Posted on 03/19/2008 6:27:57 AM PDT by Dutchgirl
We left our last denomination because of its apostasy. Because they ignored, reinterpreted and twisted the Word. Because they hid top level goings on from the pews. Because of their political correctness and Biblical incorrectness. Because of their very close ties to other apostate denominations.
The fact that a few months before he went and got himself arrested, marching in the demonstration ( and wearing his collar) in NYC supporting the Roe decision.....well, that helped also..
He conducts a Christmas Eve service dressed in burlap with rope around waist. Host is served off of crude clay dishes. Processional is guitars and peace banners. Lord's Prayer sung in calypso. Everyone in sitting in pews is properly humbled.
Young pastor gives teen-age Walther Leaguers a chant (free verse) play for rehearsal with the play to be performed at a future church service. All about starvation in Bangladesh. All anti-American....the world starves, we eat.....you get the drift. Play aborted by church board after parents, including me, loudly protest.
Fast forward to the Sunday morning service after MLK assassinated. Church jammed. During mass guilt sermon, young pastor points here and there at congregation...."and YOU pulled the trigger"....."and YOU pulled the trigger....."and YOU pulled the trigger".
Immediately, three people get up and walk out, an usher, the township assessor (heavy church donor, hah) and myself.
When the church board realizes that contributions are down and pledges are being cancelled, the young minister is gone. He is now where he should be, heading a Lutheran old peoples' home where he can live out his dream of social justice and do-goodishness without too much harm.
The ailing pastor returns, the heavy-hitter donors return, I return....and all is well-again in the world.
Mr. Obama should know that we three congregants walked out during ONE sermon. Obama sat through 20 years of much worse sermonizing. Yet he and his wife remained glued to the pew. He's fooling no one despite all his contrived disclaimers. He was in agreement with "Reverend" Wright, or he was too weak-willed to walk out. Undoubtedly both.
Leni/MinuteGal
>entertainment on Sunday morning< This issue is hugely divisive.
I worship at the early “traditional” service because my musical tastes run to the classical, but I understand that a generation raised on rock is not going to embrace a culture so foreign when searching for a church home. The later “contemporary” service has bongos, etc. At some of our services we have dry crackers for communion, at others, we have fresh bread.
I occasionally watch the Catholic channel, and saw a documentary that ended with a montage of various congregations around the world coming up to receive communion. I was particularly struck by African churches that danced up to communion. I envied them their joyful tradition. Our occasional”liturgical” dance seems a little stiff...but God Himself encourages us to praise Him with the dance and the trumpet and with joyful noise.
In the front of every Methodist hymnal there are these “Instructions for singing.” I especially like #iv.
i. Learn these tunes before you learn any others; afterwards learn as many as you please.
ii. Sing them exactly as they are printed here, without altering or mending them at all; if you have learned to sing them otherwise, un-learn it as soon as you can.
iii Sing all. See that you join with the congregation as frequently as you can. Let not a slight degree of weakness or weariness hinder you. If it is a cross to you, take it up, and you will find it a blessing.
iv. Sing lustily and with a good courage. Beware of singing as if you were half dead, or half asleep; but lift up your voice with strength. Be no more afraid of your voice now, nor more ashamed of its being heard, than when you sung the songs of Satan.
v. Sing modestly. Do not bawl, so as to be heard above or distinct from the rest of the congregation, that you may not destroy the harmony; but strive to unite your voices together, so as to make one clear melodious sound.
vi. Sing in time. Whatever time is sung be sure to keep with it. Do not run before nor stay behind it; but attend close to the leading voices, and move therewith as exactly as you can; and take care not to sing too slow. This drawling way naturally steals on all who are lazy; and it is high time to drive it out from us, and sing all our tunes just as quick as we did at first.
vii. Above all sing spiritually. Have an eye to God in every word you sing. Aim at pleasing him more than yourself, or any other creature. In order to do this attend strictly to the sense of what you sing, and see that your heart is not carried away with the sound, but offered to God continually; so shall your singing be such as the Lord will approve here, and reward you when he cometh in the clouds of heaven.
As long as the songs are scripturally based, I will sing them in worship, because I am not there to entertain the congregation, or feed my own taste of vanity, but to worship God. I consider it part of the “unending hymn of praise.” If we were all true purists, we would still be singing psalms in the original Hebrew.
I like to think that good modern songs will stand the test of time. I just recently saw the film “Amazing Grace.” What was amazing was the story of how God used this great sinner, John Newton, to not only write that hymn, but put him in a position to influence Wilberforce and accomplish great things.
I’ve had a long route on religion.
MWT, Sr. was raised what is now called modern orthodox, but was then called Conservative, and actually comes from a long, long line of rabbis, as in so long, we are likely genetic descendant of Aaron. He become Reform as a young adult, then basically agnostic during Vietnam.
Mrs. MWT, Sr. is Sephardic, and from a fairly observant family from various locals in Mexico/South America. (Sephardi don’t really neatly break down into Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, but she was basically agnostic when she married MWT, Sr.) Members of her family have switched between being Roman Catholic and observant Jews basically depending on political winds.
I grew up in a rural Texas town, and religious training consisted of my bris (my uncle who was not only a doctor but a mohel), keeping Shabbos at home and going to visit grandma in Mexico on the high holidays and listening to people speak Spanish and Hebrew, neither of which I spoke.
Later, I went to summer camps in Long Island, where I grew to dislike fellow Jews as yankees.
It seemed all they did was smoke pot and have very large hair. (I do have to thank one lovely older teenage counselor with large hair for an amazing education that she gave a young, inexperienced, boy. The girls sure didn’t do THAT back in Texas!)
Being a very tall athletic guy, I did terrorize the summer Jewish basketball leagues in my day and amazed them with the fact that I could actually really saddle and ride a horse and could hit the bull’s eye with the .22 (although I got in trouble for calling it my “weapon” — MWT, Sr. spent years in the military, and I loved to hunt).
Anyways, I learned how to bluff my way through a religious service there, and to half-bend at the knees properly and at the right time, which was important.
I attempted to go to a more observant combo Yeshiva/secular education school in New York. I got “As” calculus and other math subjects and “Fs” in English and Hebrew. (I did learn to play Dungeons and Dragons by the light of the fire escape light in the hallway, which turned out to be a great thing.)
I was also picked on because I was approaching 7 feet tall, built like a Texas football player, and spoke like a hick (to everyone there), and was pretty much an outsider in general, as it seemed everyone was either related or knew each others’ family for 10 generations from Poland, and would talk in Yiddish behind my back.
Ergo, I was miserable and assumed I was hated.
I have since learned, I was one with the problem, having a Texas-sized chip on my shoulder. Live and learn.
In fact, I recently got an email from a fellow student — whom I “saved” from a beating by some middle eastern asshole by walking up and looking like almost 7 foot tall Texas football player — saying that everyone missed me at our 25th graduation reunion, and several more emails from others that said that all the really good stories were about me talking back to the teachers.
I did have a bar mitzvah, and stumbled my way through the Torah OK.
It was kind of embarrassing because, not only was I older than the other boys, I sucked at it in comparison.
Anyway, that wasn’t working out, so, at 17, Grandma, being unsatisfied with my religious training to date, offered to spring for a Orthodox yeshiva in Israel that specialized in taking Jewish kids with little or no formal religious training (read: borderline delinquents) and turning them into little Lubavitchers. Here again, did really well in math subjects, and started taking engineering subjects early. I could squeeze by on Hebrew, I think mainly because I had to start learning it to get around town and buy beer.
Yiddish still escaped me, but I learned all the cuss words.
Well, after 2 years I did OK, and was finally proud to be Jewish and felt like I belonged.
So I went to MIT, and chose to live in housing for observant Jews. This actually worked out really, really, well, and was one of the high points of my young life to date, and my alcohol consumption.
There was a point, however, where I wanted to join ROTC and be in the military like my father — he was a soldier’s soldier — two purple hearts, in the top 20 pilots for kills, and a string of very serious air medals from Vietnam.
MWT, Sr., the solder’s soldier, was not real keen on having a little Lubavitch son.
ROTC and eventual military service necessitated shaving my beard and certain other compromises on observance. I had a long discussions on this issue with various people.
And I decided to shave my beard, which caused a falling out of sorts with many of my friends.
Well, right after the shaving, I went to Israel for my sister’s wedding (she married a career IDF guy — who proceeded to tell me about how I could have served in the IDF as a US citizen and not shaved my beard — ahh, too late, I already signed up and was owned by Uncle Sam for 8 years).
Anyway, at the wedding in Israel I met a very good looking and athletic slightly older young lady who was a distant cousin of the my then-brand-new brother-in-law — who came in to see her parents, went to the wedding with them, but was currently attending MIT.
We were on the same flight back to the US.
Love was in the air. Good-looking athletic and (presumably) Jewish women attending MIT are, well, rare.
Well, despite being a born-and-bred citizen of Israel, despite serving in the IDF herself, despite having a Jewish father and a Jewish name, this young lady was a Christian of the Episcopal variety, just like her mother (who actually had a Reform conversion, but it didn’t stick), which I discovered about 6 months into falling in love.
There was some serious discontent, and I set about attempting to re-covert this young lady, which was a serious miscalculation on my part, as we went back-and-forth for some time, and eventually agreed to part ways.
The first Gulf War and a frolic-and-detour in Kosovo interceded, and I did my thing with only minor bodily injury caused by not paying attention to the unfriendly man with the long tube on his shoulder.
Anyway, I ended up in a hospital in Germany.
And who was the first person to show up? A beautiful athletic young Episcopal girl from Israel whom I still happened to love very much. She kissed me. We agreed to not discuss religion.
My roommate was a much more seriously injured soldier from Hawaii who started a Bible study, and I listened, not being able to leave.
Being a pushy asshole, I eventually interjected into the discussion, as it was My People’s book they were talking about.
We did Genesis and Exodus, and they learned a lot, and I studied a lot, so as to wow them with my Jewish prowess.
We next did Mark, which I tolerated, as the stories were interesting and I liked the guys, but I dismissed the stories as fiction, and then we worked on Letter to Hebrews, which candidly was fascinating and made me think very, very much that everything I thought I knew about Christianity was, well, wrong.
After two months, I went back to Saudi where I had essentially a desk job, as my vision was now questionable thanks to little bits of cockpit in one eye, and I was not content.
And I continued my correspondence with the beautiful athletic young Episcopal girl who was now working on her PhD in archaeology back home in Israel.
After much soul searching and prayer I was Baptized with water from a helmet by an Army chaplin. I have no idea what denomination he was, but he didn’t dunk me. I didn’t tell anyone.
I got a job with a major oil company (engineer) off shore of Saudi, and before I went I went to stay with my sister in Israel. Visited a beautiful athletic young Episcopal girl who showed me the sights of Israel.
I gave he a ring, and told her I agreed that the guy named Jesus was, in fact, the Christ, and that I had been Baptized.
Her family liked me OK.
My family did not like her OK, and, for a while, did not like me.
We got married in my sister’s backyard in Israel in the Jewish tradition, as, in my families’ eyes, she was at least Reform, albeit with incorrect ideas regarding the Jesus fellow.
Mrs. MWT agreed with my mother (a wise decision) to keep our house kosher, install a Mezuzah on the front door, keep Passover and the high holidays, and keep her mouth shut regarding our ideas about Jesus when she visits, all of which she does, out of respect for my mother. This is not a big deal for a girl from Israel.
We still go to Mexico for the high holidays, where I still am surrounded by people who speak Spanish and Hebrew. Mrs. MWT and our daughters understand them, and I still do not.
We dodged the circumcision issue by having only girls. Five of them now.
I have regrown my beard, mainly because I like it and have a nasty scar on my face.
We have decided it is improper for us to keep a true Orthodox Sabbath, but we sure do 99% of it. If I have to turn on a light, however, we turn on a light.
We went to an Episcopal church, but like most serious folks, left it for a Ugandan Anglican church.
bump
> If we were all true purists, we would still be singing psalms in the original Hebrew.<
True. How many people even know what musical instruments were used then or how to play them?
I think sometimes they use the music to try and reel in the younger set.
Just like fishing-sometimes you have to change what’s on the hook! As long as it doesn’t conflict with the bible.
No, you are supposed to go out and preach the Gospel. Your job is not to be fed. Your job is to feed.
legalism
...& tv cameras
“God’s word is powerful”
..and there is the key...a church where God’s Word is taught plainly and clearly.
peace
Are you preaching the gospel?
Oh yeah. I’m teaching the Book of Romans to my Sr High Sunday School class. I am also a lay preacher.
I spoke of gifts earlier. Some are not called to preach. Some are not called to pray in tongues.
>All of us, every one of us, are called to preach the gospel by living our lives so that the peace and love and joy of God show through us.<
From this link:
http://www.rmbowman.com/catholic/s970209h.htm
I have actually been asked by co workers why I am different.
Because I’m working hard and treating other people well regardless of who they are. I’m not telling blue jokes and gossiping about everyone. I don’t complain about my work. These are not my words, these are the words people used to describe me when they asked. They knew there was something different about me, they liked it and they asked about it.
I tell them it’s because I’m a christian. But I don’t out and out preach to them, because I am not called to preach like some people are. I would be a terrible preacher.
But in a church setting, you are usually free to talk about spiritual issues.
>But in a church setting, you are usually free to talk about spiritual issues.<
This is true, but I don’t attend church and I am not blessed with the gift of preaching as you are.
We reach out in our own way to friends and family. There are many ways to witness to others.
There are many churches too.
>There are many churches too.<
This is true. But my salvation doesn’t depend on whether or not I leave the house to go to church, as some have tried to make me believe in the past. I have actually been told I couldn’t possibly be a christian if I don’t go to church.
The gospel is powerful and He has the power to reach anyone. He can reach us through the words of others who don’t even have to be believers, strange coincidences and little everyday miracles. We don’t have to be in a building to hear from Him. He has all kinds of ways to grab our attention. It just depends on how badly you want to tune in to what he is saying and hear from Him.
No. It depends on your obedience. If you can say "I'm being obedient by avoiding church", you are taking a big chance.
Mat 7:21 Not everyone who says to Me, Lord! Lord! shall enter the kingdom of Heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in Heaven.
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