Christianity Remix

This last Sunday night we were honored to have Dr. Albert Mohler speak at the Red Barn for the campus church event called by the name of his book Atheism Remix.  Dr. Mohler gave a clear and compelling presentation, arguing that the two primary options for us today are either the new atheism or biblical theism.  As one student who identified himself as an atheist pointed out, Dr. Mohler’s tone and content was both fair and friendly.

This is the type of Christian leadership that I have experienced at Southern Seminary, for which I am profoundly grateful.

In reflecting on the event I was led to consider another remix – a Christian remix.

Having begun my ministry training at a fundamentalist Bible College in Missouri, a remix was exactly what I longed for.  I found it at Southern.

The following list summarizes those categories for which I am most thankful and the most deeply impacted by.  Each set is contrasted with the fundamentalist ethos I was exposed to in my early days of ministry training prior to coming to Southern.

The New Christianity is:

#1:  Intellectually Satisfying – instead of – Anti-Intellectual

#2:  Culturally Informed – instead of – Culturally Isolated

#3:  Compassionately Conservative – instead of – Unnecessarily Antagonistic

#4:  Optimistically Evangelical – instead of – Narrowly Sectarian

#5:  Lovingly Evangelistic – instead of – Dispassionately Proselytizing

I plan on coming back to this list and providing more description in the near future.  I’m off to Mars Hill Church for a crash course with their creative team.  It’s sunny in Seattle today.  This is going to be fun.