{"id":1170,"date":"2012-07-26T21:32:50","date_gmt":"2012-07-27T02:32:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/calebripple.com\/blog\/?p=1170"},"modified":"2012-07-26T21:32:50","modified_gmt":"2012-07-27T02:32:50","slug":"if-the-church-is-doing-her-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calebripple.com\/blog\/if-the-church-is-doing-her-job\/","title":{"rendered":"If the Church is doing her job…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Toby J. Sumpter<\/a> has been on a roll lately. His latest\u00a0Jesus & the Bikinis<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>is another home run. Here’s a taste but you should most definitely read the whole thing (here)<\/a>:<\/p>\n

And if the Church is doing her job, proclaiming this good news of forgiveness and justice in Jesus, then she ought to attract people who need that forgiveness, who need that justice. A faithful church ought to attract tax collectors and sinners and prostitutes and homosexuals, a faithful church ought to attract the broken, the despised, the rejected, the hurting. And they\u2019ll come in off the street with all their addictions, all their pain, all their confusion, and they\u2019ll puke on the sanctuary carpet from time to time and need to sleep off their hangovers in the pastor\u2019s office. And praise God for that. But Jesus doesn\u2019t leave us where He finds us. Jesus transforms lives. He takes the broken, and He heals them. He lifts us out of the darkness and brings us into His light. His Holy Spirit is real, powerful, and efficacious. And when the gospel gets a hold of someone, crazy things start to happen. Where rottenness and thorns once grew, the fruit of the Spirit begins to emerge. And when someone gets a new heart, when someone is filled with the Holy Spirit, they start to glorify their life with beautiful things, they start to adorn the temple of their body, the temple of their home, the temple of their family with glory. Jesus puts His glory in our hearts so that it can spill out into all of life.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Toby J. Sumpter has been on a roll lately. His latest\u00a0Jesus & the Bikinis\u00a0is another home run. Here’s a taste but you should most definitely read the whole thing (here): And if the Church is doing her job, proclaiming this good news of forgiveness and justice in Jesus, then she ought to attract people who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church","category-excerpts-quotes"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t