True Identity: We are Strangers In a Foreign Land
/The reality is, Christians are interlopers. We are strangers and foreigners.
BY ED STETZER
As Christians, I believe we should always be more driven by our missionary identity than we are by our national identity, our political identity, our environmental identity, our social identity, or even our church identity.Don’t get me wrong. We ought to love our church. (I know I love my church.) And the Church (with capital C) is the bride of Christ, destined for eternity with God. But here on earth we must face the reality that our culture is not to be our primary identity.Our culture is a mission field. We must see ourselves as people on mission. This is not our home. This is our mission field. Therefore, we all must see our vocations as mission—as kingdom work.
Strangers in a foreign land
First Peter 2:11 tells us that we are strangers and exiles. This land is not our home. But part of the challenge is that a lot of people want to fight for their homeland instead of acknowledging that we're supposed to have the mindset of foreigners and exiles.Let’s put this into the facts that we know about our population. If the percentage of people who are nominally Christian is shrinking and nominal Christians become Nones, then we are dwelling in an increasingly secular land.As a result, we need a reemphasis on gospel clarity. Being labeled Christian no longer means a ‘social Christian’, but instead is someone who's been changed by the power of the gospel, if indeed you have. This is a vital theological shift in the way we are viewed and should view our land.Understanding these shifts is necessary in part because we live in an age of outrage. People in our land get ticked off over things that they don’t like. This calls us to gospel clarity. And missionary identity, seeing ourselves as strangers and temporary residents, is what will pull us towards showing and sharing the love of Jesus as we should.
We are a convictional minority
At one time, we were perceived (incorrectly, I think) as a religious majority. Today, we're a convictional minority. This is key, because when you're a convictional minority, you don’t fit in the mainstream of culture. We are statistically a minority of people in our culture who think differently than the mainstream culture. We are not walking around thinking, We're the majority. You're going to do what I say. You're going to accept all my standards.A lot of people still think Christendom when they think American, Candian, British, or whatever. They believe they need to take back the country, because it's theirs and others are interlopers.The reality is, we are the interlopers. We are the strangers and foreigners.When we think like a convictional minority, we'll engage culture less with "You owe me" and more with “How can I engage you the culture we are in via the mission we are on?"Christendom has died. Not Christianity, statistically, but Christendom.The prevailing idea of a Judea-Christian worldview is no longer something we can take for granted. We are in a post-Christendom age. Our focus must now be more on mission, evangelism, and the like.Sorry, Christian, we are not birthright owners. We are exiles. Many sincere Christians have seen America as a new Israel. When Ronald Reagan said, "We will be as a city upon a hill," some saw some divine relation to a specific nation. But, let’s be clear: Reagan wasn't quoting the Bible; he was quoting John Winthrop standing on the deck of the Arabella in 1630.God loves all people. And perhaps we have great responsibility because we occupy “a great land between two great seas” (another Reagan gem). But we are not the new Israel. Our covenant relationship with God is no covenant like the Old Testament.Sure, we can pray, "Lord, heal our land," but 2 Chronicles 7:14, where God says, "If my people, which are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray, I will hear from heaven and heal their land," is not about us. It’s about ancient Israel in the time of King Solomon, who was about to go off the deep end into idolatry.We need God to heal our land, but we don't have a land in the same way as King Solomon.
Stop the Israel thinking
We've got to stop the Israel thinking, which is, This is our place, our home. Instead, we must consider that we are foreigners and strangers in exile. It's someone else's home. We're not Israel. We're Israel in exile.Jeremiah 29:5 speaks to those like us in exile. Sure, plant gardens and grow, and flourish, and more. But always remember you’re in Babylon.This makes all the difference. Why? Because only then will we have exile thinking and gospel focus. We begin to think about our mission to engage a culture that God loves and wants to redeem and restore to himself.Ed Stetzer holds the Billy Graham Distinguished Chair of Church, Mission, and Evangelism at Wheaton College, is executive director of the Billy Graham Center, and publishes church leadership resources through Mission Group.This article was republished with permission and originally appeared here.
“Ultimately, the answer for that stat is adoptive families, safe families, Foster Care, but the question is not what do families do, but what does the church do? So we came up with this campaign called Brave where churches create catalytic events in partnership with the local community to actually get the girls at risk of trafficking and say, ‘Hey, we think you are the solution and not the problem.”She adds, “I feel it’s a time when the Church has an answer with the sacredness of humanity. That every life matters to God because everyone was created with the sacred image of God inside of them, and so to acknowledge that, to recognize that, means that we fight things like slavery and trafficking and injustice.”[bctt tweet="It’s a time when the Church has an answer with the sacredness of humanity. That every life matters to God because everyone was created with the sacred image of God inside of them. - Danielle Strickland #humantrafficking " via="no"]
Preach the Truth
“In the past several years, we as a society have begun to understand the seriousness of loneliness to not only our emotional state, but also our physical health,” said Nick Runyon, executive director of CV Outreach. “Through this study, we hope to provide useful information to church leaders so they can be aware of and respond to the lonely in their communities.”Beyond geographical location, the CV Outreach study identifies that women are more likely than men to suffer from loneliness, and millennials are at a significantly higher risk of loneliness than any other age group. Though millennials make up just 21 percent of the total population, they are more than 50 percent of the lonely population.The study also explores common online behavior of a lonely person. For example, by analyzing Google searches, researchers were able to identify common keywords that accompany a search for loneliness help. These include life, husband, time, feel and marriage.“This data shows us that loneliness often surfaces not as a core issue, but as an underlying symptom of another, more immediate issue such as marriage or relationship issues, existential struggles or financial difficulties,” said Chad Hugghins, author of the study and content and marketing director for CV Outreach. “Given individuals often turn to the church for help with their struggles, church leaders should be looking for signs of loneliness as well.”In addition to the study, CV Outreach provides insight into how individual Christians can reach the lonely such as exhibiting healthy online behavior and intentionally getting to know your neighbors. Church bodies can respond by speaking publicly about loneliness and connecting with people online. To see the full study, visit 
“My prayer for all that live in LA and Orange counties and wherever you live is that people would recognize large communities of men for one thing: they recognize them for having been with Jesus. That they become sources of life and it’s a noteworthy miracle, and that would be a witness for God that would create so much salvation in a city and so much life,” Luck said.“Knowing the Lord is the main thing of life. The only thing left for us to do is to declare surrender,” Luck adds. “I’m not surrendering to anybody, but I’ll surrender to Christ.”On Friday, the conference opens for check-in and coffee at 5 pm, and Session 1 from 7-9 pm. Saturday’s schedule includes a 7 am check-in, Session 2 at 9-11 am, lunch, and Session 3 from 12 to 2 pm.For registration and more information go to the conference website: 
So what is evangelism? Thankfully, it is not terribly complicated. Theologian Wayne Grudem provides an accurate and simple definition: It is “the proclamation of the gospel to unbelievers (from the Greek word euangelizo, “to announce good news”). In other words, it is the announcing, teaching, or communicating of the good news of the gospel to the unsaved with the hopes that they might come to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. This is the essence of evangelism. Nothing more and nothing less.We find this definition in two key passages, both defined by Jesus Himself. The first is Luke 24:47, which says that “repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.” The second key passage is Mark 16:15, which reads, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.”Understanding what evangelism is according to Scripture also helps us to discern what evangelism is not. In understanding the difference, we have a clearer focus on our mission as Christians. It also should give us soberness to not pass up good opportunities to speak the gospel to people, especially when we are tempted to replace evangelism with another program or method that we think constitutes true evangelism.Here are ten common practices that can tempt us to believe we have evangelized (especially when these activities are used as a replacement for verbal gospel proclamation):1. Inviting non-Christians to church: This is one of the common practices of Christians today. Christians think that they have done their evangelism job once they have brought the unbelievers into the church gathering. It’s not bad to invite a friend to church, since the assembly of the saints is a good place for unbelievers to see the living testimony of Christ lived out before his eyes. But when using this as a crutch or a substitute for your obedience to evangelism, then it becomes a problem. And is there really any guarantee that your pastor or any church leader will personally evangelize your unbelieving friend on that Sunday?2. Conversions: Another term for this is “the results of evangelism.” This is when you have both proclaimed the gospel to the unbeliever and converted them. Nowhere in Scripture, even in passages like Romans 1:15 and Galatians 4:13 when evangelism is used as a verb, does the word imply that evangelism is successful when we procure conversion. Failure to grasp this concept has lead to unnecessary pressure on evangelists, which in turn leads them to try to get conversions at nearly all costs. When this happens, Christians experiment with unbiblical, pragmatic methods of evangelism that produce manipulated “decisions,” and ultimately spurious conversions.3. Apologetics: This is the art of defending the Christian faith with answers to objections. The problem is that some Christians use apologetics, rather than the gospel, to try to win over unbelievers, thinking that clever arguments, such as kalam cosmological argument, the Dead Sea Scrolls discovery, the DNA structure, and biblical prophecies, will win the day. Other than the fact that commonplace experience shows us that unbelievers are not generally converted by hard data, Scripture even tells us that God does not use solely empirical evidence to draw a sinner to belief in Christ. Instead, the Lord uses the gospel. God has chosen to use the “foolish message” of the cross to be the power of God onto salvation (1 Cor 1:18).4. Praying with unbelievers: This is when you pray with unbelievers. Some people believe this to be evangelism, and have actually replaced evangelizing unbelievers with praying with them. This is a case of the fear-of-persecution syndrome. Let’s face it; it is a lot more “loving” to pray for them than to be “confrontational” by being open with them about the issues of sin, judgment, and the need to repent before a holy God. The problem with this approach is that it clearly does not square with the biblical definition of what evangelism is. Another roadblock is that nowhere in Scripture are Christians exhorted to pray together with unbelievers, as if they have a common saving faith or a common god. Instead, Christians are commanded to pray and intercede for an unbeliever’s salvation (Rom 10:1; 1 Tim 2:1).5. “God loves you” or “Jesus loves you:" You’ve probably been a part of evangelism teams, or have seen groups, that said or held up signs that read, “Jesus loves you!” Yet these evangelists rarely mention sin, heaven, hell, the atonement, the resurrection, or any information that a sinner needs to know in order to come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. It’s not a bad thing to say “God loves you” to an unbeliever, because it is true. But when proclaimed without any context, it can be misleading. When unbelievers hear this statement, they think that God will accept them eternally, no matter what kind of lifestyle they are living or what they believe.6. “Accept Jesus:” This is very close to evangelism, but not quite. This is when you take a gospel presentation, chop out all the content, and simply call the unbeliever to “accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.” In other words, you don’t actually explain the gospel message to them. There is a problem with this approach. The unbeliever will obviously not desire to believe in Christ because he does not see why he needs to come to Christ, and does not understand why Jesus is the only way for him to be saved from hell. Gospel proclamation, although not an encyclopedia of data, is certainly more than just telling someone to “accept Jesus Christ.”7. Lifestyle evangelism: This is when you live a certain way before your unbelieving friends, relatives, and co-workers, thinking that your actions will impress them, illicit curiosity to your faith, and eventually draw them to salvation in Christ. It is somewhat based on the salt-and-light principle from Matthew 5:13-16. Although this Sermon on the Mount passage does teach us to be living witnesses to unbelievers, it is not identical to evangelism. Evangelism, once again, is the proclamation of the gospel to the person, and “lifestyle evangelism” does not fit that bill. Unbelievers will not understand the gospel just by observing your lifestyle. They can very well see a respectful lifestyle in a moral Buddhist and an atheist. As Romans 10:14 declares, “…How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher?”8. Personal Testimony: This is when you share your life story with an unbeliever about how you came to Jesus Christ or what he did or is currently doing in your life , with the hopes that this “bait” will attract your prospect to the faith. The problem with personal testimonies is that many of them are devoid of the gospel message. Once again, we must remember that it is not apologetics, clever stories, or arguments that win people to salvation, but the gospel (Rom 1:16). A downfall with personal testimonies is that unbelievers will approach such stories with an attitude of, “That’s good for you. But I have my own path and happiness.” However, the gospel is not relative or optional. It sets one path of salvation, and calls for a response from the sinner.9. Humanitarian or social action: A popular trend among many evangelicals, especially in urban settings, is to spread the Christian influence by doing good deeds for the city, such as feeding the poor, serving in soup kitchens, cleaning up the streets, and tutoring underprivileged children. They call this “servanthood evangelism.” In this pursuit, the gospel is sometimes preached, but other times, it is not. In the latter case, the church becomes no different than the Angelina Jolies of the world who do humanitarian work in the name of “love.” Giving a sandwich to a homeless guy on the street is noble, but what does it profit him if we feed him physically, yet he dies spiritually?10. “Revival” events: These are special events designed to rally Christians up in “worship” of God. They are usually centered on high-tech music designed to stir up the feelings of the attendees so that they can get an emotional high for God. The problem with this approach is that this type of event does not place the preaching of the gospel as its centerpiece. Therefore, it cannot qualify as a “revival” in any way, because the historical outworking of revival is the mass salvation of unbelievers as a result of gospel proclamation, such as the case with the Great Awakening. Emotional feelings for God do not save people; only the gospel can do this, as the Bible teaches.These ten practices should always be kept in perspective. This is not to say that these practices are evil or counterproductive. Most of them can actually be of great benefit to supplement or open opportunities for the preaching of the gospel to non-Christians. This is why if they are done, they should be done to the glory of God and in some sort of partnership with evangelism opportunities. Creative approaches should always serve the cause of biblical evangelism, and not be replacements of it.As defined earlier, evangelism is the proclamation of the good news of Christ to unbelievers with the hope that they might turn to Christ in faith and be reconciled to Him eternally. And the content of that faith should center on God's authority, man's sinfulness, eternal punishment, and the good news of Christ's incarnation, atonement, resurrection, and our need to respond in repentance and faith in order to be saved. That is the successful communication of the gospel. And that message alone has tremendous power, as Paul states, "For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek" (Romans 1:16).Steve Cha is the teaching pastor of 
“What we discovered while researching and writing the book will be shocking to many Christians in America,” said Cooke, whose book was co-written by Jonathan Bock. “If you’re interested in why Christianity continues to disappear from the culture, and how to turn it around, this is the book for you.”Heading into 
TLA: Is media part of the solution for Christians to get our credibility back? How so?Cooke: No question. We live in a media-driven culture. One British study indicates that the average person today is bombarded with up to 5,000 media messages every single day. We check our iPhones 110 times a day. We live in the most distracted and disrupted culture in the history of the world. As a result, sharing our message on multiple media platforms is absolutely essential. In the gospels, Jesus spent His life where the people were. In those days it was the temple square, the marketplace, or social gatherings like weddings. Today, the people are online, watching TV, listening to radio, or in movie theaters. We need to be there. In fact, keep in mind that today, by population, Facebook is now the largest country in the world. Who’s sending missionaries to that country? Who’s planting churches in that country? We shouldn’t just think of “missions” in terms of geographical boundaries, but also think in terms of digital boundaries.TLA: Can you tell a favorite story about how you observed God working through a specific media project you did?Cooke: Billy Graham passed away recently, and I’ve been remembering that 22 years ago, the ministry asked me to “produce a Billy Graham TV special that someone who would never watch a Billy Graham program would watch.” As a result we produced a prime Time TV event called “Starting Over.” It was broadcast globally and because it was television, it was the first time Billy had preached to 50 different countries at the same time. The Los Angeles Times reported that more than 2.5 billion people viewed the program globally and insiders at the Graham ministry told me that it generated 1 million phone calls for salvation. I can’t think of a better way to show the impact of sharing the gospel through media.TLA: What do you look forward to most about this year's NRB convention?Cooke: Helping inspire and motivate a new generation of Christian media professionals. We can’t keep doing what we’ve always done. We need new ideas, new creativity, and new energy. The Bible says God never changes, but trust me, everything else does. People change, trends change, styles change - we need to make sure we’re proclaiming an unchanging gospel to a world that’s constantly changing. We need to learn to speak that language, and I love teaching young filmmakers and media producers and challenging them to change the world.
Cha told the chef, Chiva Neo, from Ramen Senya in Sherman Oaks, that he’d never heard of anything so “fancy” done for a whole neighborhood before.“We are always looking for ways that we can use events like this for evangelism and outreach because last year, when we were planning for our 2018 goals, one of the things we were thinking about was possibly doing barbecues or some sort of dinners,” Cha said. When this opportunity came up the pastor and its leaders asked themselves, “Who don’t we do this as an outreach?”“We looked at it as a way to get Grace City known as well as use it as an opportunity to proclaim the gospel as well, and possibly get them plugged into a church or a home church,” he said. “It was one of those unexpected things for us, but we said this was one of those once-in-a-blue-moon opportunities so that’s why we decided to take him up on it and just roll with it and see how everything was going to go. It turned out pretty well actually.”Cha said that before guests filled their plates from the sushi buffet-style table, he gave a brief introduction to what his church was about and prayed a blessing.
Guests for the dinner appeared to be of various socioeconomic backgrounds and not necessarily poor, according to Cha. It was an evening enjoyed by everyone, amazed that the free dinner was not standard fare.To end the evening Cha said he spent a short time giving his testimony about how he “came to a saving faith in Christ” and hoped people would reflect upon it and “challenge them in a small way to think about the message of everlasting life.”“We were able to use the food event as a way to point to the food as physical sustenance but use that as a way to point to the spiritual food that is in Christ,” he said. “Like the verse, ‘I am the bread of life that he who believes in me shall never hunger,’ (John 6:35) that Jesus used to show that we care about them physically — to feed them physically but most importantly we want to feed them spiritually.”Plans for another food outreach night hosted by 
“From the very beginning, we just realized that it’s poor stewardship that ‘the church’ is empty so much of the week,” said 
His vision of the coffee houses in the Los Angeles area came in a series of dreams over seven to ten days in 1987, he said.
Last summer, Nelms was one of four pastors participating in a 
“Mankind was created to bare the image of God. Dignity reflects the soul; that dignity that God gave you. You don’t give dignity, you affirm it,” said Perkins while being interviewed by Warren during his message, “
Fake News? Tell that to the former legal affairs journalist for the Chicago Tribune, 
2. Why Did God Allow This To Happen?Pastor Greg Laurie wrote this post shortly after the 2017 Las Vegas Shooting. He writes: A 64-year-old man armed with more than 12 rifles shot and killed 58 people in what is being called the largest mass shooting U.S. history. Hundreds more were wounded.The question that comes to mind at a time like this is. . . Why?Why did God allow such a horrible thing to happen? >> 
4. Steve McQueen’s Missing Bullitt Car: The Big Reveal [EXCLUSIVE VIDEO]The huge success of Steve McQueen: American Icon as a one-night movie event in the fall led to two more special screenings and now a special edition DVD available at Harvest.org that is having phenomenal success as well.The documentary helps to reveal McQueen’s journey to a faith in Jesus, not common knowledge about the actor described as Hollywood’s “King of Cool.”In the process of working on the biography and documentary about McQueen (with Marshall Terrill), Harvest pastor Greg Laurie took a special interest in the discovery of the long-lost stunt car used in the film Bullitt.Watch the video that’s included as a bonus feature on the DVD of Pastor Steve Wilburn and car restoration expert Ralph Garcia, Jr. telling the story of how the official validation of the car found in Mexico went down. >> 