Brian Bailey tips us off to a great article about the Ted Haggard situation and more importantly the church's role in it.
In general I have been very impressed with the voices of the church on this one. My gut reaction when I heard about this was "Lord, please don't allow Christians to make this worse by how we respond."
So often times the church kicks our own when they are down as if sin doesn't exist in grace and especially in their respective churches and even homes. I'm very pleased with the response from most everyone with a voice in the Christian community. I've been glad to hear reasoned voices like Ed Young in this article and Mark Driscoll in this article. I'm encouraged to see Mr. Haggard's church rise to meet this challenge head on and to see the accountability and support that is being provided by leaders in the evangelical community including Dr. James Dobson. I'm personally very pleased that we're seeing this for what it is but we're actually showing the love and compassion of the church in the process.
I've been encouraged to see CNN coming off as the ignorant ones instead of the church. Since the church for the most part isn't giving them the infighting they expected, producers have had to try to create more of a story than actually exists. I believe that while the world sees the sin of Mr. Haggard, they also see the love and restoration provided by the church. Most people we're trying to reach have things in their past they are not proud of and I'm glad we're showing them that they can come into the church for restoration and healing.
Check out the articles by Ed Young and Mark Driscoll (here and here). If you're like me you'll be encouraged.
1 comment:
Yeah no doubt the whole event could have been a blackeye on the Church, but with leaders like Ed Young and others, the Church is standing up with grace and humility proclaiming Christ in actions that are rarely seen in these cases.
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