I listened to the message from Saturday's Connexion, and feel like I should probably apologize (though not for what many of you might be thinking). During the message, I said that the church must show the world what it looks like to live in the kingdom. I could've focused on a lot of kingdom living things, but I focused for a couple of minutes on love. The church is to show the world kingdom life, and more than anything else, kingdom life is love.
So far so good...
Then, in the next breath, I was talking about how the purpose of the church isn't to build the church, but to point to and witness to the King and the kingdom. Again, so far so good. I talked about how it's possible to build a huge local church and do nothing for the kingdom. Ok. Then, I did something I shouldn't have done - I specifically mentioned Joel Olsteen and his Lakewood Church as an example of someone who's built a huge church by telling people what they want to hear without necessarily witnessing to the King or the kingdom.
Do you see it...
I think I'm right in my assessment (in fact, I watched an Olsteen sermon on Sunday night just to confirm it. He said, and I quote, "just because you have weaknesses doesn't mean you're a bad person". That would be ok if by weakness he meant a bum knee or an weak constitution. However, earlier in the message he used some examples of weaknesses to clarify what he meant. For example, someone might have a weakness towards food and overeating; some might be prone to jealously or anger; others might be impatient; still other may be big spenders; other might have a "weakness towards the opposite sex"... Most of us would call these "weaknesses", sin: gluttony, jealousy, anger, materialism, fornication/lust, etc. Not Joel - the word 'sin' wouldn't make people feel good).
Rant over. I think I'm right in my assessment, but it probably wasn't a display of love to call him out by name in a message. So, I apologize, kinda...
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