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    What If Christians Grew Up?: The Missing Story of Christianity
    What If Christians Grew Up?: The Missing Story of Christianity
    What If Christians Grew Up?: The Missing Story of Christianity
    Ebook130 pages2 hours

    What If Christians Grew Up?: The Missing Story of Christianity

    By Yaholo

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    About this ebook

    Whats wrong with Christianity? Why does it so often seem like the church is working against good in the world instead of helping it? What if we got the facts right but the story wrong?

    What If Christians Grew Up? takes the beliefs most common in mainstream Christianity and puts them under the lens of building a dynamic relationship with God, a relationship in which we began as infants, but through which we grow to be the heirs of God.

    This book was written to equip Christians who are passionate about social justice and effective engagement in the world around us to express their beliefs in a world where the Bible is so often used to justify ignorance and persecution.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWestBow Press
    Release dateMar 6, 2014
    ISBN9781490827247
    What If Christians Grew Up?: The Missing Story of Christianity
    Author

    Yaholo

    Yaholo is a practical mystic, a passionate writer, a paltry poet, and an old-school Jesus freak. He is a contributing author to Tony Campolo’s RedLetterChristians.org and author of the Practical Christian Mysticism blog. He lives in Indianapolis, Indiana, with his wife, Sarah, and two sons. Yaholo seeks practical ways for Christians to engage the world around them. His day job is business and marketing strategy for small businesses and non-profits. You can read more about Yaholo and find links to his blog and author page at http://yaholo.net

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      Book preview

      What If Christians Grew Up? - Yaholo

      Copyright © 2014 Yaholo.

      http://yaholo.net

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

      Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

      WestBow Press books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

      WestBow Press

      A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan

      1663 Liberty Drive

      Bloomington, IN 47403

      www.westbowpress.com

      1 (866) 928-1240

      Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

      Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

      Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

      ISBN: 978-1-4908-2725-4 (sc)

      ISBN: 978-1-4908-2740-7 (hc)

      ISBN: 978-1-4908-2724-7 (e)

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2014903566

      WestBow Press rev. date: 03/05/2014

      Contents

      We Have Lost the Plot

      What is the real story of Christianity?

      The Children of God

      What do we mean when we say, God Loves Us?

      The Heirs of God

      What is the real good news of the Gospel?

      A New Way to be Human

      What does it really mean to be a grown up Christian?

      The Enemy Within

      How do we understand sin in the context of growing up?

      Claiming Our Inheritance

      What does growing up look like?

      The Kingdom of God

      How would Christians change the world if we grew up?

      The Grand Finale

      Why are we still acting like infants? What are we waiting for?

      Equipping the Saints

      How would Church be different if we acted like grown ups?

      Breaking Down Barriers

      What is holding us back?

      Dedicated to Sarah, who saw me as I am, and then told me to write.

      We are all the children of one God. The sun, the darkness, the winds are all listening to what we have to say. - Geronimo

      We Have Lost the Plot

      What is the real story of Christianity?

      I grew up in the Church. From a young age I loved the story of the Gospel. I was so grateful to be growing up in a family and community, which followed Jesus Christ. As I got close to becoming an adult, dreams of being a pastor, professor, or preacher swam in my head (there are a lot of p words in church). However, the more I grew up, the more I realized that what I had been reading in the Bible all these years, was not what was being practiced around me.

      In high school, my youth pastor was what many would consider radical, but I did not know that at the time. Instead of packing us in a room to hear a cheesy sermon about the Gospel themed like a reality TV show (like Survivor Faith), he took us out to volunteer and get to know the ministries in our city. We took blankets to the poor, ate lunch with the homeless, and renovated homes. I can’t say I always looked forward to our field trips. In fact, I was partly afraid of them.

      However, those trips opened my eyes to the difference between the safe middle-class world I was privileged to from the rest of reality. I was shocked to realize that the loving home I grew up in was not the norm. I would often ask God why I was so fortunate as to have been born into the life I had, while others were not.

      In high school we had cliques and were separated from each other, but as soon as we walked into his house, we were equal. He was incredibly skilled at getting us to talk to and learn about each other. We got to the point where even if we had nothing in common we still deeply cared about each other. To this day, I am so thankful for the courage that youth pastor had to break in a bunch of spoiled kids.

      I am also grateful for his courage, because he was fired for it. Many of the things he did for us were looked down on by our church. Sure, we were learning to understand poverty, to build relationships, and learn respect for each other but they said he was failing in his duties to teach us more important things like the finer points of dispensationalism. He was ridiculed, dismantled by gossip, demoralized, and then ejected.

      That was a pivotal moment for me. Up until that point, what I read in the Bible and what I was learning about Christianity seemed consistent. After high school, Church just didn’t make sense anymore. I had fallen in love with the Church I read about in the Bible. It was Church that sought to tends the needs of each other and those around them. It was a Church that encouraged boldness and courage to stand against the cruelty of the world. Instead, I found myself in a fortress of religion, people scared of the world beyond their walls and mostly interested in preserving their own way of life.

      My first instinct was to assume this was just my church. So I started looking for other churches, denominations, and communities who are perhaps living the Gospel I grew up learning about. After a decade-and-a-half of searching, I realized that the wallpaper and decorations may change, but the thinking was the same just about everywhere. It seemed that each church was little more than a self-preserving mini-culture of people.

      I couldn’t bring myself to enter seminary. I knew I could never regurgitate what they were teaching. So instead I just entered the world of entrepreneurship to test my young idealism and search for the Gospel of Christ in real life. In that time I have had the honor of seeing Christ really working in this world, with or without churches. The amazing and loving people who are making this world a better place have humbled and astounded me.

      In business, I learned that most people aren’t corrupt and evil. Instead, I discovered that people are full of hidden gifts and talents, which they have simply suppressed because they were discouraged by the world around them. I learned that people can learn and adapt to almost any situation as long as they feel safe and are treated with respect. I discovered that people are limitless sources of creativity and productivity, who can solve any problem if they can work together.

      Today, I still see that Christ is powerfully working through the lives of many. But I am still discouraged with how many of these people are having to follow Christ in-spite of or even against the churches they come from. How did our churches get so far gone as not only stop living the Gospel, but so often work against it?

      Christians Out of Context

      Please be aware that when I say I grew up in the Church I don’t mean one church. I grew up in the Christian community all around my area. I participated in all the big events like Acquire the Fire and The Great Banquet. As life moved me around, I got to know over a dozen different church communities. From Southern Baptist to Catholic, you name it, I have probably been a part of at one time or another..

      I have come to understand the difference between Church, the global Body of Christ, and a church, which is the Body of Christ applied to a local community. That being said, as I hit adulthood, I had become to grow discourage with the Church, as a whole. I felt I had to be missing something.

      With the encouragement of many, and some temperance of my own youthful chip on my shoulder, I became determined to play well with others in my local churches. I started attending services again, primarily Bible studies and small groups. To my surprise, I found that most Christians were just as confused and frustrated as I was.

      It was very difficult, but I tried to always listen before I talked. My goal was to find out what made the Gospel of Christ such a powerful source of inspiration for me, but seemed to be a discouragement and prison for others. After a while, I realized that even though we had the same facts which we agreed on, we were all looking at them under a different light.

      To me, Christ was someone I had a personal relationship with. To another, he was nothing more than a legal settlement with God. To me, the Gospel tells us how much potential we have for doing great things in the world. To another, the Gospel is a source of shame and guilt, convincing them they are worthless. What is going on?!?

      I could read a verse in Scripture and say look, God loves us but another person will say, look, God is mad at us. We are looking at the same Bible, but it is saying completely different things to each of us. That is when I realized that people all come to the church with their own stories of what Christianity is. Those stories determine how they interpret everything else.

      In journalism it is referred to as a narrative. Facts are not simply presented, they are told in the context of a greater ongoing story. That way, each news story seems to tell a new chapter in the same story. Some people would call it the context we interpret facts through. Some would call it the message. Some call it our worldview. For the sake of this book, I am calling it our story.

      We love stories. We think in stories, we entertain ourselves with stories, and

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