I'm a

What am I?

Have I been labelled, named, described? Of the many things that I am, one of them - the most defining one, is I am a Christian. Inspired by my previous post which reminded me of a discussion that I had with a lecturer of mine regarding that particular title.

There seems to be a move these days, in the emergent church at least, away from calling ourselves Christian's. In fact, because of the potentially sensitive topic of my previous post, I almost fell into doing the same thing. I almost called myself 'a follower of Christ' in place of 'Christian'.

It is this that I have a problem with.

As fas as I understand it, the reason for moving away from 'Christian' is so that the stigma that is attached with the word is forgotten/ignored/avoided.

The reality is, even if enough of a percentage of us did start calling ourselves 'followers of Christ' for the secular world to notice, we're still Christian's - we believe what we always have believed; we act the way we've always acted; we get seen as hypocrites like we always have been (cynical - I know) - but we're just called something different.

It doesn't matter what we're called. We need to continue to grow more Christ-like, and by the way we treat each other and the rest of the world that people will know we're different. The brutal past that we have won't matter anymore.

So I'm a Christian - the very nature of which is to be a 'follower of Christ'. What's the point of trying to confuse the issue?