Due to my line of work, I am unable to attend church every other weekend. So, being able to attend church is important to me. I look forward to it. Do we have the best church you could find? No. Of course not. Do we get expository preaching? Not really, no. And I'd prefer that. but as far as I know (and forgive me for saying it this way) it's "the best game in town".At least so far.
See, yesterday our head pastor preached on 2 Corinthians 13. Now again, he wasn't expository, and our associate pastor tends to be more that way.
Before he went to the passage, he spent a good portion of the half hour or so talking about our "vision statement". That sounds too much like "Mission Statement" to me, but it's essentially "go get the unchurched..." (read sinners, or lost people) "...and turn them into faithful followers of Christ". Well, ok. Of course, I'd prefer just quoting the Great Commission.
Anyway, we heard about our "vision statement", and then moved to the idea of "transforming our town for Christ". Well, ok, but how are we going to do that? Take the gospel to them, proclaiming sin, righteousness and judgement as Paul said? No. We get them to come to church. And in his silence about how to get the message to them, I can only surmise that "it (the gospel) will get to them somehow". That's kind of how Purpose Driven works (or should I say doesn't work).
Other statements I heard were "We are going to have a meeting. You need to come because we have come to a "Y" in the road and need to decide if we are going to take the high road or the low road". Mix in a statement about "wowing" our visitors. That's where he really started scaring me. Why am I envisioning belly dancers and "hula praise teams"?
This has me bothered. Hopefully I'm wrong. It was two years ago (and change) that I left my former church of 90 or so because our pastor had left and the worship team had taken over and shoved contemporary worship down our throats. Pragmatism. Health by increased numbers. I also left because of an iron-fisted (near)-founding member who got sucked into Warren's philosophy. If anyone was "boss", it was him. Diotrophes on steriods.
Two years later and my wife finally has joined me at the new church. And I have joined.
Now this.
I really hope this is a case of me seeing things wrongly because I've spent so much time reading about Warrenism, the Emergent church movement, etc. I really do hope so.
But that "we gotta wow 'em" thing just scares me.
No sir, we aren't there to "wow 'em". We're here to proclaim the Gospel. It is our duty to spread the seed and trust God with the results. We present the law to a lost soul, which acts as a mirror. Then when they see they don't measure up to God's standard (perfection) and help them understand their destiny without Christ, we then show them the solution which is Jesus as the One Who paid the penalty for our sin.
If they will hear that, wonderful! But if not, what ware we "wowing them" for?
The "High Road" isn't followed by "wowing" anyone. It's by worshiping God through obedience to what He has told us to do -- proclaim the Gospel with clarity and simplicity.
And, you know, he does that in general. To his credit, he mentions sin, condemnation and the need for conversion. That doesn't fit the Warrenism mold.
I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
But I hope we don't drift away from the biblical Gospel to "Purpose Driven".
The Gospel is what God uses...
2 comments:
Brother, I cannot tell you how much of a blessing it is to have found a place where expository is not only the norm but is the only teaching style allowed.
That is the m.o. of all Calvary Chapels and we have been very very blessed to have found one in our area with a super solid pastor at the helm.
You might consider looking into whether or not there is one in your area, you can search by state, etc at this link.
http://www.calvarychapel.com/?show=Churches
Thanks for the support. I kind of questioned the wisdom of posting this here but I'm not attacking my church. I love my pastors but there are things that I see there that in the past have pointed to bigger problems, biblically.
As I mentioned in my post, my wife recently started going to my new church each week. Before, she went there on my weekends off work (when I'd go). On the weekends that I worked she'd go to our old church. It's been tough on her because she grew up moving around all the time and never had much for roots. She wants that badly now and the main problem she had with changing is related to that. So imagine her turmoil if we changed again! I can understand what the Lord meant when He said what he did about serving the Lord and marriage. When you are married you obviously have to consider your wife. So, I'm learning to do that...and maybe that's best for this reason: it forces me to face an unpleasant situation instead of packing and leaving. That demands growth and development of a backbone...at least in my case.
Of course there is no way of knowing what the meeting is about for sure without going. I could be wrong. Again, here are the pieces....
1. our worship pastor left. My understanding is that he preferred hymns; he grew up on them. Part of the reason he stated had to do with "worship styles". We have two services; one contemporary, one trad. Some contemporary has been leaking into the trad.
2. Our head pastor was discussing the need to change our "terminology" away from biblical (sin, repentance, etc) because, alledegedly people don't or can't understand those terms (that is really an insult).
3. Gotta "bring people in to send them out" and we gotta "wow em!"
4. On our worship leader's last Sunday, we talk about "a wye in the road".
Again, I could be mistaken. And I'd really rather not go to that meeting; I tend to do one of two things -- either chicken out from saying anything or lose control of myself. Not much in the middle. I'm a control freak.
His KId: I checked and the closest churches related to yours are in the Chicago area. I'm a few hours away unfortunately.
To both of you. Thanks for your prayers and encoruagement. I hope I'm just borrowing trouble. I'm so tired of seeing churches adopting Warrenism and integrating contemporary music (which uses the words "I, me, my" way too much). I'd rather hear music about God's character and attributes. With our music pastor there we haven't seen much contemporary leaking into the trad but we'll see what happens now...
Blessings to you both.
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