Remember the GC pastors going on about men being strong, 'quite you like men', having DTs with their men get the newbs to be more macho, and all the emphasis in which they look for "Strong men" for their positions? I always found this more than a little repugnant, not that many men can't use a boot in the butt to suck-it-up (I like the country song where a buddy tells his friend, after hearing the friend whine of woes, 'sounds like life'), but because in Scripture we're never taught we need to find our strengths, our "S.H.A.P.E.", for instance (which besides being a conglomeration of a bunch of not just un-biblical, but anti-biblical, philosophies, e.g. SHAPE teaches that God was preparing people before being believers or makes them in some SHAPE for his glory--and of course the "christian" radio stations and groups blast this on-air as well as take-out commercials on secular stations 'God made you for . . .'--whereas the NT/Apostolic teaching is that those unsaved are USELESS and that beefore being saved they were USELESS and that the old is passed away not useful, men aren't to go back to who they are, their experiences, or start looking to themselves and discovering who they are, but rather Christ as expounded in the Scriptures.
Anyway, GC's uses the, and things like the, SHAPE test in order to discover strengths and determine courses of control, I mean, er..., placement/track. Besides this test being a load and full of assumptions, worldly minded, oriented, and derived philophies, the pragmatic things businessmen find important which historically, in the Christian tradition, are neither important nor even necessarily of any use to the Church, rather than perhaps direct harm, isn't it a basic of the gospel that God's strength, greatness, power, and glory, are all displayed in weakness? And I don't mean feigned weakness portrayed in the midst of a set-up to gloat about "what God has done through us", or in order to finagle him to "use me".
The dumb among sophists was Paul--a poor speaker, yet a powerful writer and zealous apostle remembered by those orthodox, not for his focus on men, as GC likes to put it, "love for souls" and all the emphasis on his works, etc., which go contra Paul, but for his weakness through which God showed great strength, his constant diminishing of any import to his own works--"in me there is no good thing", but rather Christ's work in the believer, any believer, and constant attack on those who would put attention on works rather than grace, though not, of course, making grace license. I also find it funny how GC likes Paul so much because he was such a zealous and incessant worker, which they want their members to be for their goals, when they are so anti-creedal (at least if it's not what they want to hear or what they're not teaching at the moment), whereas Paul is the opposite, and was one who attacked viciously those who made anyone stooges for their own purposes rather than Christ, bringing them into bondage.
Anyway, on "Testosterone Christianity",
http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2010/02/05/jesus-didnt-come-to-help-you-get-in-touch-with-your-inner-mma-fighter/I don't like TGC much, don't think we need more movements, coalitions, etc., where people even of severe divisions pretense they're unimportant, (Terry Dugan put these things well on his blog once) and even begin teaching so "for the sake of the gospel", "for Christ's sake", etc. at the expense of clear speaking / unambiguous teaching and truly being subject one to another accorrding to the Scriptures to be corrected, discipline, mutually edify, repent of errors where they're revealed, expel those who won't repent, and all speak the same thing in the same mind and same judgment as the pillar and bastion of truth, as much as people laugh at such an idea in putting a death grip on whatever is dear to themselves, rather than the Lord's word wherein it is put that the food of His sheep is that word, by which they are also to be tore down, edified, instructed, cleansed, sanctified, etc.. But this is a worthwhile and simple enough piece of response to one type of malarkey that is practiced--perpetrated in Christ's name. I particularly like this way of putting it:
Yes, Jesus is the strong man who binds the adversary, but he bound him by suffering, humiliation, and weakness.
(Hope nobody is offended that he dared not use capitals to begin any word referring to Jesus.)
