I watched this movie yesterday:

My friends couldn't finish it. It just didn't keep my attention. It was a long soak in a fairly narrow example of Christianity gone wrong.

is this the best you can do, Jesus Camp?

What really struck me was how much more ominous they could have made this. By using footage and material from the most popular and mainstream, rather than from this kind of wacky, campy group...

Heck. I think I could make a doc that goes deeper than this, contains even more disturbing facts--like divorce rates, drug use, and pornography addiction rates (among pastors), etc... I could talk from my youth ministry experience, adn that of so many of my peers, of how so many American parents have their heads utterly immersed in sand. So many times, I saw folks pooh-pooh their kids' need for complete spiritual renewal. I saw the church high-five each other over buying a pop machine for the youth, while the real message of Scripture got buried in Americana Pop culture. Teaching their kids to be nice, they left them vacuous and weak.

"Youth are the Future of the Church", they always said. Youth are not the future of anything. they are the present. By softpedaling the Message of Jesus, neglecting prayer, and allowing nationalism and consumerism to affect discipleship so profoundly, we have really, really messed it up.

Anyway, Jesus Camp is a hokey movie. They're trying to shock us, but they don't even choose the juicy stuff. It was totally grievous to see Brother Ted blow a chance to get to know the little "preacher" kid.

What struck me was how utterly unthreatened the True Message of Jesus is, by this kind of criticism. What Jesus taught is not what these kids are being taught. I liked the fact that the film stated that, too.

I'd save the two hours, though the irony of this doc is historic, since it was only months later that ted was exposed as a total faker. Good for him. All of us need to keep in mind that Jesus has come for the undone, total fakers.
of whom I am formost.

I love ted. Jesus loves ted.

Maybe we could make a documentary about how great a failure the American C hurch has been--a documentary that shows us how Awesome Jesus really is. He loves us! And what he really taught will amaze people, because they'll find out that He is just as different from the Americana Jesus as they are hoping.

And He is still untameable and dangerous, too.
I hope that you connect with the dangerous JEsus of Scripture, today, and successfully shed the weight of this culture that is constantly trying to chain Jesus totheir lame cart. He refuses.

I am amazed at the damage that church leaders in our generation have done to the ability of onlookers to understand the message of jesus. Our criticism of outsiders, without looking within--all in spite of 1 Cor. 5 that tells us to keep our judgment to our own community.
This fundamental confusion of nationalism with the Kingdom of God.

Mercy.