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My Jesus, by Todd Agnew

Which Jesus do you follow?
Which Jesus do you serve?
If Ephesians says to imitate Christ
Then why do you look so much like the world?

Cause my Jesus bled and died
He spent His time with thieves and liars
He loved the poor and accosted the arrogant
So which one do you want to be?

Blessed are the poor in spirit
Or do we pray to be blessed with the wealth of this land
Blessed are they that hunger and thirst for righteousness
Or do we ache for another taste of this world of shifting sand

Cause my Jesus bled and died for my sins
He spent His time with thieves and sluts and liars
He loved the poor and accosted the rich
So which one do you want to be?

Who is this that you follow
This picture of the American dream
If Jesus was here would you walk right by on the other side or fall down and worship at His holy feet

Pretty blue eyes and curly brown hair and a clear complexion
Is how you see Him as He dies for Your sins
But the Word says He was battered and scarred
Or did you miss that part
Sometimes I doubt we’d recognize Him

Cause my Jesus bled and died
He spent His time with thieves and the least of these
He loved the poor and accosted the comfortable
So which one do you want to be?

Cause my Jesus would never be accepted in my church
The blood and dirt on His feet might stain the carpet
But He reaches for the hurting and despises the proud
I think He’d prefer Beale St. to the stained glass crowd
And I know that He can hear me if I cry out loud!

I want to be like my Jesus!
I want to be like my Jesus!

Not a posterchild for American prosperity, but like my Jesus
You see I’m tired of living for success and popularity
I want to be like my Jesus but I’m not sure what that means to be like You Jesus
Cause You said to live like You, love like You but then You died for me
Can I be like You Jesus?
I want to be like my Jesus

Hello all:

I have a couple of different things to post about, but I’ll start with this one first.

A few days ago I was talking with my 80 year old Grandmother, who lives in Missouri, over the phone. I was curious, so I asked her how she became a Chrisitan. She told me that she grew up in the church, and that her mother had grown up in the church as well.

I made a comment during the conversation that her mother must have remembered the division between the Churches of Christ and Christian Churches quite well. My grandma wasn’t sure exactly when the division happened, but she did have something to say about it:

“You know, your granddad and I had friends in the Christian Church. Their service in town was before ours, so we would go and worship with our friends at the Christian Church, and could still make it to ours. They were pretty much just like us except they had an organ. I just couldn’t disfellowship those people just because they used an instrument.”

Thats a good example that we should follow today.

-Clarke

Hello all:

My wife relayed a funny/sad story to me tonight.

Her best friend’s boyfriend goes to a non-denominational community church of some sort, and he has decided to be baptized.

He’s been waiting for three months.

The church he belongs to makes you sign up on a waiting list to be baptized. They do not want to fill the baptistry each Sunday, so they only baptize people twice per month, and when they do, they only baptize a couple of people each time.

So, he’s waiting. Sara told him that he could come to our church and be baptized right away, but he wants to be baptized in front of his congregation.

Since they believe that baptism isn’t necessary, its not really that important and so they don’t believe it matters when you are baptized. The one reedeming (I think…) thing to this story is that it sounds like they baptize more people per year than we do, but they are a large church which is constantly growing.

Sara was told by her friend’s dad that, “it doesn’t matter when you are baptized since you are saved when you start believing.” She didn’t really know what to say to him and didn’t want to get into an agrument so she stayed quiet.

I think we need to rethink our logical arguments on baptism and find one that works today. It drives me nuts to be listening to the local Christian music station and hear someone talk about “inviting Jesus into your heart to be saved.” Its such an obvious error, we’ve got to find a better way to communicate the importance and necessity of baptism.

-Clarke

Hello all:

One of my kids in the youth group I lead is dating a guy that attends a large independent Christian Church. He comes fairly often with her, and I try to expound on the fact that the two churches aren’t that different and come from the same heritage.

On Sunday morning, she went to church with him at his congregation. She then came for Sunday night service at ours. While she was at his church, she invited the youth group there to come to the monthly devo and movie night that we hold once a month. I was pleased to hear that.

I was pleased, until she told me the youth ministers response. He said to her, “I don’t feel comfortable having my kids go visit a church that doesn’t use musical instruments.” He also told her that he was afraid his kids “might think a capella worship is better,” than worship with an instrument.

We certainly aren’t the only ones with a hand in our division…..

-Clarke