The Power of a Mongrel

I am blogging from Rome today, at a conference of pastors from all over Europe.

Whenever we have conferences at Tree of Life, we have people call and ask what I consider strange questions about our preachers…

Are they a grace person?
Have they been to such and such Bible College?
Are they proper Word of Faith?
Who is their spiritual covering?

When you cut away all the fluff from these questions, they are all the same question: what is that person’s pedigree? 

If you buy a new pedigree dog it can cost thousands of pounds.  A pedigree is a dog that is pure bred, all it has its DNA from the same breed.  People pay lots of money to own pedigree dogs, and they are the dogs that win awards at shows.

And people seem to take the same approach to preachers… oh, he preaches the pure message, he only preaches at this place to these people, he has a real pedigree.

And what has happened is people have forgotten the power of a mongrel.

Do you know what the unhealthiest breeds of dogs are?  Pedigrees!  Especially poodles and dogs like that.  The reason being that another name for purebred is inbred.  All those dogs come from very tight families and only having the DNA of one family means you are very vulnerable to health problems.

And the unhealthiest Christians of all?  Those who only get their DNA from the same small, inbred family of teachers and preachers.

You need to be a bit of a mongrel Christian, it’s good for your health.  I’m not saying that you should listen to some dead, dying, denominational preacher who got his job through playing a system.  I’m saying there are a lot of Christians on planet earth bearing great fruit who have different doctrines and emphasises and ideas and philosophies from your small circle and that you will always be healthier if you take the time and effort and wisdom to find out why.

Selah.