Can We Simply Be Christian?

Channel surfing this evening brought me to a religious station which was showing a denomination's national convention. This convention was not my own but if I pressed mute it would look identical. Even while listening to the message (which overall was a good one challenging a stop to the generational divide in the church) I was reminded of a concern I have had for a number of years. At hand is the denominational propaganda being tossed around.

One day a member of our denomination asked me how we could keep young Pastors involved with the denomination and I said what I'll say here: Don't promote the denomination over Christ. Make the denomination what it is... a secondary (or thriddary) issue to the only label that matters.. the name of Christ. My generation cares about glorifying the name of Jesus Christ above all things and holding every other thought captive to that end. Promoting differences between Christians wastes our time and energy that we could spend telling others about Christ.

So, Can we simply be called Christian?

Can we hold off on the call for young people to keep up the name of the XYZ denomination? Can we just challenge every human being we encounter to encounter the living God? People don't care what we talk about at our annual meetings (or weekly for that matter). To a lost and dying world our theological education doesn't mean jack. They want to know who the living God is and if he cares for them. Let's stay focused on telling them.