Posted on 05/17/2004 7:06:39 AM PDT by qam1
VIEW MEGACHURCHES AS SLICK, IMPERSONAL
For evidence of generational upheaval these days, you might skip over the usual suspects -- sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll -- and consider instead Christianity.
Two decades after baby boomers invented the suburban megachurch, which removed crosses or stained-glass images of Jesus in favor of neutral environments, their children are now wearing "Jesus Is My Homeboy" T-shirts.
As mainline churches scramble to retain young people, these worshippers have gained attention by-creating alternative churches in coffee bars and warehouses and publishing new magazines and Bibles that come on as anything but church.
But does a T-shirt really serve the faith? And if religion is our link to the timeless, what does it mean that young Christians replace their parents' practices?
The movement "has a noble side," said Michael Novak, the conservative theologian at the American Enterprise Institute. He remembers how much he enjoyed the Christian comic books of his youth. He compared the alt-evangelicals to missionaries, who "feel they've learned something valuable from their faith and want to share it" using the native language.
For many in this generation, the worship style of their parents feels impersonal: not bigger than their daily, media-intensified lives, but smaller. Their search is for unfiltered religious ex-perience.
"My generation is discontented with dead religion," said Cameron Strang, 28, founder of Relevant Media, which produces Christian books, a Web site and Relevant magazine, a stylish 70,000-circulation bimonthly that addresses topics like body piercing, celibacy, extreme prayer, punk rock and God.
Strang, a graduate of Oral Roberts University, is in some ways a model alt-evangelical, with two earrings, a shaved head and beard. He left a megachurch, he said, because he felt no community at the slick services. Now he attends an alternative church in a school gym, with intimate groups and basketball after services.
This stylistic shift is critical, said Lee Rabe, pastor at Threads, an alternative, or "emerging," church in Kalamazoo, Mich. Where megachurches reached out to baby boomers turned off by church, the younger generation often has no experience with religion. They need to be beguiled, not assuaged, Rabe said.
"The deity-free 'church lite' of the megachurches, that's the last thing these people want," he said. "They want to talk about God. It's hard-core, not in a fire and brimstone way, but it has to be raw, real."
The changes are often more stylistic than doctrinal. Many alt-evangelicals espouse conservative theology, but reject the censure of some churches. Strang sees this as a blueprint for an evangelical left.
"We're all sinners," he said. "Your sin isn't any worse than my sin. We don't say, 'Stop the horrible gays.' You want to reach them, you don't want to protest them. If we looked like goody-two-shoes, clean cut, we couldn't have a conversation with our lesbian friend at the coffee shop, because she couldn't relate."
Increasingly, this conversation borrows from pop culture, in the same way that hip secular culture borrows the cabala and the cross.
Critics say this engagement comes at a price. Timothy Williams, 48, a pastor at Sound Doctrine Ministries, a non-denominational church in Enumclaw, Wash., sees flirtation with pop culture as a capitulation to sin. "More and more, the church is seeking to be like the world around it," said Williams, who has written a pamphlet denouncing Christian rock. "But the Bible says that anyone who becomes a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. If we're going to be relevant or on the world's level to draw people, we might as well give free beer in the parking lot."
But evangelicals have long used pop culture and new technology to spread their gospel, said Stephen Prothero, chairman of the religion department at Boston University.
Christian tracts handed out in the 19th century were one of the first mass media. In the 1930s, the evangelist Charles Fuller used the new medium of radio to broadcast his sermons. Four decades later, the Jesus movement of the 1970s adopted the vibe of the 1960s counterculture.
The actor Stephen Baldwin, a born-again Christian, has just directed a DVD called Livin' It, pairing extreme sports with faith testimony, from which he hopes to spin skate Bibles, clothing, CDs and Bible-study guides, all tied to a non-profit youth ministry.
"This could be the first get-down rock 'n' roll, cool Christian brand," he said.
The underlying romance is familiar from any Nirvana video: the Christian as rebel or outsider, misunderstood, struggling against a world of conformity, commercialism and manufactured pleasures.
"It's a countercultural thing," said Tim Lucas, 33, pastor of an emerging ministry called Liquid in Basking Ridge, N.J. On a recent Sunday, Lucas wore a Hawaiian shirt and used images from The Lord of the Rings movies and a clip from Amadeus in a sermon about the book of First Samuel.
"They identify with being an underground movement, which is what Christianity was in the beginning," Lucas said of his congregation. "Living out a life with Christ at the center draws a lot of flak. Not a lot of people will celebrate that."
The movement away from middle-of-the-road theology and worship mirrors a trend on college campuses, where growing numbers of students claim either no religion or strong religious affiliation, with the middle ground shrinking, said Alexander Astin, director of the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA, which last year completed a national study of students' beliefs.
In the survey, more than 70 percent of students said they prayed, discussed religion or spirituality with friends, found religion personally helpful and gained spiritual strength by trusting in a higher power.
As long as it's God worship and not self worship or world worship then you have a point. You cannot seriously believe that watching Along Came Polly is about worshiping God. If you think that pleases Him then we are not talking about the same God.
I apologize jtminton. I misread your statement to say that Jesus' sermon should not be preached about rather than what you probably intended: That Jesus would not have preached about it.
For the past six months or so I have been watching a church of mainly older people die rather than give up their old hymns, old organ, and old building.
We have been losing younger families at the rate of at least one per month even though the pastor and the music director were trying their hardest to create a blended service for everybody.
This past Sunday it all came to a head. The "sentimentalists" as they call themselves have won the fight. They will keep their worshiped but crumbling building they can't afford to repair; their precious pipe organ,which is not repairable; and their really old music.
They will lose the pastor, assistant pastor, music director, pianist, children's director and secretary. They will also be losing most of the money that has been keeping things afloat.
Those who have been doing the work and paying the bills are starting a new church. They are losing virtually everybody under the age of 60 and one couple in their 80"s!
No prob!
Nor could people believe that telling a story in which a samaritan is the hero was something that belonged in a proper sermon.
Storytelling, whether through telling them or showing movie clips, are not in themselves used to be "about worshipping God." They are about communicating truth, just as Jesus used stories to communicate truth.
You're right, from the reviews I've read I can't envision how "Along Came Polly" could be used in a worship service to communicate truth, unless it were used to illustrate than refute the unspoken values the world looks for. There are many other movies that could better serve that purpose.
I think it can't be done. I think using the clip says that seeing these movies must be okay. Unless the clip is used in a negative way and being preached against.
I'm not sure it is fair to compare Jesus' use of parables as being similar to a contemporary church using hollywood movies to make a point. Maybe it is.... but I don't know.
One more thought.... every time a church shows a clip from some movie.... they've paid a royalty. There are distribution houses for these clips.
I am offended by movies -- even clips -- in church. (With exceptions like The Passion of the Christ.) If fellow church goers think I am wrong then they should still care about the conscience of their "weaker brother" and refrain from bringing movie clips to church. They can watch them at home. But that's never the response I get. They defend their movies like they are their god. I do not wish to worship Hollywood. I don't even respect Hollywood. I now go to a different church.
I am not even sure it is legal to the extent they do it. Movies are under copyright laws.
It's just plain wrong.
You can even buy the clips with topical suggestions on how to use it in a sermon from Willow Creek, and then they'll take care of the royalties.
What do they say about showing entire movies to a 60 - 80 member youth group?
The movement is about packaging worship. I think it's just like the money changers in the temple.
Willow Creek is just one of several that are in the business of selling church. They would argue that they provide a service for small churches. Helping promote the gospel and all that. And they will make a convincing argument.
But they're selling ideas. They've set up a network of churches and all that. You join the network and you get discounted prices for their "products". If it has to do with church... they have a way to market it to other churches.
I took a guitar class from Stephen Curtis Chapman's guitar player there once. Pretty cool. Took classes on building Church bands, coordinating, the roll of band members in worship and the like.
They are a big church with 20k members or so. A performing arts theater for a sancutary, and the slickest services you would ever want to see. They have their arts seminar about this time every year. And thousands of staff members go there every year to " get ideas", and to get training.
I am sure he did.
Funny thing is, I've attending several different denominations in my lifetime. I am not that picky. I love traditional and contemporary services. I just don't like the new-new cntemmporary, packaged Hollywood style services. YUCK! I think they are a slap in the face of our holy God. Honestly.
He led them to the promised land. Do you have a scripture where God specifically says that Moses would lead them in or into the promised land ? Or have we read that into it . We do know he was to lead them out of Egypt, and to the promised land but I can not think of a specific verse that said he would lead them into it.There may be , but I can not recall one
As for the intercession of Moses for His people ... don't you believe we are led by the spirit to pray for those in our charge? God ordains prayer.
The purpose of prayer is not to change God's will but to conform ours to His. Since God knows all things past present and future, He knew that if He threatened to destroy the Hebrews , Moses would intercede for them. The true nature and Character of Moses' as shaped and developed by prayer
Perhaps Moses was tired and angry and spiritually drained , and God wanted to renew the enthusiasm for the journey and the love for this people So Moses prayer was one of the means that God used to bring about His purposes for Moses' life, and for the Hebrews.
Consider the temptation that it could have been to a man of a carnal nature to allow the destruction of the nation of Israel and become the Father of a new nation ?
We do not know the condition of Moses emotions or spirit at this time , but God knew and He chose to bind Moses to the Nation with that prayer.
To believe that God "changed His mind" is to deny the attributes of God.. Immutability and the words of Scripture
Mal 3:6 For I [am] the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.
Num 23:19 God [is] not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do [it]? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?
1Sa 15:29 And also the Strength of Israel will not lie nor repent: for he [is] not a man, that he should repent.
Hbr 6:18 That by two immutable things, in which [it was] impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us:
Hbr 13:8 Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever
Jam 1:17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.
KJAM if God is mutable and changes , why would you believe the promise of salvation?
Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the rhema of God. The issue here is not specifically the scriptures but specifically the revelation of God. Certainly God uses scriptures but in context this is not a prop for the Scriptures but a prop for the interpersonal nature of God's working in our salvation process. Just my 2 cents anyway.
Do you understand the compromise of the gospel that is done in Willowcreek to have that growth?
There is no worship time on Sundays because worship makes the unsaved "uncomfortable", they allows a Muslin to preach there on their podium . Their Sunday service is "seeker friendly" there is no meat there for the saved.
James MacDonalds church is growing by leaps and bounds because he is getting those that are saved and come out of willowcreek . The saved want to hear the word preached, they do not want platitudes.. so Willowcreek is more tares than wheat .
But this is exactly what happens when men think they are in charge , and that they save people .They have market studies and target populations , and they compromise the gospel that does save.
I don't think it's those old peoples job or calling of the Lord to accept any whim that the church decides to follow. I just don't. But most staffs in most churches in this day and age do. And most will tell you that the thing that really keeps their church from "breaking out" whatever that means, is because of all the senior adults in the church.
It is too bad that the staff of your church can not see that maybe God is using those old Saints to warn them
A smart man will open a church right down the street , and preach the full gospel every Sunday , pretty soon your leaders will not have to worry about the interference of the oldsters.
Oh yeah... as you read farther in this thread the things I've said... that will become evident I think.
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