Christianity's reputation

What reputation would you want Christianity to have 30, 100, 500 years from now?
Whatever our answer is, we should be living with that goal in mind today, shouldn't we? 

Comments

[Stan]

I surely agree that we need to be acting in the right manner today, but I do not know if we should be looking with such futuristic anticipation. It is idealistic to believe we should make these plans and set these goals thinking there really is that much more time. It would be more prudent to start living with the urgency that there is not. “Tomorrow I will be a good Christian, tomorrow I will reach out to my hurting brother:” may be an overly optimistic plan. I am not predicting the end of the world, but in reality not all of us reading this will be here in thirty years from now. In Matthew 24:36-51, Jesus makes clear this point that we better start living as Acts 29 disciples today. I am not one to preach short term planning, but our focus should be on today, living it out as if it were our last. I do not know if we should be so worried about our legacy, our reputation or our future image. In what image do we live today? How we live today will determine the future, not the other way around.

[DougG]

JR,
I always turn it into a math problem: say you had 50 committed followers/disciples of Christ at resonate and they got 50 new folks evangelized/discipled this year, and next that 100 got 100 more and so on ... about 30 years from now I think the whole world would be following Christ. PS I thihnk it has started elsewhere; check out places like Cambodia, etc.

DougG

[Brian]

Reputation? Among whom?

In the first years of the gospel, among the powerful, the wise, and the learned, who drove the dominant Roman and Hellenistic cultures, Christianity was the religion of the unwashed, the poor, the ignorant, and the "unproductive" people who don't much matter. At best, they were irrelevant. At worst, they were dangerous and seditious because they refused to worship Caesar.

Given opportunities to improve the reputation of Christianity, Christians instead chose death at the claws of wild beasts, or at the tongues of fire.