I still maintain that there are much greater obscenities than 4-letter words that we make compromises with everyday. Let’s maintain some perspective about things that really matter.

An idea that poses a real threat to the forces of darkness - Atkinson’s suggestion that imperfect people quit looking for the perfect church and begin looking for ways to live in community with one another - is muted by an argument over what constitutes unwholesome talk, which many of these exchanges, in my mind, are not.

This is where the blog forum fails. We don’t know everyone’s name. We can’t see faces. We can’t hear inflection or tone. Nor can we reach over and slap someone upside the head when it’s so desperately needed.

Worst of all, we fail to give each other the benefit of the doubt and believe that our fellow followers on the other side of an issue might really be trying to honor God with his/her position.

Instead, we get our panties in a wad over a dissenting opinion and then begin drawing lines in the sand, flavoring our ripostes with dollops of sarcasm and scorn.

I’m always game for a healthy disagreement. So I’m not calling for less of that, just more honesty. For example, my guess is that Mike isn’t really grateful for Learner’s “rebuke” or sorry that he can’t respond to every post as quickly as Learner would like. A more honest answer might be, “Learner, you are really getting on my nerves. I’ve got half a mind to cuss you out right here.”

And I doubt Learner is truly asking about cowardice and manhood, even though there are question marks at the end of those sentences. It sounds to me like he/she is really saying, “Mike, you’re a coward for not answering this question.” Or, “Mike, it takes a man to defend himself in a public forum instead of hiding behind private correspondence.”

Besides being the best policy, honesty is always a prerequisite for being in communion with God. So if we’re going to really make this a free exchange of ideas, let’s take the gloves all the way off, be generous with others but honest with ourselves, and quit making this an online pissing contest.

(Calm down. Piss is in the Bible.)

I will say this: I will (eventually) answer every single e-mail that’s sent to me (on the address I’ve provided a couple times before) that is signed with a real name. If it’s an address I’m unfamiliar with, please put something on the topic line that will keep me from wiping it out with the daily spam.

That said . . . Janet Lyn, good question. Please see my earlier posts about being consumer-driven vs. missional. I think those will answer your questions. Too many people are looking for churches that “meet their needs” rather than churches that equip them to live for the sake of the world. And churches too easily fall into that marketing trap. Reallivepreacher points out that often churches use yellow pages and billboards to reach the “church shoppers.” True seekers are usually only reached through nitty-gritty relationships.

And that, dear fellow believers, is all I’m going to say about this thread. I really MUST get back to packing since I’m moving a week from Saturday. Yipes!!

What word describes the feeling you have when you ask a young mother if she would like to talk to her husband who has suffered extensive third degree burns before you sedate him, put him on a ventilator, and fly him to the burn center? You can’t bring yourself to tell her that he’ll never talk to her again….but she knows. The word that came to my mind might shock you – but it couldn’t begin to disturb you as much as the situation batters my soul and shakes my faith.

I have a friend who lives in a country less than 600 miles off the US coast. Most of us know that country vaguely as a place of chaos, failure and poverty. Some of us didn’t even know we had been there when the cruise ship docked at a Disneyesque paradise fenced off and secure from the unseen reality. Children there die of starvation everyday as we battle the scourge of obesity here. I’m afraid that in heaven there’s a word for this – I’m afraid that it’s a word so vile and evil that the living creatures around the throne would recoil in horror at its sound (if it were possible for them to stop praising God.) I’m afraid that it’s such a word that if I heard it my ears would turn to stone from the sheer perversity of it or more likely I would fall down dead from shame.

I don’t mean to discount the power of words – the danger is almost certainly that we don’t acknowledge their impact enough. The truth is though that whatever comes out of my mouth, there are darker things in my heart. God knows every one of them and He loves me anyway. When my vocabulary fails me, the Spirit intercedes with groans that I can’t express.

God won’t mistake my inadequate words or their baser substitutes for a hard heart – I can cut others some slack.