Does Christianity have a future ? Part 7

Experiences in knowing God are not limited to a physical building or a worship service. We can know God anywhere because he is constantly revealing his presence in every aspect of life. That’s how God speaks to us through movies, television programs or other forms of media. Dr. Paul L. Cox, an ordained Baptist pastor and co-director of Aslan’s Place, said that he and a few friends went to see Star Trek. During the movie, he felt waves of the power of God come over him. As he later contemplated what that could have meant, he realized that the Lord was speaking to him in a dramatic way. The theme of Star Trek is daring to boldly go where no man has gone before. He felt the Lord was asking him if he dared to go where God wanted him to go?”

If you are earnestly looking for God, he will reveal himself to you. God uses whatever means it will take to get to your heart. That is an example of how people can have a profound experience with God at the movies.

God is at work in the world. Our experience with God can occur at any time of the day throughout the week. He will choose whatever means he desires to speak to us whether it be through people, places, nature, objects, etc. Is it fair to say that many of our church leaders want to control how people experience God? Perhaps it is a frightening concept to consider that God can work outside the walls of the church building and outside of the pre-constructed box in which we have placed God.

I believe the media church can better understand a God that they can experience in whatever way God choices to reveal himself. We have limited God and made him fit into our framework. This helps to explain why many in the church of media can have a profound spiritual experience watching media because God is speaking to them though it. We must be open to how God chooses to speak to people. God works differently with each generation.

Members of the media church have grown up in a world unlike anything we have ever seen. They are a product of the media culture. And have learned to pursue their wants and to put their interests at the center of their lives. But God will find a way to speak to them. Media missionaries will be used by God to reveal truth in a way that they can understand. The future of Christianity and media will be interconnected and dependent on each other. We have an enormous opportunity ahead of us.

Let’s complete Jesus’ plan for establishing the Kingdom of God in the media culture as well as the church of media by following his word in Matthew 28:18, “I have been given complete authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all my commandments I have given you. And be sure of this, I am with you always even to the end of the age.” NLT