Chris Elrod

I've Moved To WordPress

ChrisElrod.com has made the move to WordPress. For the RSS feed and subscriptions, please click here.  To see the new blog, please go here.

Less We Get Too Smug

In the last 24 hours...

• Over 40,000 children worldwide died of hunger
• 845 million people worldwide went to bed hungry
• Over 3 billion people on Earth lived on less than $2
• Almost 6,000 people worldwide died from AIDS
• Over 32,000 children in Africa became orphans
• Almost 1 billion people worldwide couldn't read a book or write their name

It's fairly easy to point the finger at Hollywood...it's a little more difficult to point the finger at us...followers of Christ. Consider the statistics above...now...how many of us Christian leaders, pastors, bloggers and laypeople....

• Spent $5 this week on a cup of coffee?
• Helped our church raise millions to build another "much needed" building?
• Blew over $100 this week on Christmas gifts?
• Filled up the tank of our gas guzzling SUV?
• Spent a butt-load of cash on multi-media products for worship?
• Are taking the youth group skiing?
• Bought a video game console for our children?
• Broke the bank to market our church?
• Left uneaten food on our plate at a buffet?
• Spent hundreds to thousands of dollars on a staff retreat?
• Downloaded a cool ringtone to our cell phone?
• Paid a bunch of money to go to conference?
• Didn't spend a dime of missions or relief ministry?
• Patted ourselves on the back for being doctrinally sound, while totally ignoring Matthew 25:34-40?

PLEASE NOTE:  ChrisElrod.com has made the move to WordPress. For the RSS feed and subscriptions, please click here.  To see the new blog, please go here.

Oh Look, More Hollywood Crap!!!

In the last 24 hours...

• Over 40,000 children worldwide died of hunger
• 845 million people worldwide went to bed hungry
• Over 3 billion people on Earth lived on less than $2
• Almost 6,000 people worldwide died from AIDS
• Over 32,000 children in Africa became orphans
• Almost 1 billion people worldwide couldn't read a book or write their name

What are the fine and caring Hollywood actors and actresses doing?  They are making cute little videos in support of the writer's strike that is affecting Hollywood. A first year writer on a sitcom makes between $60,000 and $100,000 a year...almost below the poverty line. I can certainly see why this worthy cause deserves such charitable attention from Hollywood. Without writers...there are no scripts. Without scripts there are no television shows or movies. Without television shows and movies...actors and actresses may have to live on less than $2 a day. Hmmmmm....

 

PLEASE NOTE:  ChrisElrod.com has made the move to WordPress. For the RSS feed and subscriptions, please click here.  To see the new blog, please go here.

WordPress Thoughts

Earlier this week I announced that I would be moving ChrisElrod.com over to WordPress.  Since then many folks have asked me about WordPress vs. TypePad...I will try to answer a little about that in this post.

First off...I'm not unhappy with TypePad...I just found it limited in design and simplicity for the price.  In order to do major changes to TypePad basic designs you have to be a master at HTML...I am not.  Also I never had much success using Ecto or email posting.  Posting from my Blackberry never worked...even after receiving help from tech support.  I also found that any of the real cool blog features were an extra cost on TypePad.

WordPress is free and their templates are much more user-friendly (not to mention better looking).  I found posting to WordPress...using multiple formats...has been incredibly easy.  Even a bonehead like me can make things look pretty good and professional.

There are few drawbacks to Wordpress...none of which bother me much.  The first is that nothing can be put on the blog that remotely looks like commerce.  This means no posting those cute little Amazon wishlists or stores.  Also no plugins...which did bother me a little.  I do not allow comments on my blog...but I was intending to put up one of those banner things on my posts with thumbs up and thumbs down.  No plug-ins means no blog post ratings.

I hope this answers some questions I've been getting via email this week.  By the way...I will stop posting to this account over the weekend.  My domain now feeds into my WordPress account...but my RSS feed has changed.  Click here to subscribe.

PLEASE NOTE:  ChrisElrod.com has made the move to WordPress. For the RSS feed and subscriptions, please click here.  To see the new blog, please go here.

Accountability: The Bible

Over the last several months God has really been laying into me about accountability.  Not only accountability to make sure we are following God’s Word as a church….but also personal accountability in my own life.

For years I had friends…three in particular from my Prison Fellowship days…that I could share anything with and thus I felt totally accountable to them.  I guess that in itself is the main difficulty in true accountability…finding people I can be totally honest with that can also be truly honest with me.

With me no longer working with Prison Fellowship on a regular basis, there became a need for new accountability.  I still talk with those three dear “prison” friends very often, but our lives don’t intersect enough for them to know me on a day-by-day basis.  They also have never really had any ties with Compass Point…so it would be impossible for them to also provide accountability for the church.

The accountability process I now have in my life…and the life of Compass Point…has been…and will continue to be…a growing process. Accountability is based…not only on Scripture and God’s leading…but also on unwavering trust in another human being.  With that in mind, over the next several set of posts I will lay out a brief sketch of my accountability structure.  I’ll start with…

THE BIBLE – It begins and ends here.  If it’s not Scriptural…not just one verse taken out of context but according to the whole counsel of God’s Word…I do my best to flee from it.  This is also the case with Compass Point.

In order to do this I must be...my accountability partners must be...the Elders of Compass Point Church must...scholars of God's Word.  That means that I am daily reading from Scripture, but also several times a week pouring into it for hours at a times.  I will admit...there are times that as a pastor of a growing church..."life stuff" and "ministry stuff" gets in the way.  I really have to block out time when the phone is turned off, the world is shut out and I just spend uninterrupted time in God's Word.

As I've said before my greatest regret is not finishing seminary (something I will rectify one year from now...more on that in a later post).  However, I do not let that stop me from being a scholar of the Word of God.  I read MacArthur commentaries like most pastors read business or leadership books.  I almost always have one with me and I really use them as a text book.  While I study hard for what I'm going to be preaching on...at least once a week I spend several hours studying something I have no current plans to present to my flock.  This is done for my own growth and knowledge...something just for me...that I look forward to.

Finally, I have QuickVerse loaded up in my Mac (my main way of studying...but I wish they'd get MacArthur's stuff on Mac) and I use Sprugeon's "Morning And Evening" as a daily devotional...well...morning and evening.

Other accountability measures to follow...

PLEASE NOTE:  ChrisElrod.com has made the move to WordPress. For the RSS feed and subscriptions, please click here.  To see the new blog, please go here.

No Friend Of Emergent

This post is…by far…the most difficult I have ever written.  By publishing it I know that I will receive much flack…quite a few flaming emails…and lose some dear friends…including some within my own congregation.  However, I learned a long time ago that:

• Silence is support.
  
• If you don’t stand for something…you’ll fall for anything.
  
• There are hills in which to die on.
  

Before I begin, please know that this piece has taken almost six weeks to write.  Before that I spent many months in prayer…and God’s Word trying to discern things.  I also have been blessed by receiving counsel from Godly pastors, missiologists and theologians from around the United States.  They know who they are…and I thank them for taking my calls and responding to my emails.

For the last several years the church I pastor (Compass Point) and I have been mistakenly lumped in with the Emergent movement.  It may be because Compass Point puts so much emphasis in missional, servant outreach…or it could be because I’m an occasional contributor to Next Wave.  I have never been comfortable with us having the Emergent tag, though I did little to discourage it.  I had always maintained a “live and let live” mentality when it came to my concerns about Emergent’s theological stance.  I can no longer do that.

Recently two fairly emerging church plants have ceased functioning in an official capacity.  These were made up of mostly young to mid 20-somethings that had theological leanings toward a more liberal and Emergent doctrine.  As a result of these two communities of faith dissolving, some of the participants began coming to Compass Point.  With them came a universalistic doctrine that they attempted to convey in every situation that was presented to them.  For the first time the leaders of Compass Point and I had to deal directly with the illness that is the doctrinal beliefs of those that align with the Emergent movement.

I’m all for a healthy theological debate…however I will not even begin to entertain a discussion into the integrity and validity of God’s Word.  The truth is that not everyone will see the gates of Heaven…and Hell is real.  Our repentance of sin and acceptance of Christ our Savior…by the grace of God…is the only way out of eternal damnation.  Any teachings to the contrary is…heresy.

For a while now the leadership of Compass Point and I have been able to sit on the sidelines of the Emergent debate.  While there was much that we disagreed with theologically…there were also many Emergent things that we did when it came to outreach and missions.  I think there was certain “frog in the kettle” scenario for us…while we were bothered by statements and books by some of Emergent’s leadership…it was not to a crescendo that really rocked our world.

That all changed last year when many of the main “voices” of Emergent began to get a little louder with their universalism stance.  It began to show up in books they were writing, magazines they contributing to, in interviews they were conducting, in videos they were producing and in keynote speeches they were giving.  They would be very subtle in the way they would drop it in…while talking about social justice, inequality and missional outreach.  It was almost “smoke and mirror”-like…an old magician’s trick to divert your attention away from what was really happening.  It would be something as simple and unassuming as, “God isn’t mad…God is love…He doesn’t want you to feel guilty about the sin in your life…and oh, by the way…everyone is saved no matter what they believe…they just don’t know it”.  Universalism.  Heresy.

It is not my place to name names or expose those “voices” of Emergent.  They do not fall under my accountability…nor do I have access to them.  However, their heretical views and false teachings have now been brought into the field of the Compass Point flock…and it IS my job to protect the sheep.  The Elders of Compass Point and I can no longer sit silently by.  We have decided to take stand.  The following things have been implemented at Compass Point:

1. For the first time in our history we now have a Constitution & Bylaws with a comprehensive Statement Of Faith.


2. Our small groups are being revamped in order to protect the doctrinally integrity of God’s Word.  Resources by authors, pastors or speakers aligning with Emergent will no longer be used.


3. We have a much better mentoring strategy and program in place for our up-and-coming leaders.


4. There is greater accountability and training in place for those that preach or teach the Word of God at Compass Point.


5. Only literal translations of the Bible will be used in the preaching and teaching of God’s Word at Compass Point.  Our sword of choice…English Standard Version (ESV).


6. Our Sunday messages will occasionally be topical-based series…but will mainly be expository in nature.  We have already been doing this for some time…but we have now made a more “official” stance of it.


7. We are in the process of having our church listing removed from websites or publications that have ties to Emergent.  We are also in the process of disassociating ourselves from networks or alliances that are affiliated with Emergent


8. This post was added to my blog to be a public statement that Compass Point Church and Chris Elrod is not affiliated in any way, shape or form with Emergent.

There will be those that will criticize the steps we have taken.  So be it.  There will be those that will choose not to fellowship with us.  We can accept that.  There will also be those that will say that this blog post was not needed because Emergent has no official theological stance.  That’s a crock!  Those that speak for you…define you…and what you believe.  Others will say that we’re being legalistic.  It’s not legalistic to believe that “theology” contradictory to the Word of God is wrong.  Finally, there will be those that say that we’re judging.  No…it’s called discernment…and it’s Biblical.  It’s what we’re suppose to do as the shepherds of the flock that God has entrusted us with.

PLEASE NOTE:  ChrisElrod.com has made the move to WordPress. For the RSS feed and subscriptions, please click here.  To see the new blog, please go here.