Benjamin L Corey – 10 Ways To Determine If Your Christianity Has Been “Americanised”

American religion is rapidly spreading in the world through the power of the ‘almighty dollar’ and the insidious influence of the media (that is what we used to call  with a very adequate term, ‘imperialism’. Thus, we find many ‘Americanised’ churches all over the world, especially in evangelicalism. And that is also true of Romania, unfortunately.

Benjamin Corey suggests ten tests for finding out if your church has been ‘Americanised too’. Here they are, in brief:

1. If you look at the early Christians and are in disbelief over what you find. 

2. Your chief concern with Muslims is how to defeat them instead of how to show them the love of Christ.

3. If you can recite more of the US Constitution and Bill of Rights than you can the Sermon on the Mount.

40 Years in the Desert – 5. The Price of Freedom 1

Any given thing is as valuable as the price we are prepared to pay for it. If we really want to enjoy freedom, we have to be ready to pay the price that it demands. Here are some of the possible ‘prices’ we may need to pay.

5.1 Slower Pace of Growth

From a biblical perspective, faithfulness, not pragmatic effectiveness, is the test of our faith. This may sound strange in our pragmatic times, when we tend to consider that if something ‘works’ it must be right. The Bible tells us that Abraham believed God and he was counted as righteous on the basis of that faith (Gen. 15:6): nothing pragmatic about this story; it was all about faithfulness.