My Pastor in Florida once spoke about…celebrating the ” AND ” insted of the ” OR “. The idea has stuck with me over the years.
There are some clichés that may help visualize this for you. ” my way or the highway ” get in or get out. “, or those… if – then…ultimatum statements…if you can’t get this done, then I will find someone who can.
It is all about exercising authority, pushing an agenda, and in some cases getting your own way.
This kind of thinking has at times divided and broken the body of Christ or at the very least hindered the mission of the Church.
We want to define and pigeon hole everything and when it does not fit with our definition we reject it and sometimes lable it in ways that are untrue and even unkind.
I remember when the Church in Florida was attempting to make changes in their outreach methods, and worship style in order to be relevant to their community. People were upset, even livid at times. Some even left the Church over it. All because we were taking the very same core beliefs that have been unchanged since the beginning and began to find new ways to take them outside the walls of the Church to a world without Christ. Making our worship service something joyful, open and welcoming instead of exclusionary, dry and proprietary. Infact they offered 2 services, a traditional service and a contemporary service and still many could not get past the ” OR “. It was either the old way OR I will worship somewhere else.
The fact is after several years, a Church that was loosing members every year, and quickly moving toward closing the doors, has stabalized, and gotten good at both services.
Let me attempt to clarify what I am trying to say here. We become so tied to our religeous traditions and ceremony that we close our minds to the changing needs of the world around us, and become irrelevant. Not because the gospel is irrelevant, but because we are not speaking the right language.
Would you go to China and do Church just like you do here, preaching the good news in english? Of coarse not. You are going to adapt to the language and take you core values and relate them in a way relevant to the culture you are in so that the people understand the message you are giving.

I never really had much use for rap music. To me it seemed irrelevant and reflected a ” gangster mentality “, but then I am a 59 year old white guy. Not too long ago I became friends with a young black man at Church. I attend The Blended Church, a multiciltural Nondenominational Church in Indianapolis. We have over thirty nationalities represented in our Church. We are not color blind, we celebeate our differences, love and encoueage each other and worship God together. JD is a gospel rapper, that loves Jesus Christ and has a heart for reaching those that society has shunned. Prostitutes, drug addicts and dealers, gang members etc. He recently brought some of his fellow rappers to the prison where I go twice a week to preach and teach the Word. We had a great turn out and lives were touched and hearts changed with the gospel through what some might label an unconventional means. When JD led the same worship style at the womens prison in Madison In. Over 300 souls made the decision to either receive Christ or rededicate their lives to Him. It just amazes me that in the face of the evidence to the contrary, some will deny the power and presence of God because the ” AND ” is not in their religious tradition or vocabulary.