Tarheel Baptist said:
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This is actually a fascinating conversation and I'm grateful to have stumbled across it. I agree with mostly all of it. Our church planting team has had several focus groups centering around this subject and here are some things we are discovering:
There has been a knee-jerk reaction to hell-fire & damnation preaching that has caused the "contemporary" church to allow the pendulum to swing to far in the other direction. There is little to no talk about anything that would appear heavy or cause the listener to feel conviction. Not only that, the church, both contemporary & orthodoxy, have convoluted the theology of discipline and judgment and do one of two things: either talk about it wrongly or don't talk about it all. And as a result, both sides are getting it wrong.
Attractional and missional are buzz terms that will be redefined and renamed a decade from now... But the narrative will likely be the same. There has to be a balance between reaching and teaching (attraction & mission). We can't allow our desire to reach the lost distract us from speaking truth in love. The church needs to talk about discipline and judgment. We need to teach that discipline isn't punitive rather it is a redemptive action from a loving Father to draw us closer to Him. After all... This is the fundamental message of the Gospel.
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