Salty Teaching

Jesus was tough and tender. The strong Biblical examples of the prophets and apostles should guide our teaching. Teachers in the Church, men or women, young or old, need to be tough and tender, bold and gentle, salty and illuminating. (My other blog, Be Bold, Be Gentle, is about fleshing out this theme as husbands and fathers.)

Doug Giles has a challenging column today, "Got Salt?" An excerpt:

To be a faithful salt dispenser for Christ, you and I must have the
resilient thick hide and attitude of a bulldog to maintain faithfulness to His
call, even, or especially, when it means saying that which might cause
consternation.

My ClashPoint is this: Man … do we need a group of believers
who are not men-pleasers and who do not buckle to the demands of Generation Duh.
When Christians, especially ministers, cease to be piquant provocateurs, then
the villainous will fill the vacuum. Yes, I blame our world’s problems on the
tame, timid, and tepid religious person who will not stand for what he
supposedly believes when it means there might be conflict.

I do not blame Playboy, Las Vegas, the gay agenda, Air America, or whomever for our societal
tooth decay. I blame the "righteous" ones who will not shamelessly proclaim
truth in such a way that it is persuasive, provocative and preserving. Yes,
churches that do not seriously stand for truth commit institutional suicide and
effectively marginalize themselves, rather than being the salt-shaking organisms
God has called them to be.