I am going to post a couple of links from Slice of Laodicea. To my readers (if there are any) this blog is a very good blog. I know the blog is very critical of the contemporary Christian church, but it makes undoubtedly strong cases for its points. As a Calvinist, a subscriber to the five "solas" or "alones" (grace alone, faith alone, Christ alone, Scripture alone, to God be the Glory alone), I am bothered by what I observe in the Christian churches today...
...and the Holy Spirit by this blog often brings conviction of my and my church's complacency in its labor of worship...
In these following two posts, Ingrid of Slice gives us a parable of two churches, and each church in the evangelical world is represented largely by one of the two.
Here is church 1.
Here is church 2.
Which one is best represented by your church? Do the members of your church have any inckling of or respect for Whom they are coming to worship? Who does the music actually praise--regardless of its style? Men or God? Do they even try to engage in *gasp* church discipline? One of the Ingrid's points that I greatly enjoyed is this: Does the church service attempt to connect you with the heritage of Christianity's history by the recitation of creeds? How much Scripture is read during the Service?
Look, I understand the hesitancy of a traditional mindset, but Ingrid's point is correct. Every church adheres to a set of traditions; it is a matter of which ones. It is also a matter of whether or not the traditions can be substantiated by the authority of Scripture.
People, we come to church, week by week, going through the motions. We come for the opportunity for socializing. We come to be entertained. Speaking from mine own experience, we do not come to worship the Almighty God, the One Who spoke our beings into existence, Who sustains us by the power of his Word, Who judges evil and wickedness, Who hates sin in its most minute forms, who quickened us from the dead by his grace and love and joined us in union to Christ...
Last night, at our fifth Sunday singing service, I had to face this harsh reality as I listened to a poem titled "Desiderata" distributed by our church leadership and read from the pulpit by a person who was not a member of our church. Its closing stanza began with this: "Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you concieve Him to be..." Where was the discernment and why was this endorsement of mental idolatry allowed to be read? My answer to this is a mere speculation: we didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings.
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4 comments:
Well said. Everything that happens during the worship service should be directed towards the Lord, and all things should be done while maintaining an appropriate degree of reverence for whom you are there to worship. We do not just “sing songs for our edification” we “worship the Lord in song”. We do not just “return a portion of our wealth” we “worship the Lord with tithes and offerings”. The message is God’s message, not the pastor’s message, not the purpose driven message, it is God’s Word read aloud and made real and familiar for the congregation. It is not a gleeful anecdote on how to deal with life’s annoyances, it is the declaration and explanation of God’s word to His people as revealed in scripture. Anecdotes and platitudes are baby formula fed to the disbelievers in order to fill the pews, give me the meat and potatoes. There are two things which should go on in a worship service; worship and declaration of the Word, to paraphrase Solomon “All else is vanity”.
“Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.” - Pluralism/Relativism
“You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.” - Pantheism
“Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be.” - Pantheism/Idolatry
Wow, and I can even get it on a wall plaque!
"Who you consider God to be?" Well, I consider her to be a cantelope and spent some time in the produce aisle paying due homage this morning. Good grief! What kind of heresy has made its way into Christ's church? This is theological poison. Thank you for posting this. Badly needed.
Brent,
Does one have to be a Calvinist to be worried about these same issues or does Calvinism provide some greater expectations? The same issue exists in all Christian churches, it's just the question of whether or not they have become irrelevant due to it or how close they may be to becoming so. I don't mean at all to be critical of Calvinism here, but to point out how serious is the problem you describe in all Christian churches, provided you accept that a nonCalvinist can be a Christian too.
I would heartily agree with you that a huge dose of good old Calvinistic respect for the Sovereignty of God would do all of us well to consider. The greatest failure of my own denomination (SBC)is the failure to recognize the sequence of the four great questions of life. We spend no time on the first two and start with people on the third one where Jesus appears. You cannot discover the answers to the four great questions out of sequence; presenting Jesus to someone with no knowledge of a Sovereign Creating, absolute truth giving, God is a waste of time. If you don't know you are a sinner, you have no need of a savior. Your frustration is exactly on target for what are our church problems as I see them to be: the postmodern world now a defining force for all of us as individuals and churches, has cut the very legs out from under Christianity. Even though we may declare how much we exalt the "deity of Christ", without a firm basis in belief and respect for the sovereignty of God we are just sources of noise. In the answering the four questions of life, we are starting in the middle believing the audience of the Christian church has the same understanding of God as the Jews to whom Christ came.
Good thoughts.
As a nonCalvinist there is much to be gained from the Calvinist emphasis on the Sovereignty of God. Don't mean to pick a fight here, but to point out that we agree rather than disagree on an argument that transcends all labels.
Jerry
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