Teaching and Transformation--A Difference?

Rick Warren said,

"...that there's a difference between teaching and transformation. I'm in the life change business. I'm in the transformation business. You know what motivates me? – not size; in fact, I don't even like big
churches. I mean, my favorite size was 300 people. What motivates me is that I am addicted to changing lives. I love seeing lives changed and that is the untold story. Everybody tries to attribute the growth of churches to everything else but what makes them grow – and it's changed lives...."

David Brooks says,

"I do think there is a shopping-for-faith aspect – maybe there always has been in American culture. Henry Steele Commager had a line: "In the 19th century, religion prospered while theology slowly went bankrupt." And he meant that Americans are not doctrinal in their faith. We had presidential candidates like George Bush who switched denominations in the middle of his life, but he couldn't quite tell why. You had Howard Dean who switched denominations over a bike path. And then you had Wesley Clark who switched four or five times. And that's not atypical for Americans. And so we're just not a doctrinal people, but I think,nonetheless – not only in mega-churches but maybe throughout American culture – you have, I think, a lightening of religion, certainly a walking-away from the old Jonathan Edwards trembling before an angry God. It's certainly more happy, more upbeat, more optimistic. And to me, one of the most interesting things about this book is the way it's both part of the culture but in some ways very counter-cultural. It's very against the culture of narcissism, the culture of "me," but on the other hand, it's not Jonathan Edwards either. And so it's the negotiating – being part of the world and being opposed to it, marketing and at the same time sort of counter-marketing – that's the great tension and the temptation, it seems to me, looking from the outside. or a lot of the evangelical community it's the temptation to just be so easy, so undemanding and sometimes so vacuous. That is also part of the consequences."

Bro Joe's reflection--I am reminded of the John 15:19  "If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you..."