Posted on 11/30/2016 2:41:47 PM PST by SeekAndFind
A Canadian study has found that Mainline Protestant churches that have both modern worship services and teach a literal interpretation of the Bible grow faster.
(Photo: Reuters/John Gress)A parishioner cries as he signs a song of worship in the 7,000-seat Willow Creek Community church during a Sunday service in South Barrington, Illinois, November 20, 2005. Institutions like Willow Creek and Houston's Lakewood Church, each drawing 20,000 or more on a weekend, offer not just a vast, shared attraction but a path that tries to link individuals on a faith-sustaining one-to-one level beyond the crowd, observers and worshipers say.
The Canadian researchers who authored the study, "Theology Matters: Comparing the Traits of Growing and Declining Mainline Protestant Church Attendees and Clergy," surveyed 2,225 churchgoers in Ontario, Canada, and interviewed 29 clergy and 195 congregants. The study will be published in next month's issue of the Review of Religious Research.
"This study was important because it quantified empirically something that evangelical renewalists have been saying for decades — theology matters," said the Rev. Tom Lambrecht, vice president and general manager of Good News Magazine, a United Methodist publication, in an interview with The Christian Post.
Lambrecht, who served for 29 years as a United Methodist minister in Wisconsin, told CP that people who are interested in the things of God "want spiritual substance, not just a feel-good message or the opportunity to engage in community service." The Church, he said, has to to be distinct from and offer more than local civic associations and charities.
A solidly Orthodox Gospel that motivates churches to adapt their worship life and ministries to engage the next generation more effectively will be one where the message remains the same, but the means of delivery look different.
The study also showed that services at growing "churches featured contemporary worship with drums and guitars, while declining churches favoured traditional styles of worship with organ and choir."
"The use of contemporary Christian worship music is an example of that adaptation," Lambrecht said. "It has been around for over 40 years, yet some churches still resist making that adaptation." He added, however, that he's seen examples of churches that have more traditional styles of worship that are also yielding growth.
Pastor John Daffern who leads a Southern Baptist congregation in Columbus, Mississippi, calls himself "an apologist for the modern church."
(Photo: Chris Ellis Photograhpy)Josh Daffern, pastor of MTV Church in Columbus, Mississippi.
"I pastor a church that fits that mold," said Daffern, who leads MTV Church, in a recent interview with CP after he read some of the study's findings.
"We are theologically conservative, according to that study, and yet we are unashamedly modern and we are in a sustained period of growth in our church, and that is in direct contrast to many of the Mainline churches and even some evangelical churches.
"And I think the wisdom of that study is the two parts. There does need to be a modern sense of an expression of the faith while at the same time a conservative, Orthodox view of Christianity," he added.
Daffern said he believes that what church growth comes down to is how man-made controls are applied and both liberals and conservatives do that in their own way.
"For those who would say that we want to liberalize the tenets of Christianity and pick and choose which parts we are comfortable with and which parts we aren't, that's man exerting control over the theology," Daffern said.
"In the same way, a conservative theology yet a traditional approach is still trying to exert man-made control over religion, but it's not over the theology but over the cultural expression," which amounts to an approach which he describes as leaders saying, "Hey, we're going to stick to the Bible but we're going to pretend that it is the 1950s or the 1960s."
Those man-made controls rob the supernatural aspect out of Christian faith, he asserted.
Lead researcher of the study, David Haskell, said in an interview with The Guardian earlier this month that Christians who rely on a fairly literal interpretation of the Bible, "are profoundly convinced of [the] life-saving, life-altering benefits that only their faith can provide, [and] they are motivated by emotions of compassion and concern to recruit family, friends and acquaintances into their faith and into their church."
The study also found that only half of the clergy interviewed who are presiding over declining churches agreed that it was "very important to encourage non-Christians to become Christians," whereas every member of the clergy in a growing church felt that way.
A whopping 93 percent of clergy and 83 percent of worshipers from growing churches believed in the literal bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, compared to 67 percent of worshipers and 56 percent of clergy from declining churches. One hundred percent of clergy and 90 percent of worshipers from growing churches believe God does miracles in response to prayer, whereas only 44 percent of clergy and 80 percent of worshipers from declining churches say so.
"One of the reasons that people are drawn to modern churches is because people don't want to be part of a monument." Daffern asserted. "They want to be part of a movement. One of the greatest beauties of Christianity is that it is living and active."
"In my world, as a Southern Baptist pastor, I tend to deal with churches that have a conservative view of the Bible yet a very traditional mindset, often times it is monument to a bygone era of what they imagine to be the golden age' of Christianity in America."
Such churches are perfectly poised to come back were the 1950s ever to return, he mused.
However, the problem with some more modern churches, he added, is that people sometimes make the modern expression itself an idol of sorts.
"But the key is to be modern enough while not being a mere imitation of everything else around in culture."
Now for you thinkers, WHAT IS THE SOURCE OF TRUTH?
Obviously, God, and His material source is Scripture, which is the only substantive transcendent wholly inspired of God body of Truth.
Pro_20:12 Ears to hear and eyes to see—both are gifts from the LORD.
Jesus used those words often:
Mar_4:9 Then He said, “Anyone with ears to hear should listen and understand.”
Mar_4:23 Anyone with ears to hear should listen and understand.”
Mar_7:16 [Anyone with ears to hear should listen and understand.]
Now, there is a subtle change in His use of those words when we get to the book of Revelation. I will let you do your own research and thinking.
Your ignorance of Church history may be part of your problem.
The Church started when Christ invested Peter.
St. Peter (32-67)
St. Linus (67-76)
St. Anacletus (Cletus) (76-88)
St. Clement I (88-97)
St. Evaristus (97-105)
St. Alexander I (105-115)
St. Sixtus I (115-125) — also called Xystus I
St. Telesphorus (125-136)
St. Hyginus (136-140)
St. Pius I (140-155)
St. Anicetus (155-166)
St. Soter (166-175)
St. Eleutherius (175-189)
St. Victor I (189-199)
St. Zephyrinus (199-217)
St. Callistus I (217-22)
St. Urban I (222-30)
St. Pontain (230-35)
St. Anterus (235-36)
St. Fabian (236-50)
St. Cornelius (251-53)
St. Lucius I (253-54)
St. Stephen I (254-257)
The Canon of Scripture was establish about 325.
Projection is not movies on the wall ... and denial is not a river in Egypt. MGHMOYS you are working, always working, and full of pride in your works (27 pages? Hah!). I wonder what argument you will throw up to GOD at the Great White Throne of Judgment? Perhaps you will write a longer ‘paper’ and demand HE honor you for it! Then you can tell HIM how many times you ate his flesh and drank his blood ... work, work, work, claim works of righteousness which you have done. ... No wonder there will be gnashing of teeth!
And, BTW, I notice you ignore the catholic members who asserted that it was Peter’s profession which Jesus founded HIS body of bel;ievers upon, not the man Peter who very shortly thereafter denied Jesus three times ... this would be a good spot to post your list, old cow.
The Church started when Christ invested Peter.
.......................................
The Canon of Scripture was establish about 325.
Mat 7:21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.
Mat 7:22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’
Mat 7:23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’
But, lets get to the heart of the matter. What you are doing is claiming authority.
The early church went through many heretics who claimed authority. The were many books rejected and there were many as THE ISSUE WAS AUTHORITY. A lot of people claimed to know Jesus, or his 4th cousin Bert. Or I have a piece of the cross or his burial linen.
1) the authority stopped with the apostles. That is why it says “holy, catholic, APOSTOLIC church. The authority of all apostles is claimed, not just Peter.
2) The authority stopped at the apostles, those who had direct contact with Jesus.
But what does God say about the matter?
1Co 1:12 Some of you are saying, “I am a follower of Paul.” Others are saying, “I follow Apollos,” or “I follow Peter, “ or “I follow only Christ.”
1Co 1:13 Has Christ been divided into factions? Was I, Paul, crucified for you? Were any of you baptized in the name of Paul? Of course not!
Joh 6:65 Then He said, “That is why I said that people can’t come to Me unless the Father gives them to Me.”
THIS fella??
You mean the 'history' that Rome claims retroactively?
These 'Catholics' are; I should say; just a WEE bit more than mere MEMBERS!
Augustine
Basil
Bede
Cyril
Origen
Hilary
But like all swallowers of a lie, the poster must ignore those voices and hear with itching ears only what furthers the works based religion.
Up to it?! You have yet to provide any evidence that you can actually answer any of the refutations i put forth. Moreover, I have far more than 27 pages of rebuttal, by the grace of God, but all that is not even necessary, for the refutations here have exposed your utter lack of any reasonable argument. Instead you engage in the logical fallacy of argument by assertion as well as begging the question, supposing that continually posting the words at issue is refuting the arguments against your semiliteral understanding of them.
If you cannot even provide here what i said is needed then claiming you have 27 pages someplace that do can hardly be taken seriously.
But you can try, if you want to see them publicly refuted one by one. Go ahead, and we will see if you are "up to it."
Actually, once again the charge is one that applies to you. You actually have no historical argument, only another vain argument by assertion.
The Church started when Christ invested Peter. St. Peter (32-67) St. Linus (67-76)..
So this is your argument? Once again you are begging the question, presuming as a conclusion the very thing that needs to be proved. You list of "popes" does not make Rome the one true church, and in fact is reveals that are not.
The NT church never manifestly saw apostolic successors being voted for after Matthias was chosen for Judas (even though James was martyred: Acts 12:1,2), which was in order to maintain the foundational number of apostles (cf. Rv. 21:14) and which was by the non-political Scriptural means of casting lots. (cf. Prov. 16:33)
And it never taught or exampled that all the churches were to look to Peter as the bishop of Rome and the first of a line of supreme infallible heads reigning over all the churches, and having the last word in questions affecting the whole Church.
And as for history, even Caths scholars, among others provide testimony against RC propaganda:
Avery Dulles considers the development of the Papacy to be an historical accident:
“The strong centralization in modern Catholicism is due to historical accident. It has been shaped in part by the homogeneous culture of medieval Europe and by the dominance of Rome, with its rich heritage of classical culture and legal organization” (Models of the Church by Avery Dulles, p. 200)
Klaus Schatz [Jesuit Father theologian, professor of church history at the St. George’s Philosophical and Theological School in Frankfurt] in his work, “Papal Primacy ,” pp. 1-4, finds:
“New Testament scholars agree..., The further question whether there was any notion of an enduring office beyond Peter’s lifetime, if posed in purely historical terms, should probably be answered in the negative.
That is, if we ask whether the historical Jesus, in commissioning Peter, expected him to have successors, or whether the authority of the Gospel of Matthew, writing after Peter’s death, was aware that Peter and his commission survived in the leaders of the Roman community who succeeded him, the answer in both cases is probably 'no.”
If one had asked a Christian in the year 100, 200, or even 300 whether the bishop of Rome was the head of all Christians, or whether there was a supreme bishop over all the other bishops and having the last word in questions affecting the whole Church, he or she would certainly have said no." (page 3, top)
Catholic theologian and a Jesuit priest Francis Sullivan, in his work From Apostles to Bishops (New York: The Newman Press), examines possible mentions of “succession” from the first three centuries, and concludes from that study that,
“the episcopate [development of bishops] is a the fruit of a post New Testament development,” “...the evidence both from the New Testament and from such writings as I Clement, the Letter of Polycarp to the Philippians and The Shepherd of Hennas favors the view that initially the presbyters in each church, as a college, possessed all the powers needed for effective ministry. This would mean that the apostles handed on what was transmissible of their mandate as an undifferentiated whole, in which the powers that would eventually be seen as episcopal were not yet distinguished from the rest. Hence, the development of the episcopate would have meant the differentiation of ministerial powers that had previously existed in an undifferentiated state and the consequent reservation to the bishop of certain of the powers previously held collegially by the presbyters. — Francis Sullivan, in his work From Apostles to Bishops , pp. 221,222,224
Paul Johnson, educated at the Jesuit independent school Stonyhurst College, and at Magdalen College, Oxford, author of over 40 books and a conservative historian, finds,
The Church was now a great and numerous force in the empire, attracting men of wealth and high education, inevitably, then, there occurred a change of emphasis from purely practical development in response to need, to the deliberate thinking out of policy. This expressed itself in two ways: the attempt to turn Christianity into a philosophical and political system, and the development of controlling devices to prevent this intellectualization of the faith from destroying it....
Cyprian [c. 200 – September 14, 258] came from a wealthy family with a tradition of public service to the empire; within two years of his conversion he was made a bishop. He had to face the practical problems of persecution, survival and defence against attack. His solution was to gather together the developing threads of ecclesiastical order and authority and weave them into a tight system of absolute control...the confession of faith, even the Bible itself lost their meaning if used outside the Church...
With Bishop Cyprian, the analogy with secular government came to seem very close. But of course it lacked one element: the ‘emperor figure’ or supreme priest... [Peter, according to Cyprian, was] the beneficiary of the famous ‘rock and keys’ text in Matthew. There is no evidence that Rome exploited this text to assert its primacy before about 250 - and then...Paul was eliminated from any connection with the Rome episcopate and the office was firmly attached to Peter alone... ...There was in consequence a loss of spirituality or, as Paul would have put it, of freedom... -(A History of Christianity, by Paul Johnson, pp. 51 -61,63. transcribed using OCR software)
Eamon Duffy (Former president of Magdalene College and member of Pontifical Historical Commission, and current Professor of the History of Christianity at the University of Cambridge) and provides more on the Roman church becoming more like the empire in which it was found as a result of state adoption of (an already deformed) Christianity:
The conversion of Constantine had propelled the Bishops of Rome into the heart of the Roman establishment...They [bishops of Rome] set about [creating a Christian Rome] by building churches, converting the modest tituli (community church centres) into something grander, and creating new and more public foundations, though to begin with nothing that rivaled the great basilicas at the Lateran and St. Peter’s...
These churches were a mark of the upbeat confidence of post-Constantinian Christianity in Rome. The popes were potentates, and began to behave like it. Damasus perfectly embodied this growing grandeur. An urbane career cleric like his predecessor Liberius, at home in the wealthy salons of the city, he was also a ruthless power-broker, and he did not he did not hesitate to mobilize both the city police and [a hired mob of gravediggers with pickaxes] to back up his rule…
Self-consciously, the popes began to model their actions and their style as Christian leaders on the procedures of the Roman state. — Eamon Duffy “Saints and Sinners”, p. 37,38
For the so-called successor to Peter, as Damasus 1 (366-384) began his reign by employing a gang of thugs in securing his chair, which carried out a three-day massacre of his rivals supporters. Yet true to form, Rome made him a "saint.
Damasus is much responsible for the further unscriptural development of the Roman primacy, frequently referring to Rome as ''the apostolic see'' and enjoying a His magnificent lifestyle and the favor of court and aristocracy, and leading to Theodosius 1 (379-95) declaring (February 27, 380) Christianity the state religion.
Falsified history of the Roman church was also instrumental in the development of her unScriptural papacy and power. RC historian Johann Joseph Ignaz von Döllinger:
In the middle of the ninth century—about 845—there arose the huge fabrication of the Isidorian decretals...About a hundred pretended decrees of the earliest Popes, together with certain spurious writings of other Church dignitaries and acts of Synods, were then fabricated in the west of Gaul, and eagerly seized upon Pope Nicholas I at Rome, to be used as genuine documents in support of the new claims put forward by himself and his successors.
That the pseudo–Isidorian principles eventually revolutionized the whole constitution of the Church, and introduced a new system in place of the old—on that point there can be no controversy among candid historians. - — Johann Joseph Ignaz von Döllinger, The Pope and the Council (Boston: Roberts, 1870) Then you have the unScriptural Development of the distinctive Catholic priesthood More by the grace of God.
And thus you have the recourse of no less than Manning:
It was the charge of the Reformers that the Catholic doctrines were not primitive, and their pretension was to revert to antiquity. But the appeal to antiquity is both a treason and a heresy. It is a treason because it rejects the Divine voice of the Church at this hour, and a heresy because it denies that voice to be Divine....I may say in strict truth that the Church has no antiquity. It rests upon its own supernatural and perpetual consciousness. Its past is present with it, for both are one to a mind which is immutable. Primitive and modern are predicates, not of truth, but of ourselves....The only Divine evidence to us of what was primitive is the witness and voice of the Church at this hour. — "Most Rev." Dr. Henry Edward Cardinal Manning, Lord Archbishop of Westminster, “The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost: Or Reason and Revelation,” (New York: J.P. Kenedy & Sons, originally written 1865, reprinted with no date), pp. 227-228; ttp://www.archive.org/stream/a592004400mannuoft/a592004400mannuoft_djvu.txt.
Premise 1: If the Jews misunderstood Jesus, he had a duty to correct them.My response has been, as stated above, that your premises are flawed. That has not required a comprehensive analysis of the entire passage. Only a demonstration of specific errors, which I have provided, as follows:
Premise 2: They understood him in the Catholic way of understanding, and He did not correct them,
Conclusion: Therefore the Catholic way of understanding this passage must be correct.
Mark 4:11,12 "And he said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables:That seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand; lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them."
Fake news is nothing new??
Who knew!!!
There's a LOT in the sixth chapter of John that folks miss!
Jesus was asked a DIRECT question; and He gave a DIRECT answer:
John 6:28-29
Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?”
Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”
It appears that later on, a similar question must have been asked, for John writes again...
1 John 3:21-24
Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us.
John 13:7 NIV
Jesus replied, “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.”
Just keep doing the work!
I missed this piece of propaganda, for the historical reality is that In reality, scholarly disagreements over the canonicity (proper) of certain books continued down through the centuries and right into Trent, until it provided the first "infallible," indisputable canon — after the death of Luther.
Thus Luther was no maverick but had substantial RC support for his non-binding canon. Furthermore, the (standard) RC objection against the Protestant lack of an assuredly true and reliable complete canon via an infallible magisterium would also apply to the majority of RC histor.y
Or just maybe by now you should actually state your basis for authority and argument for it rather than asking us to figure out your cryptic dance.
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