{"id":3438,"date":"2008-04-09T00:10:31","date_gmt":"2008-04-09T00:10:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jesuscreed\/2008\/04\/preparing-for-pentecost-13.html"},"modified":"2008-04-09T00:10:31","modified_gmt":"2008-04-09T00:10:31","slug":"preparing-for-pentecost-13","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2008\/04\/preparing-for-pentecost-13.html","title":{"rendered":"Preparing for Pentecost 13"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There is a mood today at work in the church &#8212; the mood of open season on the church. Fundamentalists are attacking what they think are signs of drifting away from the stalwarts of the faith; liberals are attacking the conservatives and calling them such things as jihadists; and the younger generation of Christians think the 40somethings and beyond are modernists who don&#8217;t get it. I wonder how a Jesus Creed perspective would approach such things &#8230; not that genuine constructive (important word here) criticism doesn&#8217;t have its place. <!--more|inline--><br \/>\nIn my view, and I deal with this in chp 13 of <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&amp;location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2F40-Days-Living-Jesus-Creed%2Fdp%2F1557255776%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dbooks%26qid%3D1201660962%26sr%3D1-22&amp;tag=jescre-20&amp;linkCode=ur2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325\">40 Days Living the Jesus Creed<\/a><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=jescre-20&amp;l=ur2&amp;o=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" style=\"border:none !important;margin:0px !important\" \/><\/em>, we must be exceedingly careful about criticizing the church. Exceedingly careful. We can&#8217;t dismiss or diminish. We can grieve, but we must watch what we do.<br \/>\nWe must learn not to love the &#8220;idea&#8221; of the church, but the &#8220;real&#8221; church.<br \/>\nThe church is the group sitting in the circle around Jesus; the church is made of folks who, in their own way, participate in the work of Jesus in this world.<br \/>\nI wonder, how about you?, what Jesus would say about those who sat outside the room and nibbled away at his followers.<br \/>\nYou know what Pentecost is? It is the Day when God&#8217;s Spirit empowered normal followers of Jesus to dare to be what God had called them to be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There is a mood today at work in the church &#8212; the mood of open season on the church. Fundamentalists are attacking what they think are signs of drifting away from the stalwarts of the faith; liberals are attacking the conservatives and calling them such things as jihadists; and the younger generation of Christians think&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":298,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jesus-creed"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Preparing for Pentecost 13 - Jesus Creed<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2008\/04\/preparing-for-pentecost-13.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Preparing for Pentecost 13 - Jesus Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There is a mood today at work in the church &#8212; the mood of open season on the church. Fundamentalists are attacking what they think are signs of drifting away from the stalwarts of the faith; liberals are attacking the conservatives and calling them such things as jihadists; and the younger generation of Christians think&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2008\/04\/preparing-for-pentecost-13.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Jesus Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-04-09T00:10:31+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=jescre-20&amp;l=ur2&amp;o=1\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"xscot mcknight\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Preparing for Pentecost 13 - Jesus Creed","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2008\/04\/preparing-for-pentecost-13.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Preparing for Pentecost 13 - Jesus Creed","og_description":"There is a mood today at work in the church &#8212; the mood of open season on the church. Fundamentalists are attacking what they think are signs of drifting away from the stalwarts of the faith; liberals are attacking the conservatives and calling them such things as jihadists; and the younger generation of Christians think&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2008\/04\/preparing-for-pentecost-13.html","og_site_name":"Jesus Creed","article_published_time":"2008-04-09T00:10:31+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=jescre-20&amp;l=ur2&amp;o=1"}],"author":"xscot mcknight","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2008\/04\/preparing-for-pentecost-13.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2008\/04\/preparing-for-pentecost-13.html","name":"Preparing for Pentecost 13 - Jesus Creed","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2008\/04\/preparing-for-pentecost-13.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2008\/04\/preparing-for-pentecost-13.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=jescre-20&amp;l=ur2&amp;o=1","datePublished":"2008-04-09T00:10:31+00:00","dateModified":"2008-04-09T00:10:31+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/9c0db2eaf4d047d76276f907b62843f0"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2008\/04\/preparing-for-pentecost-13.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2008\/04\/preparing-for-pentecost-13.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2008\/04\/preparing-for-pentecost-13.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=jescre-20&amp;l=ur2&amp;o=1","contentUrl":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=jescre-20&amp;l=ur2&amp;o=1"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2008\/04\/preparing-for-pentecost-13.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Preparing for Pentecost 13"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/","name":"Jesus Creed","description":"Scot McKnight on Jesus and orthodox faith for today","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/9c0db2eaf4d047d76276f907b62843f0","name":"xscot mcknight","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/1f0\/1f0cb0f88d1f99f6e05597a2de7f1949x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/1f0\/1f0cb0f88d1f99f6e05597a2de7f1949x96.jpg","caption":"xscot mcknight"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/author\/xscot-mcknight"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/298"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3438\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}