Far too many Christians, especially of the fundamentalist variety, are worried about the church accommodating to culture.\u00a0 Should the church and followers of Christ\u00a0\u201dadjust,\u00a0compromise, modify, or otherwise adapt\u201d (one definition of accommodation)\u00a0our theology, beliefs,\u00a0message or actions to please culture in order to\u00a0win the lost to Christ?\u00a0 Absolutely not!<\/p>\n
Should churches and Christians be helpful and neighborly (another definition of accommodating) toward those who are our actual neighbors, even if those folks don\u2019t act like prim and proper Christians on Halloween?\u00a0 Should the church seek to reach our friends and neighbors with the Gospel of Christ every day of the year, including on\u00a0Halloween, or do we simply retreat behind closed doors and wait until those \u201cpagans\u201d get off \u201cour\u201d streets and out of \u201cour\u201d neighborhoods?<\/p>\n
I suppose the answer to those questions ultimately comes down to which definition of \u201caccommodation\u201d you subscribe to.\u00a0 Some fundamentalists will always be more comfortable railing against any \u201caccommodation\u201d by Christians to culture.\u00a0 They probably will never be comfortable sitting at a\u00a0notorious sinner\u2019s\u00a0table and eating a meal with him.\u00a0 I\u2019m just glad Jesus didn\u2019t have that problem.\u00a0 Go figure.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Were there people who came to our church on Halloween who were dressed “inappropriately?” Yes. If I could have called the “Fashion Police,” they would have had non-stop work just in our parking lot alone. However, many of those same folks would have never stepped foot on our church property (outside of a wedding or funeral), but they came by the thousands. They came with their kids on the “darkest” night of the year. They came for the free treats inside the trunks. When they left, perhaps their candy wasn’t as sweet and their night wasn’t as dark. That’s what salt and light will do, even on Halloween!<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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What a night! With over 4,000 people attending Bethel’s 3rd Annual “TRUNK-OR-TREAT,” the church that I pastor once again decided to be “salt and light” in our community on a night which has become associated with darkness. Who says that Christians have to retreat from the world for any night, much less the one night…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_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}},"categories":[8,11,35],"tags":[2313,78,139,3370,1729,2308,2311,2309,2306,2310,2305,2307,1370,469,712,3392,2312,1003],"class_list":["post-4045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianity","category-culture","category-religion","tag-accommodating-culture","tag-alamogordo","tag-bethel-baptist-church-alamogordo","tag-christianity","tag-christians","tag-church-lady","tag-conservative-evangelical","tag-dana-carvey","tag-dr-russell-moore","tag-evangelical","tag-fall-festival","tag-fundamentalist","tag-gospel-of-christ","tag-halloween","tag-new-mexico","tag-religion","tag-salt-and-light","tag-trunk-or-treat"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1LP7G-13f","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4045"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4045\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4055,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4045\/revisions\/4055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}