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Why We Must Burst the Christian Bubble

 

2. We become a disciple.

Christ changes our lives by His power through the cross. We have newfound joy, a hunger to grow, and begin to see our lives changing. At the same time we have a deep burden for those who do not know Jesus. We pray for them, talk to them, and a good part of our thoughts each week have to do with those whom we know and those we don’t who need Jesus.

3. We become a church goer.

Before long we learn the drill, that what seems to be valued more than just about anything is church attendance. We begin to see Christianity less as a movement of people daily in the culture and more as a building to attend consistently. We still care about those who do not know Christ but are more like to invite them to an event than to pray for them as we had before or speak to them directly about Jesus.

4. We become part of the Christian subculture/bubble.

“We get more excited about going overseas to the mission field…than about the mission field we live in every day.” (Kimball, 44) We get our little fish symbols for our car, buy those cheesy t shirts, and set our radios to Christian stations. We go to “Christian” day at the theme park, take our kids out of public school (okay, some times that is the best course of action, but we should ask ourselves if such decisions are driven by the gospel or by our allegiance to the bubble). We start speaking Christianese, which makes us increasingly incapable of talking to people not like us.

The Christian subculture manifests itself in many ways. There is an academic version, an artistic form, and abundant ministerial examples (student ministry has a version as does children’s ministry, etc). Just find a pastor who spends most of his time in his study and virtually no time among the unchurched and you have found not a “senior” pastor, but a bubble pastor. This leads to:

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alvinreid@churchleaders.com'
Alvin L. Reid (born 1959) serves as Professor of Evangelism and Student Ministry at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina, where he has been since 1995. He is also the founding Bailey Smith Chair of Evangelism. Alvin and his wife Michelle have two children: Joshua, a senior at The College at Southeastern, and Hannah, a senior at Wake Forest Rolesville High School. Recently he became more focused at ministry in his local church by being named Young Professionals Director at Richland Creek Community Church. Alvin holds the M.Div and the Ph.D with a major in evangelism from Southwestern Seminary, and the B.A. from Samford University. He has spoken at a variety of conferences in almost every state and continent, and in over 2000 churches, colleges, conferences and events across the United States.