A Generation - from Belief to Action

One of the things that has seemed heavy on my heart has been the issue of believers (I like what Joseph Stowell says about calling ourselves "followers" instead - because of this very thing) - but the issue is for us to move from what we believe - and even being proud of what we stand for - into what we do - and how we live!

**This has seemed to be a very big emphasis at VL as we spent 6 weeks in our "THE VIEW" series - dealing with what we believe - and ending with THE VIEW of the Church - and how it calls us out - The Church (PEOPLE!) - to now DO something with what we "say" we believe!

It's interesting that this issue - like others over the last several months of my life - that have been heavy on my heart - are on the hearts and lips of others as well. This tells me that it is truly God doing something - and it seems to be very apparent in this generation of church leaders.

One proof of that is something I just listened to over the last 2 days in my car on my iPod. It was a Catalyst interview (I HIGHLY recommend listening to the entire interview by going to the Catalyst Podcast and this one was in October of 2006) where Rick Warren said he was praying for a 2nd Reformation of the Church. He said, "the first one was was about creeds, the second one needs to be about deeds - the first was about what we believe, the 2nd one needs to be about how we behave"

In this interview Rick also challenged me GREATLY by talking about the issue of AIDS - and correlated it to back in the day when Christians seemed to be silent about keeping our African American brothers in slavery - and now we seem to be ignoring this terrible epidemic.

Along the same lines - I am sensing a great challenge for the "Church" to stop thinking that our "worship" is attending a church service each week - or really even being a greeter or parking lot attendant or preschool volunteer - but that God is more concerned about our lives outside of those walls.

I believe that through God's prompting, our generation is tired (and should be) of attending church - and we are being (and should be) challenged to BE the CHURCH!