The Internet Monk Archives

Ridiculous Religiosity

Meeting House Newtown — Meeting House, Newtown, CT

I am going to go on record here: that this pastor was compelled to apologize represents his denomination’s ridiculous religiosity and their complete failure to understand and practice love of neighbor.

From Reuters:

“Pastor apologizes for role in prayer vigil after Connecticut massacre”

A Connecticut Lutheran pastor has apologized for participating in an interfaith prayer vigil for the 26 children and adults killed at a Newtown elementary school in December because his church bars its clergy from worshiping with other faiths.

The December prayer vigil was attended by President Barack Obama, leaders from Christian, Muslim and Jewish faiths, and relatives of the 20 first graders who were gunned down in their classrooms two days earlier after a gunman entered their school.

The December 14 shooting shook the nation and led to calls for improved school security, gun control and better mental health care.

The pastor, Rob Morris of Newtown’s Christ the King Lutheran Church, provided the closing benediction at the interfaith event.

Earlier this month, the president of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, Pastor Matthew Harrison, wrote a letter to church members saying he had requested an apology from Morris for his participation in “joint worship with other religions.”

“There is sometimes a real tension between wanting to bear witness to Christ and at the same time avoiding situations which may give the impression that our differences with respect to who God is, who Jesus is, how he deals with us, and how we get to heaven, really don’t matter in the end,” Harrison wrote.

“There will be times in this crazy world when, for what we believe are all the right reasons, we may step over the scriptural line,” he wrote.

Harrison said he had accepted Morris’ apology.

This is not the first time a Lutheran leader has been chastised for participating in a community service in the wake of a local tragedy.

David Benke, a Lutheran pastor in New York, was suspended for praying at an interfaith vigil in 2001, 12 days after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. Benke, who had refused to apologize for the incident, was reinstated in 2003.

In his own letter to his church, Morris wrote it was not his intent to endorse “false teaching” and apologized to those who believed he had.

“I did not believe my participation to be an act of joint worship, but one of mercy and care to a community shocked and grieving an unspeakably horrific event,” he wrote. “I apologize where I have caused offense by pushing Christian freedom too far, and I request you charitably receive my apology.”

(Reporting by Edith Honan; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Jim Loney)

“A Hope for Some Glory Other than a Crown of Thorns”

entombme — The Entombment of Christ, Badalocchio

As part of my studies, I am trying to wrap my mind around Alan E. Lewis’s fine book, Between Cross and Resurrection: A Theology of Holy Saturday. You will be hearing much more about this book in days to come as we move through the Lenten season and Holy Week. For today, I will share with you one of its luminous passages. The late author penned passages that cry out for contemplation. This is rich food indeed. One reviewer said, “A stunning volume… Few works of contemporary theology so wonderfully combine great learning, stylistic eloquence, and moving depth of insight,” and I concur.

Here is one such passage: for your meditation and our discussion today.

…The only way to defeat the power of sin, without denying its reality or reducing its hostility, is to go beyond it, surpassing its mighty negativity with yet more abundant creativity, its deadliness with overflowing life, its emptiness with presence and with filling.

This is surely the core of faith’s good news, but also its great difficulty. The protest of unbelief is that the world is godless and unjust, a place of lovelessness, iniquity, and pain. Faith, by contrast, hears and speaks a word of promise — that nothing, however evil, can separate us from God’s love, so that the world’s sure destiny is peace and joy. Yet that confidence itself contains the temptation so to proclaim the world’s salvation as to take no longer seriously its distancing from God through suffering, sin, and death. There is a “faith” which has forgotten what it is to doubt; a way of hearing which no longer listens to the silence; a certainty that God is close which dares not look into eyes still haunted by divine remoteness; a hope for some glory other than a crown of thorns.

Such supposed but cowardly and inauthentic faith and hope has failed to wrestle with the conundrum of the grave, evading the possibility that God is God among the suffering and dying, and that the King who rules the world is only a wounded lamb that has been slain….

Latest Blog Rankings

UPDATE: I inadvertently copied and pasted an old listing of blog rankings. Here is the most current one. See if it changes any of your perceptions or observations:

#	Name	Author	AR	CV	PR	GR	HA	RD

1	Between Two Worlds	Justin Taylor	35,179	148,688	5	5,687	79	788
2	Jesus Creed	Scot McKnight	7,035	661,665	5	1,452	81	290
3	Michael Hyatt	Michael Hyatt	18,176	37,007	5	2,061	81	2287
4	Desiring God	Various	31,555	175,518	4	17,809	78	374
5	The Gospel Coalition Blog	Various	35,179	148,688	5	4,913	75	256
6	DeYoung, Restless, and Reformed	Kevin DeYoung	35,179	148,688	4	3,293	77	500
7	Fr. Z’s Blog	John Zuhlsdorf	99,640	56,664	6	11,487	70	482
8	Dr. Albert Mohler	Albert Mohler	264,069	21,400	5	3,737	77	1371
9	Tim Challies	Tim Challies	86,185	30,484	4	10,148	75	1545
10	The Resurgence	Various	113,075	43,670	4	6,987	74	1458
11	Stuff Christians Like	Jon Acuff	91,881	42,390	4	9,012	73	1112
12	Bad Catholic	Marc Barnes	7,035	661,665	5	1,169	78	112
13	Kingdom People	Trevin Wax	35,179	148,688	4	1,075	76	323
14	Tullian Tchividjian	Tullian Tchividjian	35,179	148,688	4	1,247	75	229
15	Internet Monk	Various	330,542	15,725	5	2,327	69	650
16	Rachel Held Evans	Rachel Held Evans	123,411	43,817	4	3,515	65	502
17	Don Miller	Don Miller	388,165	6,383	4	13,030	71	1050
18	Ligonier Ministries	Various	66,090	122,844	4	4,670	71	166
19	Compassion International	Various	72,773	6,929	5	1,084	70	300
20	Pyromaniacs	Various	548,173	8,448	4	4,209	73	694
21	Ed Stetzer	Ed Stetzer	241,811	14,007	4	1,680	67	486
22	Pure Church	Thabiti Anyabwile	35,179	148,688	4	866	74	155
23	9Marks	Various	203,436	19,962	4	2,698	67	282
24	Out of Ur	Various	665,665	126,780	6	991	68	337
25	Ministry to Children	Various	90,464	250,491	4	693	63	360
26	Church Marketing Sucks	Various	456,419	6,203	5	956	69	631
27	Ragamuffin Soul	Carlos Whittaker	384,233	6,224	4	2,315	66	828
28	Theoblogy	Tony Jones	7,035	661,665	5	417	77	70
29	Christianity Today Live Blog	Various	23,911	56,958	6	489	77	112
30	Christ is Deeper Still	Ray Ortlund	35,179	148,688	4	945	73	114
31	Reformation 21	Various	499,736	11,006	4	4,111	63	362
32	Acts 29	Scott Thomas	710,356	5,327	4	1,797	67	1075
33	Parchment and Pen	Michael Patton	357,914	14,646	4	2,381	61	234
34	Ron Edmondson	Ron Edmondson	339,378	11,018	4	1,707	60	289
35	Peter Enns	Peter Enns	7,035	661,665	4	598	74	57
36	Beyond Evangelical	Frank Viola	77,940	7,352	4	1,083	60	265
37	Adrian Warnock	Adrian Warnock	706,447	6,178	5	1,453	61	375
38	John C. Maxwell	John C. Maxwell	494,814	3,936	4	3,212	64	410
39	Brian McLaren	Brian McLaren	973,278	2,885	5	2,104	69	674
40	Exploring Our Matrix	James McGrath	7,035	661,665	5	212	77	73
41	Roger Olson	Roger Olson	7,035	661,665	4	398	75	64
42	Jesus Needs New PR	Matthew Paul Turner	185,601	71,029	4	389	60	290
43	The Gospel-Driven Church	Jared Wilson	35,179	148,688	4	357	72	96
44	Nadia Bolz-Weber	Nadia Bolz-Weber	7,035	661,665	4	445	73	39
45	Standing on my Head	Dwight Longnecker	7,035	661,665	5	336	73	22
46	ChurchLeaders.com	Various	47,563	135,373	4	299	60	175
47	Tony Morgan Live	Tony Morgan	811,898	3,212	4	1,297	63	552
48	The Pangea Blog	Kurt Willems	7,035	661,665	4	86	77	93
49	Christian Nightmares	Anonymous	452,767	4,059	4	1,040	61	189
50	Mark Driscoll	Mark Driscoll	486,231	5,697	4	1,120	57	183

Continue reading “Latest Blog Rankings”

iMonk: All My Wrestling

From the classic Michael Spencer post: The Ecclesiastes Attitude

* * *

The God of the Bible knows what he is doing. His work is, as scripture says, “past finding out.” He asks for no advice. He is not holding question and answer press conferences. He is not writing books of ten easy-to-understand bullet pointed explanations. He has spoken, and it is up to me to hear, believe and live accordingly.

And for me, at least, it’s difficult. It’s difficult knowing that I have failed in so many ways, hurt so many people, brought so many sinful consequences into my relationships…and God is at work- somehow- in all of it.

I want God’s purposes to be carried out through what I’ve done right. I’ve studied, preached, taught, served, counseled, led, encouraged and lived for the Gospel for more than 35 years. I want God’s purposes to be in response to all the sermons I’ve prepared. I don’t want God’s purposes to be about my failures, broken promises and abuses of others. I want to put what I want on the table, and I want God to work with that.

I’ve done a lot of things right, and I’d prefer God publish a list of how all of them are going to be rewarded. But that’s not the way it’s going to be. God is going to do what he wants to do, for reasons that can fit into a sentence in the Bible, but which are far too mysterious to wrap my mind around.

Sunday night I’m going to preach on “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” I know what the text means, but I can’t read it without thinking that I am, in a way, fearful of what God is up to. I read his ultimate purposes and I try to think of them, but I know that God has purposes now; purposes that involve my failures and the consequences he will not spare. God is not invested in hearing me say what I “need.” If he wants to take away, he will take away, and his purpose will be for me to go on without whatever he took away. The same with suffering, obscurity, humiliation and failure. God cannot be manipulated into carrying out my plans with my selected materials. He is about carrying out his plans with whatever materials he chooses.

The answer to encroaching cynicism is, I believe, Christian hedonism. The quest is not for understanding, but is for joy. The promise is not that God will do what he determines, but that he is determined to satisfy me forever with himself. Along the way of living this life, I have many more miles to travel. My heart is often hard, my mind fearful and my vision small. I am guilty of wanting God to make much of me rather than make me into a soul who makes much of him now and forever.

I am far more tempted with cynicism than I am with unbelief. I am far more inclined, as C.S. Lewis said, to see God as the experimenter than as the divine lover and heavenly Father. My prayer, and the prayers I ask for, is that I would trust God by exalting in his love, goodness and grace poured out in Christ and directed invincibly and irresistibly toward me.

There is a reason the book of Ecclesiastes is in the Bible. I have always been bothered by those who easily explained and expounded this book. It is a book that wanders in the same emotions that I have. The author counsels trust in God, but the struggle continues on every page. Over and over, he returns to the affirmation that life under the sun is meaningless and only God makes it meaningful. Only God is our hope in this world.

But Koheleth finds himself trusting a God who is never revealed in intimate loving terms. In Ecclesiastes, God seems sometimes to be more a deity of unavoidable fatalism rather than the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. I know something of this God. He gives. He takes away. He does not explain. He asks for faith, and for everything you thought you could never give up.

I do not know God’s ways. I can only put my hand over my mouth, look to the Word and the work of the Spirit, and press on. When all my wrestling is over, God remains.

There Is No “Me and Jesus” in the Bible

Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes: Removing Cultural Blinders to Better Understand the Bible
by E. Randolph Richards & Brandon J. O’Brien
IVP Books (2012)

Part Two of a series.

One major impediment Westerners have in reading the Bible and practicing the Christian faith is our individualistic perspective. For the Bible was written in a much more collectivist culture and it reflects that orientation.

My (Randy’s) anthropology professor worked in a remote tribal area for years. His village friends gave him a nickname that meant, “Man who needs no one.” This would be a positive American trait, but they were not intending to compliment him.”

In this age of accessible transportation, many have traveled for business or pleasure, or on mission trips that have exposed them to different cultures. It is common for folks to express how eye-opening such experiences can be. I would affirm that, but found it even more of an epiphany when I hosted a friend from India here in the States. I remember one entire day of driving him around our city to visit with various people. It was just the two of us riding in the car for hours, interspersed with short meetings, usually with individuals in office buildings. After a particularly long stretch of driving I asked my friend, “Well, what do you think of the U.S.?” In essence he replied, “It’s ok for a visit, but I wouldn’t want to live here.”

It struck me immediately that he was feeling isolated and lonely here. Thinking back to my experiences with him in India, I realized that, in his natural setting, he was rarely alone or in a setting that was not filled with crowds of people. His clinic is attached to his home, so he never really leaves his work or his patients. His mother and several other extended family members live with him, and there are neighbors and friends and merchants and hired workers in and out of his home all day. The streets of the city where he lives are constantly crowded with people, animals, and every manner of vehicle. If he wants some “me” time, he has to intentionally seek solitude (which, amazingly to me, he seems to need far less often that someone like myself) by leaving town for awhile.

As societies become more technologically sophisticated they inevitably become more individualistic. This leads to the “losing my religion” phenomenon we have been talking about in recent days, for Christianity is not an individualistic faith. And as the authors say, “It is difficult to present the values of a collectivist culture in a positive light to Western hearers.” What is a virtue in one society is often considered a vice in the other. This is extremely important to grasp, for it means that the deep presuppositions and outlooks that form us as individualistic people in the contemporary world do not reflect the cultural ethos represented in Scripture.

We do not, cannot read the Bible accurately until we face up to these blinders.

Continue reading “There Is No “Me and Jesus” in the Bible”

Love Passes By the “Righteous”

You see, it really is all Jesus’ fault – he goes and does the one thing you’re never supposed to do, even to strangers, let alone to friends and neighbors: He tells them the truth, the truth about their pettiness and prejudice, their fear and shame, their willingness, even eagerness, to get ahead at any cost, even at the expense of another. And so they want him gone in the most permanent of ways.

– David Lose, “Three Questions and a Promise”

* * *

It is better to be a person of love than to be a person who is always right.

Those who place the highest priority on being right cannot help but being judgmental. I am right and you are wrong, therefore I am better than you and you are less than me. I don’t have to listen to you because you don’t think right. It is better for me to gather together with those who think like I do — the right-minded — so that we can affirm and celebrate our rightness and rail against the wrong opinions, actions, or customs of those who are not us.

A person of love does not ignore distinctions of right and wrong. Love, however, finds a way of transcending them. The wrong one is still a neighbor. Though he may be genuinely mistaken or misguided, I refuse to let that be the defining issue between us. My neighbor still has human needs, and to the extent I can help meet them, why shouldn’t I? My neighbor still has gifts to offer me, and why shouldn’t I accept them? My neighbor remains God’s creation, fearfully and wonderfully made, filled with the breath of life, a fellow human being God has placed in my vicinity or awareness, one for whom the bell tolls when life ebbs away and I am lessened.

And who knows? I might even learn something “right” from my neighbor along the way.

In his home town at the synagogue service, in the presence of the righteous, Jesus spoke about speaking good news to poor people, people at the margins, people we shun, people we often criticize for their laziness and devious ways. We avoid that part of town. We stay on our side of the tracks. Their lives have gone wrong, and it might very well be their fault. We don’t know them and don’t care to know them. (How then can we speak good news they can hear? And what if they might have good news for us?)

On that day, Jesus spoke of captives and of the blind and oppressed. Those who heard him in Nazareth nodded their heads as he spoke. They were actually good with that. Theoretically.

However, when he started putting names to the nameless, their resistance began to rise. Foreigners. Zarephath. Sidon. Syria. These were names signifying those who had proven themselves perennially wrong — wrong in their opinions, wrong in their commitments, wrong in their religion, wrong in their politics, wrong in their customs, wrong in their lifestyles. Jesus’ hometown friends, on the other hand, were Israelites, God’s chosen people. The righteous.

So once Jesus started showing how God had sent prophets time and time again to the “wrong” kinds of people and not simply to the “right” kinds of people, and how the righteous chosen ones had not welcomed God’s messengers but the idol-worshiping, immoral foreigners had, well, it simply became too much for them.

That’s when they did when people who are more concerned about being right than loving have done throughout history: they turned against him. They got violent. They tried to silence the Voice that was speaking words with which they disagreed, which threatened their constricted world and comfortable lives. Jesus had pricked the balloon of settled self-righteousness and out rushed the foul air of fear, prejudice, rage, and bullying.

From the midst of their fury, he walked away.

And what became of those he left behind? Who once more let love pass them by?

Saturday Ramblings 2.2.13

Ramblings is hearing rumblings of some big to-do down in the Big Easy this weekend. Once again, we have not paid the NFL (the No Fun League) the rights fee in order to say the name of this Really Big Game. So we will continue our tradition, started by Adam Palmer, of sliding one letter to the left, and referring to Sunday’s party time as the Superb Owl. We are having a big Superb Owl party here at the iMonastery, and you are invited to join us. I suggest you bring cookies and milk to share with us all. Until then, what say we ramble?

So, who is God picking to win the Superb Owl? The San Francisco 49ers, or the Baltimore Ravens? You say God doesn’t really care who wins? Twenty-seven percent of Americans would disagree with you on that. And 38% of evangelicals think God plays a role in who wins. Mark Galli says athletes are not role models, not even Christian athletes. I agree with him. You?

Feeling drawn to Scientology because, well, you want to be just like Tom Cruise? You may want to put your conversion plans on hold until you read a new book that pulls back the curtain and gives a look at Scientology’s secrets. One of the scariest comments by the author is this: “Oftentimes people who go into Scientology are dealing with a personal problem. If you enter a Church of Scientology building you’ll be asked, “What is your ruin?” That is, what is standing in the way of your financial, spiritual and emotional success? And they will talk through things with you and offer a menu of courses designed to help.” Is this Scientology, or an evangelical megachurch we’re talking about?

Guess what city has the most megachurch attendees? Go ahead—guess. I’ll bet you don’t get it right.

Continue reading “Saturday Ramblings 2.2.13”

A Horse of a Different Color

Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes: Removing Cultural Blinders to Better Understand the Bible
by E. Randolph Richards & Brandon J. O’Brien
IVP Books (2012)

This is part one of a series of discussion-starters from this fine book.

* * *

“That is a good horse,” said the man as he watched it pull the farmer’s plow with strength.

“That is a good horse,” said the girl at the circus as she watched it do a series of amazing tricks.

“That is a good horse,” said the guide as he pointed the novice rider to one that he recommended for the trail ride.

“That is a good horse,” said the rodeo rider as he picked himself up and brushed himself off after having been thrown to the ground.

“That is a good horse,” said the bettor as he went to pick up his winnings after the filly he chose won the race.

“That is a good horse,” said the owner of the horse farm as she walked up to the prospective buyer who was purchasing a special gift for his daughter.

“That is a good horse,” said the guest at the table of his Kyrgyz hosts who had just finished the meal he had been served.

Five words. The same five words. And yet, five words that convey entirely different meanings because they are spoken in five different contexts and cultures.

Is the horse good because it is a dependable worker? Is the horse good because it is entertaining, having been trained to do unhorse-like things? Is the horse good because it is gentle with new riders? Is the horse good because it provides a top challenge for a skilled rodeo rider? Is the horse good because it runs fast? Is the horse good because it would be a suitable gift? Or is it good because it tastes good?

Is it a good farm horse? circus horse? trail-riding horse? rodeo horse? racehorse? pet? meal?

E. Randolph Richards and Brandon J. O’Brien remind us that reading is not as simple as we imagine, and that reading a book like the Bible is an even more complex task.

We can easily forget that Scripture is a foreign land and that reading the Bible is a crosscultural experience. To open the Word of God is to step into a strange world where things are very unlike our own. Most of us don’t speak the languages. We don’t know the geography or the customs or what behaviors are considered rude or polite.

…Another way to say this is that all Bible reading is necessarily contextual. There is no purely objective biblical interpretation. This is not postmodern relativism. We believe truth is truth. But there’s no way around the fact that our cultural and historical contexts supply us with habits of mind that lead us to read the Bible differently than Christians in other cultural and historical contexts.

One of my favorite examples the authors give involves the familiar story of the “Prodigal Son.” They cite a professor who did an experiment in reading this parable from Luke 15. He had students in his small seminary class read it and then retell the story to a partner. Not one of the student mentioned the “famine” in Luke 15:14 which precipitated the son’s return home. Finding this omission intriguing, he repeated the experiment in a group of one hundred people. Only six mentioned the famine. All of the participants were from the United States.

On another occasion the professor had the chance to repeat the experiment with a group of fifty students in St. Petersburg, Russia. Forty-two out of fifty mentioned the famine! The authors point out that Russians had experienced several famines in their recent history. It was a part of their life and something with which they were familiar, whereas those from the United States had no such background.

Americans tend to treat the mention of the famine as an unnecessary plot device. Sure, we think the famine makes matters worse for the young son. He’s already penniless, and now there’s no food to buy even if he did have the money. But he has already committed his sin, so it goes without being said that the main issue in the story is his wastefulness, not the famine.

…Christians in other parts of the world understand the story differently. In cultures more familiar with famine, like Russia, readers consider the boy’s spending less important than the famine. The application of the story has less to do with willful rebellion and more to do with God’s faithfulness to deliver his people from hopeless situations. The boy’s problem is not that he is wasteful but that he is lost.

The authors’ point is not that one of these interpretations is “right” and the other “wrong.” Rather, they only want to suggest that we read the Bible out of our cultural context. We can’t help but do so. We need to be aware of this and do all we can to factor in our cultural blinders when we advance our interpretive conclusions.

However, there is a problem according to Richards and O’Brien — the most powerful cultural values that affect us are those of which we are least aware. It’s like an iceberg. We are able to identify only some of our presuppositions and conscious assumptions. However most of these powerful, shaping influences are below the surface, out of our sight. “The most powerful cultural values are those that go without being said,” claim the authors. We are fish that take little notice of the water in which we live. When we read the Bible, we tend to fill in any “gaps” of understanding with pieces from our own cultural perspectives — subconsciously.

The horse that you see may be a horse of a different color to me. And neither of us may really understand why.

Renewing The Evangelical Worship Service, Part Two

This morning we began looking at some ideas that could help renew evangelicalism, or at least the weekly worship service aspect of many evangelical churches. I want to continue this discussion, but first a couple more observations.

First of all, we must must must remember that the focus of the service is Jesus, not me. Not my “felt needs” (which is purely manipulative from a marketing standpoint). Not my purpose or destiny. Jesus. In many of the services I’ve attended Jesus is an afterthought, if a thought at all. From the call to worship to the benediction, Jesus must be front and center. If a church service does not focus on Jesus in every element, then it is simply there to entertain and amuse. I can think of a lot better uses of my time than to sit through another Christless church service.

Chaplain Mike asked in a comment to part one if perhaps the reason there is no longer very many liturgical elements in evangelical services is because of ignorance rather than a deliberate shunning. I agree that some are ignorant because they have grown up in evangelicalism and have never been exposed to liturgy. Yet there are many others who, upon their conversion, decide to leave the church they grew up in and attach themselves to the “happenin’ church” in their city. They are told they are now “free to worship in the Spirit” as opposed to “bound up by traditions of men.” (And I have heard this said many, many times.)

Dennis and Robin Bratcher write about the evangelical aversion to liturgy better than I can.

For many evangelicals there remains a visceral aversion to even the mention of the word “liturgy.” Many evangelicals, especially those who have grown up in more conservative or fundamentalist traditions, immediately associate “liturgy” with Roman Catholic, which evokes the religious prejudice that opposes “Catholic” to “Christian.” For many in those traditions, to do anything “Catholic,” which becomes a prejudicial label for anything different then how we do things, is the equivalent of abandoning Christianity.

And yet, as many of those same evangelicals mature in their Faith they are attracted to the aspects of worship that are lacking in their own traditional worship experiences. These include the elements of mystery in liturgical worship, the sacraments, the communal dimension of worship, the longing to move out of sectarianism and be part of the larger Church, the focus on Scripture and prayer, even things like incense and making the sign of the cross as a testimony to their own Faith.

As a result, many evangelical churches, even from very low-church traditions, are increasingly seeking to incorporate aspects of liturgical worship into their own worship. But this in itself has created somewhat of a dilemma, since many pastors and church leaders are not familiar with liturgical worship. There is some sense, beyond the bigotry, that they really do not want to become Catholic or Anglican. Yet, there are aspects of those traditions that are increasingly seen to have value in ministering to people in a contemporary culture and to fulfill the longing of many in evangelical churches for deeper worship. (Dennis Bratcher and Robin Stephenson-Bratcher, http://www.crivoice.org)

One last observation. Not all evangelical churches are alike. Not all are focused on me me me. There are many pastors who are actually pastors—shepherds—who want to lead their flocks to green pastures, and know that the path to get there includes much more than providing an entertainment experience on Sunday mornings unlike any other. There are evangelical churches that practice the elements I’m suggesting, and do them very well. But these churches typically fly under the radar. The majority of evangelical churches follow a model of entertainment and of meeting felt needs. They are driven by modern church growth techniques (read: marketing and manipulation) in order to pack in the most wallets per service as possible.

If evangelicalism is to be renewed, drastic change must occur. And the weekly worship service is as good a place to begin as any.

Continue reading “Renewing The Evangelical Worship Service, Part Two”

Renewing The Evangelical Worship Service

The last two weeks I have written about saving evangelicalism. I do believe it is worth saving—or, perhaps I should say it is worth renewing. If evangelicalism is simply to be saved in its current state, a self-indulgent movement where each person is a church of one and is taught how to become the person of destiny they were designed to be—then I say let it die, and the sooner the better.

But there is a spark in evangelicalism that, if done right, can be fanned into a flame that will be a light that illuminates Jesus to a very dark world. Today I want to look at one aspect of evangelicalism that needs to be renewed—to have its wick trimmed, as it were, sticking with the flame metaphor. Last week I said there is something missing in many evangelical services these days: The Gospel. I want to suggest some ways that the Gospel can once again be the focus of our worship services. Michael Spencer wrote extensively on evangelical liturgy, essays you can find by using the drop box to the right and scrolling down to Evangelical Liturgy. I recommend you spend some time reading (or re-reading) his thoughts. I do not agree with all he wrote, at least not for today’s evangelicals. His suggestions were coming, at least in part, from his time as a supply preacher at a local Presbyterian church. Not many evangelical churches will want to mirror this mainline denomination’s style of worship. Having said that, we evangelicals can learn much from our mainline brethren, as well as from Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran and Orthodox styles and means of worship. I am writing as an evangelical to evangelicals. If you align yourself with another aspect of Christianity, I welcome your insights and suggestions. Obviously, we need all the help we can get if we are to renew this movement.

Continue reading “Renewing The Evangelical Worship Service”