I'm taking Todd Stewart's class on Discovering Biblical Christianity at church right now and we had our first class on Sunday. I was a little disappointed at the low attendance, but was pleased with the discussion we had. However, I'm somewhat stunned by the articles that Todd handed out for us to read as homework before the next session.
One was taken from Christianity Today and the other from the Leadership Journal (both published by the same group). I am not personally very familiar with either of these publications, but I am aware that their reputation for reliable evangelical information is not untarnished. However, both of these articles were superb and sound like just the sort of thing I would rant about (though, these were much more reserved in their tone).
The first is titled "Amusing Ourselves on Sunday," which was an editorial posted on Christianity Today October 8, 2007. The article centers around our entertainment culture and how churches no longer seek to change lives as the primary goal, but to sell Jesus as product. This has long been a complaint of mine. I'm not opposed to showing video clips in church, for example, but if you do it so frequently that people are more interested in which movie you're going to bring into the sermon this week than the substance of Christ and Him crucified and resurrected, the church is failing.
The second is titled "iChurch: All We Like Sheep" by Skye Jethani in Leadership Journal (Summer 2006, Vol XXVII, No. 3, Page 28). This article centers around the consumer church. Like the iPod, there are coming new venues for church that essentially allow you to pick your play list and tailor an individual experience. In a certain sense, I suppose, that's very attractive, but the danger is the same as the American church has been suffering for decades: growing individualism at the cost of diminished community. Jethani uses a case study of a couple that left his church because his church no longer offers the right services for their teenagers. He uses that to illustrate how Christian culture is really more oriented around shopping and T-Shirts for Jesus than it is about life-changing personal relationship with Jesus. Ultimately, he concludes, he failed as pastor convince them of the worth in engaging in the community and hopes that the pastors of their next church will do better.
In a sense, both of these articles vindicate Terri and I for choosing to stay with New Hope. We have both been fundamentally at odds with the direction the leadership seemed to be pursuing. However, we felt that it was important to stick with a church unless we had a clear opening to leave and join another community. No such opening has come. It would have been easy to seek Grace Baptist or University Christian since I have friends at both and I believe both of those churches are relative sound and solid. But I just couldn't convince myself that leaving on the basis of my own disagreement when the church we were at was just as sound and solid, just going about things in a way I didn't happen to be happy with.
It's also vindicating in the sense that the church leadership seems to be changing direction in one that would be more in line with my understanding of what a church is to be. I fervently pray that my prayers in this will be answered in that I become myself more in line with God's teaching on the subject and that the church does the same.
I'm very much looking forward to the remainder of this class.
Amen.
Leave a comment