What is the greatest need?
January 7, 2010
I love the Conservative Holiness Movement. I was born into it and I plan on staying in it until Jesus comes back or I die. That said, I believe that there are needs in the CHM. Needs that need to be prayerfully and carefully asked.
What do you think the greatest need in the CHM is? I have several thoughts, but before I post them, I am curious as to what your thoughts are.
Please understand, this isn’t a post for you to vent your frustrations or anger 
. This is a post for you to address what you think the greatest need is. Thats it. There will be other times to address specific items.
if you wish to remain anonymous, I have created a form for you. I will tabulate the results and share in the next week or so.
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Building strong, meaningful relationships. This would eliminate gossip, create great leaders, and draw others to our churches. Furthermore, if the relationship is with God, then holiness will be realized by more. Maybe I am on my soapbox, but relationships, I believe, are central to being human and a Christian.
Strong relationships are so important. Keep riding your soapbox!
This is but one of my many thoughts regarding a most needed radical reformation in our ranks:
We need an urgent restoration of hopeful, end-time confidence. Jesus plainly showed that his first coming established His eternal Kingdom on earth, His death and resurrection defeated Satan, the Kingdom (parable of mustard seed)would start small and end big, Israel would eventually believe in the Messiah and become most effective Gospel-bearers in the millennial period, God’s enemies would be judged at his Second Return and end in Hell, the general resurrection would occur at his coming(Daniel 12 and John 6), and the saints would then be rewarded with eternal salvation. Theologians like Wesley, Asbury, Clarke, Benson, Watson, all Methodist bishops through 1900, E.M Bounds, John Inskip, William Taylor, William and Catherine Booth, A.M. Hills, Daniel Steele, Phineas Bresee(founder of the Nazarene church), Charles Finney, Amanda Smith, Jonathan Edwards, and David Brainerd helped turn the world right side up with their emphasis on Kingdom building and a proper approach to the Second Coming. Their hymnals were void of any pre-millenial/Tim Lahaye/pre-trib, rapture songs but full of songs about the Kingdom of God. There’s no doubt in my mind that our view of prophecy greatly affects our evangelism. Will Jesus find any faith when he returns…or will we be looking for Him to come in person and build a political Kingdom, something he clearly said he would not do?
Great thoughts Gabriel. I am not well-informed in this debate. How do you believe your views contrast with the opinions of others?
Being relevant to our culture and world, not becoming like the world but being relevant to the world in which we live….and being intellectually honest.
Mary Ellen, I agree that we need to relevant. I think we need to do a much better job in contextualization. The Gospel never changes, the methods sometimes do.
We need to foster an environment in which sin can be confessed, grace can be applied with support and accountability and relationships can be restored. I’m sick and tired of friends – heroes – falling from grace and hiding their sin. It is as though they are more afraid of US then they are HIM.
Andrew
Yes! I agree 100% with you Andrew. I am weary and sad of this. I think one of the problems is that previous generations handled situations wrong, and now our current generations are more afraid of the fall-out than the sin.
What do we need to do to begin to develop a proper environment? Your thoughts?
My thoughts on this are many, Robert. Perhaps in person sometime. I think that it needs to be addressed with all sorts of people on all sorts of levels.
We can’t be afraid of each other. That’s the issue.
I look forward to the conversation someday, Andrew.
Seabreeze Camp?
Andrew, I won’t make it to Seabreeze Camp this year. The only event this spring that I will be at is Outreach Convention. Grad studies are occupying the rest of my free time.
Wresting the church from the control of man and giving it back to the Holy Spirit to be the Executive Director.
Here are 2 things that come to mind…
1) More power of the Spirit, less energy in the flesh.
The Holy Spirit enables us to rise above cynical, isolationist conservatism, and stay out of compromising liberalism. The book of Acts is still our model.
2) More “both/and”, less “either/or”.
That might sound strange, but for too long we have been EITHER “growth-minded” OR “careful about our standards”. We must EITHER castigate Rick Warren-types OR “risk losing our identity”. We must EITHER “love the sinner” OR “hate the sin”.
There are many more examples of this.
It’s high time we embrace the “both/and” approach. I can BOTH learn from Rick Warren AND stick to my stricter interpretation of Biblical principles. I can BOTH reach out to the needy AND not be ashamed of who we are. I can BOTH listen to new ideas AND be a whole-hearted part of the CHM.
OK, that’s a book I just wrote…but just some thoughts!
Joel, I totally agree with you on both points. We need a mighty move of the Spirit and not be afraid of contextualizing the Gospel without compromising our doctrine.
RE – Gabriel: I love the optimism of post-millennialism, but do you really think that if all the CHM changed their beliefs to that tomorrow, that we would eventually see dramatic results? Personally, I doubt that any of the different prophecy sects have got their “charts” figured out perfectly. The issue to me is…will we BE the man or woman of faith, power and purity for 2010?
Anyway…just thinking out loud…not that we haven’t debated this before