Pirates, Potter, and Protests

Captain Jack SparrowDave Terpstra has an interesting post at Out of Ur about the contradictory way Christian react to movies. When the first Harry Potter movie came out, there was considerable debate about whether Christians should see a film featuring a wizard-boy hero. One local church here in Kingston put an anti-witchcraft Scripture on its sign that week. I have never heard of anyone protesting either Pirates of the Carribean movie on faith-based grounds. Yet Terpstra notes some commonalities:

The similarity in material between the two movies that should concern parents is amazing. First, both films focus on activities contrary to the teachings Scripture, piracy and witchcraft. Second, the hero of Pirates, like the hero of Potter, is practicing what is considered evil—not just battling against those who practice it. Third, there are dark forces involved in both. Harry Potter films are amuck with sorcery and the like. Pirates of the Caribbean films are full of curses and the undead. The list could go on.

More than this, the real star of the Pirates movies is Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow, a conflicted hero if ever there was one. An important theme in both The Curse of the Black Pearl and Dead Man’s Chest is that a person can be a pirate AND a good man. Few parents want their little ones following THAT example.

The answer isn’t protests, which Terpstra shows to be mostly knee-jerk, but discernment. I haven’t seen the Potter movies (will there be one called Welcome Back, Potter?) but I love Narnia and The Lord of the Rings (the books are better) which could be criticized in the same way that the Potter films are. And I really liked the first Pirates movie (the second suffers from bloating caused by sequel-itis) but if I had kids, I’d want to talk to them about the moral ambiguities of Jack Sparrow. CAPTAIN Jack Sparrow, that is.

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July 8, 2006 · Filed Under Movies, The Church

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A Missional Church, pt. 2

Watermark RadioMy previous post defined the “missional” church as one that understands it exists in a culture alien to the Kingdom of God. That’s easy to get a handle on when the church is new, but what about when it grows to include several thousand disciples who are growing in the knowledge of God’s Word? Our traditional answer is to keep feeding them and maybe get them involved in maintaining the institution of the church.

That leads to the second defining characteristic of the missional church: Every member is a missionary where they are, every single day. This isn’t a new idea in the evangelical church, but though we talk about it a lot, it’s rare to find a church that really puts it into practice.

One church that does is Watermark Community Church in Dallas. I’ve said before that Todd Wagner is the one preacher (besides me) that you ought to be listening to. You can catch all of his stuff online, but if you really want to hear about a church that puts the emphasis on the mission of every member, listen to this message called “A Steward’s Report”. (You can download it for free and put it on your music player or a CD.)

Watermark gave everybody who attended a service in December an envelope containing some cash. It sounds like most people received $5-10 but a few got larger amounts, up to $1,000. Each person also received the instruction that they were to use this money to make the name of Jesus “more famous” in whatever way God led them. “A Steward’s Report” is the follow-up message reporting on what people did with the money. The remarkable lesson of the message is that this is essentially what Christians face each day. God has distributed his gifts among us, and we are to use them to lift up Christ so He can draw all people to Himself.

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July 6, 2006 · Filed Under The Church

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A Missional Church

Someone recently asked me what I thought about “the missional church” (thanks to Jessica Friesen). “Missional” is a buzzword I have heard kicked around a little, but I had to do a little research to find out what it means. Believe me, it wasn’t easy. Like most buzzwords, many use it and few define it. But what I found out is valuable.

As I understand it, MHCC would become missional if we understood that we are now working in a culture that is foreign to Biblical Christianity, and we let that fact begin to shape everything we do. When the Pryors went to Papua New Guinea some thirty years ago, they understood that everything about the Gospel was foreign to the people around them. They even had to create a written form of the local language in order to give these people the Scriptures. The Pryors couldn’t assume (as we do) that the people had any previous knowledge of the Bible or its teachings on things like sin, salvation, atonement, sanctification, etc. Our situation isn’t as extreme, but increasingly this is the culture in which we live.

In contrast to the missional church is the evangelistic church, where teaching unbelievers about Christ is ONE of many church programs. An evangelistic church fits well in a community where many people are Christians, and where even the unbelievers have a basic understanding of the Gospel which they have (so far) rejected. When I was a kid, churches used to have evangelistic services where a preacher would come in from out-of-town and preach fire-and-brimstone messages. During the day, the visitor and the local preacher would visit the notorious sinners in town - often the hard-living husbands of church women, guys who had heard it all before - and try to convince them to come to the services and (hopefully) repent. Sometimes it worked.

But if the people we want to reach have almost no knowledge of God or His Word - if indeed they have accepted a very different world view - we have to approach the mission much differently. That’s when the church must become missional, considering itself an outpost of the Kingdom of God in a very foreign land.

More later…

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July 5, 2006 · Filed Under The Church

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He’s a REAL superhero (that isn’t a good thing)

Evel KnievelMy previous post (and church newsletter article) was about my boyhood admiration for Superman. Well what’s a young kid who loves superheroes to do when he’s too old to believe in the Man of Steel? In the 70s there was a real-life substitute who flew through the air, put his own safety aside for the sake of his cause - heck, he even dressed in red, white and blue and wore a cape. His fame swept across America and through my Elementary School too. I’m speaking of Robert Craig Knievel, Jr.

Evel Knievel was nearly thirty years old when he made what became his most famous jump - and crash - at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. I became aware of him when ABC’s Wide World of Sports featured him regularly from 1973-76. During that time, he appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated, had a popular line of toys, and inspired a two-part Happy Days cliffhanger in which Fonzie tried to jump his bike over a line of barrels. (It wasn’t till later that Fonzie - and Happy Days - jumped the shark).

Even today I can’t help watching this guy. Last night I saw him featured on The History Channel, and today I have spent more time than I should have reading about him on the web. But these days, the fascination is more about a guy whose LIFE is a motorcycle crash. Superman was invincible. Evel Knievel has broken up to fifty bones, spent a month in a coma after Caesar’s Palace, and says he has been in the hospital for a total of three years. He had a liver transplant in 1999 after contracting hepatitis C, apparently in one of his many surgeries.

Superman fought for truth, justice, and the (politically incorrect) American way. Knievel beat Sheldon Saltman (who Knievel said wrote lies about him) with a baseball bat while another man held Saltman (Knievel served six months in jail for that). Superman was a force for good. Knievel has been in trouble for tax evasion, soliciting a prostitute, and carrying illegal weapons.

When I was a kid, I looked at Evel Knievel and saw Superman. Today when I watch those old interviews, I see a guy who is just LOST, an Elvis impersonator who has been kicked in the head a few times too many.

And Superman never sold a scooter.

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July 1, 2006 · Filed Under Culture, Life

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