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December 13, 2004
Government 101
I started this blog as a forum for discussion of politics. Specifically I wanted to create a forum for ideological flow by which we may begin to take some firm conclusions on what exactly the socio-political view of a Bible believing person is. (And consequently, to aide those who may not believe in the Bible, a means of understanding the Biblical world-view. Personally, I know it can be confusing. I was, at one point for over eight years of my life, an atheist.)
I was very perplexed by some people’s reaction in my own church, even with regard to the Election of 2004. I noticed three things:
1) People who call themselves and rightly so live as such, Christians, may not agree entirely that followers of Christ should be ‘Conservative’ or ‘Liberal’.
2) People, though coming to Christ (hence began the work of changing their world view to match what the Bible says) may not take the effort to fully consider what one’s socio-political view ought to be.
3) That the pop-culture in America, seems to have some misunderstandings in regard to the nature of government and governance.
After doing some beginnings of research, I finally decided to post my first article on the matter.
I’m not quite sure what a text book definition of government would be but considering people as a whole I would put forth this definition/role of government: (Feel free to comment if you disagree or have something to add.)
The primary role of government, at its broadest and most basic level is to enforce and safeguard those values necessary for the proper functional health of a society. (One should note that this definition assumes that certain values are universal and can be understood and known. It also assumes that one will have the means to determine the benefit or lack thereof of ideas as whether or not they hold up to a standard by which society is benefited.)
So then the question becomes, what are those values that are necessary to safeguard in order to ensure a healthy society? This is where the debate (politically speaking) begins.
For brevity, I’ll not start the discussion on what those values are but offer up this working definition for the basic nature of government. (Any comments?)
Posted by mtriley at 01:03 AM | Comments (19)
December 10, 2004
Friday Night Rock...
I was inspired by Paul's blog (found here) on the topic in the course of his comments regarding the Friday Night Rock. Also inspired by our recent All Leader's Meeting, I thought I would attempt to hash some thoughts regarding the Friday Night Rock.
I was originally going to cast my view and understanding of the Rock's vision for Friday, only to realize that would take much time and probably not be too relevant to some of the comments on Paul's blog or at the Leader's meeting.
I don't want to beat a dead horse, but as I have said in varying forms and phrases, "I've not been presented with clear, 'Yes what we are doing is actually working and fits the culture', with objective means of measuring our effect." When I think back to the comments, I think people really don't see how 'what we do', actually helps us or advances us closer to our objective, reaching people far from the cross.
I think there may be some confusion about other specific objectives for the Friday Night Rock (FNR), but overall I think we are a little lost in the detail of it all. When, in my opinion, the discussion degrades to matters of preference and style then we are loosing sight of what it is we are aiming at, but more importantly, loosing sight of knowing how to aim at what we are wanting to aim at.
But not to discredit the stylistic issue too much, we must understand, ISU is a very diverse place. Will one format fit all? Probably not. Can we pick something that will work for most? I think so, however, I'm not as convinced that we (leaders as a whole) have an understanding of what that looks like.
Overall...
I wish and pray that God would raise up a few who seem to have a really keen pulse on the culture and could help provide the leadership with clear measuring posts by which to conclude that what we are doing is in fact meeting our objective. And that these people would meet on very regular basis taking the personal initiative outside of the specified meeting to be pondering and praying over this matter.
I have to be personally careful here and not want the miracle pill. Having been involved with the Rock for six years now, and involved with the FNR since it's conception during summer of 2000 I have noticed that we as a people group like to set things one way. However, our culture is very malleable right now and as such, will require at least bi-annual tweaking of implementation. (And it's way to easy as humans to let our preference override what is best for the whole or to keep it toned down to submit to the objective.)
Thinking about this topic as I am writing, I think we made a good attempt a year ago to specifically hallmark our relationship skill (Paul called it Fellowship) and our music. I still feel that we were not quite sure how to effectively go about that. The changes came on the heels of sending off the IC church plant so it was a strange time of transition. Perhaps the change in leadership coupled with the format change, unsettled us in some fashion and so we were not quite sure what to make of it all.
At that time though, I felt we lost some of the depth of public message from the stage and de-emphasized it. This isn't a bad thing but for me points out a very important principle:
Our format must be clearly able to meet our mission objective while at the same time actually be able for us to achieve it.
For example, we cannot pick a format that would require too much out of our people to the point that they were failing at achieving what it suppose to achieve the mission objective. Let's say we just de-structured the FNR and had it be one big hang out time. It's not a bad format but would the gospel go out? Would conversations that naturally occurred at the time be spiritually salted? If not, why? Are the leaders too timid, not sure how to bring up spiritual conversation? Then why not pick a format where the spiritual nature of the meeting was presented or forced in such away to cause one at least the potential to think/talk about such things?
Culture of Apathy...
I sometimes wonder if part of our struggle for genuine growth (either in depth of character or numerically) is part of the prevalent attitude of apathy in the culture. Things like this must drive the format as well. How could we jar that attitude at the FNR?
...
Well I have probably left you with more questions than answers, but hopefully it got you thinking. As more thoughts bubble to the surface, I'll share them with you.
Posted by mtriley at 09:37 PM | Comments (4)