Hi Everyone,

This Saturday night is our 20th Christian Artist Night (which means we've completed 5 years of promoting the arts).  We have some great bands, singers, dancers, poets, artists, and more.  Please plan to come and bring a friend.  It is both a night of entertainment and inspiration.

Starting on January 26th, for three weeks, we will be examining the question "Why Do Church?"  There are many people, both inside and outside the church, who question the need to have an organized, corporate meeting.  Some promote the value that it is easier to worship God outside of an organized service than it is in one.  People outside the Christian faith don't see any relevance in a church service.  Has the time come to discontinue corporate celebrations?  If there is a purpose to a central meeting and organization, then what is it?  And is the church today fulfilling that purpose?  These are some of the questions we will be investigating starting January 26th. 

"Today's Christians know that they do not, as their ancestors did, live in a society where God's presence was unavoidable.  No longer does Christianity form the moral basis of society.  Many of us now reside in secular communities, where arguments drawn from the Bible or Christian revelation carry no weight, and where we hear a different language from that spoken in church.

"Instead of engaging this secular world, most Christians have taken the easy way out.  They have retreated into a Christian subculture where they engage Christian concerns.  Then they step back into secular society, where their Christianity is kept out of sight until the next church service.  Without realizing it Christians have become postmodernists of a sort: they live be the gospel of two truths.  There is religious truth, reserved for Sundays and days of worship, and there is secular truth, which applies the rest of the time.

"This divided lifestyle is opposed to what the Bible teaches.  The Bible tells Christians not to be of the world, sharing its distorted priorities, but it does call upon believers to be in the world, fully engaged.  Many Christians have abdicated this mission.  They have instead sought a workable, comfortable modus vivendi in which they agree to leave the secular world alone if the secular world agrees to leave them alone."

This is not a call for confrontation, but of engagement.  Leonard Sweet recently said that the world is looking for Love and the Church is giving them Reason.  Christ called for us to genuinely love as He loves, and then, as the opportunity arises, share with them the Good News of what a relationship with Christ has meant to our lives.  But sadly for many of us D'Souza's words are all too true.