By this time I had built up a lot of damage. I didn’t trust Christians and ministers, but I was among their ranks. I was determined to change things from the inside out. I don’t know what I was trying to accomplish. I wanted to see acceptance for those who were rejected. And I got angry whenever I saw someone being rejected.

Church started getting more and more ridiculous to me. We all gathered in a little building every week. The music would start, the tears would flow, the preacher would preach and the altar call was the payoff. But no lives would be changed. It was something we would do every week. To be fair, the people of the church were sincere, but we were missing something. Convincing people they are missing something is not very easy.

I eventually gave up trying.

Culture Versus Christian started in anger. I was pissed off at Christians; especially ministers. I had already learned as a musician that it is easy to get wrapped up in yourself. I met ministers and saw others on TV that were more concerned with a career than a ministry. I wanted to say things that I could not say in the church without being kicked out.

I’ve also got this really bad sarcastic bug and hooking up with James (Jones McAlister) made it even more fun. James and I both felt the same things about the church. We thought it was in trouble. Lots of my friends did. So we set out to create this thing online to create a voice for those who had no where else to say it. Culture Versus Christian became my outlet to vent my frustration with the church, with jokes.

At first we wanted to blast the church. It was venom. We lashed out on all of those who hurt us. It ruffled some feathers but more than anything else, people agreed.

At this point I no longer considered myself an evangelical as defined by religitards and the republican party. I believed in the gospel. I believed in preaching the gospel. I just could not live inside of the culture of church.

James and I started reading books about the Emergent Church. On the surface everything looked awesome. They understood the postmodern generation and relational ministry. I thought this was were I should be until I looked into their theology. Let’s just say we disagreed. Culture Versus Christian started talking about the emergent movement with the same venom as we talked the evangelical. They probably didn’t deserve everything we served them.

I know. There is a lot of anger here. But we talked it out over the past couple of years. When you listen to CVC from the first episode you see a progression of anger through movements. Then we were over it. After a while we weren’t angry anymore. We said what we needed to say. We’ve even made peace with some people. We’ve made a lot of jokes at other’s expense and we’ve had a lot of laughs.

In the end, I am not evangelical or emergent. However, I am more confident in my faith than ever. Instead of looking toward trends and new things, I began to look backwards to the apostles and the history of the early church. I’m trying to understand how it all start before it was perverted by history.

Now its time to put my ministry where my mouth is. I screamed about relational ministry for years. Now I have to continue to make relationships. Instead of talking about the stupidity of the church, I want to talk about Jesus.

But there will still be jokes..

By Jones

Alright, I just read Nahum, one of the prophetic books of the Bible, not even five minutes ago, so this is straight-up initial reaction. I’d like to expand on these thoughts later on, but I thought I’d write something down real quick just so I don’t forget it.

There’s a lot about the nature of our God revealed in the first little bit of Nahum (and it’s a very small book, so it wouldn’t hurt to go read it real quick - honestly, took me about seven minutes or so).

The first bit deals with some attributes of God that we 21-century folks may want to initially cringe and back away from. Those attributes are the jealousy, wrath, and vengeance of God (I was reading from the New Living Translation, so I don’t know how the other translations read right now). It says that God “takes revenge on all that oppose Him and furiously destroys His enemies” (1:2).

We really don’t spend much time thinking about that. And those aren’t necessarily our childhood Sunday School memory verses.

The next verse says that God is also slow to anger. But when we think about someone we know who may be jealous and wrathful, we often don’t, in the next thought, imagine that same person to be slow to anger.

This issue of God being a wrathful God, a jealous God who seeks revenge and restitution, used to be a big problem with me. And it made reading much of the Old Testament a bit of a problem as well.

But today I paused for a minute, and asked myself these questions:

1) How do we define “jealousy” and “wrath” today, and are these definitions justifiable in a biblical context (or are they, so to speak, “fluff” definitions created by pansy pop-psychologists who would prefer we all pop a xanax and get on with our lives)?

and

2) What are the objects of all of God’s attributes/emotions that we, in the Freudian West, may find a bit disconcerting?

And then I got to thinking about jealousy and wrath. And jealousy, even though it’s really frowned upon by our xanax distributors, IS a very real emotion, usually involving someone or some thing that we highly value, to the point of thinking that our lives would be absolutely no good without them or it. Often times, this jealousy is a result of misapplied or misdirected value placement, so we do indeed usually see jealousy as an ugly head being reared (i.e. jealous abusive boyfriend, smothering parents who are so jealous of their children they won’t allow them to live a normal life, etc.).

But imagine God, who loves His church as a husband loves a bride (see Song of Solomon and Revelation for more info on that), and imagine how He feels when He knows His bride is cheating on Him with Sin. Imagine how God feels when He knows that this Sin fellow is absolutely no-good. Sin is, in fact, disease ridden, unemployed, and very, very contagious. But God’s bride, the Church (in Old Testament context, Israel), keeps hanging around Sin, thinking to herself, “Well, I’m not cheating on my husband. We’re just having lunch. I don’t know why He’s so jealous. And besides, Sin makes me laugh. He seems like a good guy.”

Imagine the furious jealousy that God feels when He sees His bride flirting and, ultimately, sleeping with this darkness behind His back.

After I thought about that for a bit, I came to the conclusion that God’s jealousy for His people is rooted in nothing but goodness and love. And His furious jealousy is a direct result of His furious love.

So the object of God’s jealousy, His people, justifies and allows us to better define that jealousy. And really, it allows us to thank Him and praise Him for it.

Next comes the wrath and vengeance aspect.

Nahum told us that God will take revenge on those who oppose Him and furiously destroy His enemies.

Sounds a bit militant, right?

Well, I’m not a very militant fellow. Meaning, I don’t fancy kevlar vests with dynamite on ‘em, and I most definitely don’t spend my time thinking about ways to get the better of my hell-bound Buddhist neighbor. Mainly because I don’t have a Buddhist neighbor.

And when I read those verses in the Bible, I’m inclined to immediately judge those phrases, and catch myself saying “Well, that’s a bit harsh,” or, “That’s just as bad as militant Islam.”

But is it, in the context of who God is, and who God’s enemies really are?

If you see God as the source of all goodness, all joy, all love, all hope, all everything-you-can-think-of-that’s-possibly-worth-something-in-this-life, then you begin to see that, yeah, God SHOULD take revenge on His enemies, and destroy them. Because God’s enemies are all badness, all sorrow, all sadness, all hatred, all despair, and all everything-you-can-think-of-that’s-possibly-not-worth-something-in-this-life.

In that context, it’s not about God getting pissed and stomping on the little people. And honestly, that’s how some folks see it, and that’s why they discredit the Bible sometimes.

But rather, it’s about goodness triumphing over badness. Right over wrong. Life over death.

This is where Mr. Freud says, “But what IS ‘good?’ What IS ‘right?’ What IS ‘life?’”

I don’t think you can argue with relativists like that. Just punch them in the face and take their cookies. (Then, when they object, ask them why, and when they start blubbering about the cookies being “theirs,” and their nose hurting, just say “What’s a cookie, and what’s a nose?” Then enjoy your cookies.)

But really, it always has been about the cross. Even in the Old Testament, when we wonder why God seems so tribalistic and wrathful, we know that He, in His ultimate wisdom and goodness, worked all things to the good, to the cross, and to the resurrection of Jesus Christ for our salvation.

So the next time you read your Bible, and someone objects, and says, “But God seems so angry and jealous and wrathful in the Old Testament,” simply close the Bible, smile, and say,

“Thank God.”

‘Cause the Old Testament is the record of God, thinking about you.

Every once in a while you run into a person who recognizes a problem, and solves it. This weekend at the call, there were a lot of these people, but the one that I will remember is that generous guy waiting in line.

Someone is always passing something out at these events. Usually it comes in the form of flyers, cheesy books, and cards for Christian resources. If I would have thought about it, I would have made some culturevschristian stuff and handed out.

Its not a bad thing to hand stuff out, but some of this stuff is ridiculous. One fellow was handing out a book about the end times. It was the story of one person being left behind and their loved ones going to heaven when Jesus comes back for the church. Its the same story we have been frightened by numerous authors who think they some special word from the lord.

This book was being handed out to Christians. It was a Christian event where Christians were praying all day long. I do not need evangelism at this point. I am pretty secure in my salvation. Everyone felt this way and those silly, unimaginative, books were quickly converted to fans. These books ended up in the trash cans.

But there was another man handing things out that hot morning in Nashville. He was generous and thoughtful. He recognized a need. He had two bags of fruit, watermelon and grapefruit, and was walking around to perfect strangers offering them a tasty snack. I chose the grapefruit. It was just right in that hot whether.

He did not try to convert me, tell me about my sin, or scare me into heaven. He ministered to my need.