Lord Save Us from Your Followers

We watched a movie in Bible class called Lord Save Us from Your Followers.  It was all about evangelism in America and how we do it wrong as Christian's.  It shows this guy walking around in a white suite thing with some sort of religious/ anti religious bumper stickers all over it.  It caught people's attention really fast. The guy would walk through a town and ask random people questions about what they believed about Jesus and which bumper sticker was their favorite.  It was surprising about how many people didn't know that much about Jesus. A lot of them knew He saved us, but that was about it.  Growing up in the Bible belt, I really don't notice how many people there are that do not know anything about God.  I am not saying that everyone is a Christian in the Bible belt, but most people do know some things about Jesus.  Also in the movie a group of teenage evangelists went to a place very close to homosexuals hearts and protested against them.  My personal opinion gathered from reactions of people to protesting is that is does not really work.  I think one of the main things it causes is more anger and resentment toward the church.  People who are protested against cannot feel loved.  They probably feel somewhat humiliated and for sure mad.   I think the best way to get your point across to them is to start a relationship with them and minister to them through what you do, say, and how you treat them.  The movie also showed the guy in the bumper sticker suite go to a homosexual parade and gathering and set up a confessional building for those who wanted to confess their sins.  That was not the only reason that they put a confessional there.  Through the confessional, the man was able to talk to these homosexuals and tell them that he was truly sorry for what the Church has done to them, and what even he himself had done to them.  I thought this was a very good idea.  Way more people were probably touched by his loving manner of evangelising compared to the method of protesting where it just made everyone want to fight.  I think people should watch this movie to see some effective and maybe some not so effective ways to evangelise.  Think about it this way... if someone was very rude to you and hurt your feelings, would you want to be like them? Would you think oh man, I wish I had what they have? NO! You would probably be pushed away from them with your unappealing attitude.  But if someone came up to you humbly and started having a genuine conversation with you, you are much more likely to want to be like them than the other person.  This movie was a very good movie and it really opened my eyes to the feelings of others.

Jesus Camp

At first when I began to watch the movie, I thought these people were crazy! Then I began to realize that much of what they are saying is the same thing I believe, they are just more radical. I do not agree with everything that they think, but in some ways I want to be like them. All the kids are so on fire for God and they seem like they would do anything for Him. Like the little girl who gave the tract to the lady in the bowling alley, or the boy who got up in front of all those kids to preach, or even the lady to devote her whole life to ministering to kids. I would have a hard time doing any of those things. I wish I would get out of my comfort zone like those kids did. But that is too uncomfortable and scary. Which is ridiculous when you think about what all God has done for us and not sharing it. All it is is selfishness. I was really convicted of this while watching this video. I thought if a little 8 year old girl (maybe) could go hand a tract to some stranger, I can talk to a friend about God. There were many good things about this video and the people at Jesus Camp. They were taking a stand for what they believed in. They strongly disagree with abortion, as do we. But they are trying to do something about it. They went to the white house to petition and they committed to pray for the decisions of government. Yeah, somethings they did were kind of crazy and maybe not completely right, but they are doing a lot of things right that I do not.
There are quite a few things that they did that I do not agree on. Like when the little girl was talking about "dead churches" and how if the people at the churches don't stand up and raise their hands during worship time, that God isn't there. I think that what she said is definitely not true. God is omnipresent. He is everywhere. You do not have to stand up and raise your hands to be Christians. Also another thing that I am not sure about is when the kids started talking in tongues. In the Bible in 2 Corinthians, it talks about when someone is speaking in tongues, there needs to be a translator present. In this video and at this camp there was not. There were just a ton of kids speaking in tongues. I don't think tongues is necessarily a bad thing, but I think that people need to be careful doing it. Another thing I am weary of is when the main lady said that Christians have a "spirit-man" living inside of them, and when the read the Bible, pray, or spend time with God, their "spirit-man" gets stronger. I can understand kind of what she meant, maybe that we each have a relationship with God and when we do those things we get closer... I don't know, but I am not sure what she meant by "spirit-man". And in one part of the movie it showed a kid laying on the floor convulsing. It never explained it though and I want to know why. One last thing I disagree on is when the little girl was bowling and told her ball in the name of Jesus to get a strike. This makes me think that the girl heard people throw around that term WAY too much. I hope she doesn't think that you can command something in the name of Jesus and make it happen.
One last thing that we do need to keep in mind is that this was only an hour and a half so movie. And think of much we have not seen. I am pretty sure that if I were the directors of this movie I would have chosen the craziest things I could find possible. We have probably missed a ton of stuff. It could have been different than what the movie portrayed completely. We should not judge them, we should just pray for them and that they will be teaching the correct doctrine and  that we do also.