Swimming Upstream: “Are We There Yet?”

Missional churches. Emergent churches. Permission churches. Organic churches. Simple churches. Red letter Christians. Neo-Calvinist Christians. Liberal Christians. Progressive Christians. Social gospel.

Yipes! Double yipes! Triple yipes!

I am a simple man who loves Jesus. I am not deep or profound. Mention words like hermeneutics or eschatology, and my eyes glaze over, my ear flaps shut down and I’m gone.

So, you can imagine how I am with the new nomenclature evolving out of different sections of the American Body of Christ, right? Not a pretty sight.

Maybe, the best way to describe me is to say that I’m like my daughter was when she was three years-old and the family was going on a long auto trip. “Daddy, are we there yet? Huh? Huh? Just tell me when we’re there, okay? Hey, Daddy, are we there yet? Huh? Huh?”

Why am I this way?

I know when five dollar words are used to explain something as beautiful as the gospel and the Church that we are going to need intellectual eggheads to explain everything to us. There’s no other way around it. You see, most of the rest of the Body (at least 98.2%) have no interest in understanding these terms. They, too, are like my daughter. “Are we there yet?”

But I take heart in knowing this: the American church is in state of flux. Nobody has arrived at the final destination as yet in this move of God.

Then, how will we know when we have finally arrived?

And Elijah came to all the people, and said, “How long will you falter between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow him…

Then Elijah said to all the people, “Come near to me.” So all the people came near to him. And he repaired the altar of the Lord that was broken down.

Then the fire of the Lord fell…

Now when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces; and they said, “The Lord, He is God! The Lord, He is God!”

So, get ready the Elijah prophets and apostles are coming! They won’t write boring dissertations, expansive treatises and create weird names. They will act and the fire will fall. Period.

Swimming Upstream appears at this blog site on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. It’s  a little of this and a little of that, all written  to encourage and exhort believers in their Christian jouneys.