Posted on 08/22/2005 6:26:33 PM PDT by sionnsar
As this piece points out, the churches where you are least likely to hear Scripture read during services are often those where the authority and teaching of Scripture are most emphasized, particularly evangelical churches. Strange, but true. And the writer’s experience is that even Anglican evangelical churches often read Scripture in their worship less.
My personal experience as one with a evangelical/fundamentalist background? My current REC church is the first of my church homes where Scripture is regularly read during services outside the context of the sermon.
I think this is one way is which evangelical-style worship impoverishes itself. As I’ve experienced first hand, there is a power to formally reading the raw word of God in worship. I'd much rather sit and listen to the reading of Scripture than sing one more “praise and worship” song. And Scripture reading is a prominent feature of Jewish and Christian worship through the centuries. Why cut oneself off from that?
Yes, I greatly value the role of Lector, of reading the Scripture lessons aloud during services.
My reading duties begin this Sunday.
;-)
My husband & I attended the funeral mass for a RCC friend not long ago. It was, for the most part, a Latin mass with scripture readings in English. We were disappointed to see that the priest had to look in the index to find the book of the bible from which to read the passage. His fumbling around was obvious to all and it was not because he was old and had difficulty seeing. He was middle aged and wearing glasses. He did not seem to have familiarity with the bible.
Do you wonder, when he is marriage counseling, if he tells the couple that making love to your spouse is equal to worshipping God? A new means of grace?
Man, you people are something else.
Yes, people are something else who are transformed by the grace of God into a new creation.
First you drain worship of all the joy of the Lord by making it a dry, boring scholastic exercise
Schola means in Latin "a cessation, leisure, rest from labor, particularly leisure from affairs of the state and manual labor, which may be spent in literary occupations, hence a conversation, lecture, explanation." It also means "a number of men who, by profession or office, belong to each other, and meet together." (Freund's Levrett's Latin Lexicon)
That sounds like an apt explanation of the duty of Christians to come together on Sunday to listen to the Scriptures and their explanation, to worship God, and to refrain from labor by resting. I don't think this dry or boring at all - it is rather an exicting Divine adventure.
In the Catholic Church, the proper name of the choir of singers is the "Schola Cantorum". Perhaps singing the Psalms in praise of God is a "boring scholastic exercise".
Dry to me is singing insipid songs where we speak the voice of the Lord in the first person. But that is just me.
and now you bring your misanthropic attitudes into the bedroom.
That is the first time that I have heard placing the order of affection of God - Family - Self as being misanthropic! So if we are not self-indulgent we are being misanthropic?
Remind yourselves of Isaac fooling around with Rebeccah
I'm ignorant of any knowledge of this "fooling around". Please enlighten me.
Prov.5:18-19
To be delighted by one's own wife and to abhor prostitutes and adulterers (Proverbs 5.15, 17, 20) hardly seems comparable to directing Christians to "spice up your love life" with Victoria's Secret.
Maybe its just me, but if a man is truly delighted with his own wife as encouraged by Solomon, he has no need of fantasy visual aid lingerie.
or the whole Song of Songs
The Song of Songs is an allegory of the love of Christ for His Church - of old the people of Israel by blood, and now the people of Israel by faith in the blood of Christ.
or even that woman hater Paul in 1 Cor. 7:3.
1 Corinthians 7.3 states quite simply that marriage creates an obligation of conjugal union. It has nothing to do with making marriage center around eroticism.
Worship is a joyous occasion and so is marriage. Both have an ecstatic component to them that if missing or ignored render the experience wasted.
Ecstasy - "an emotional or religious frenzy or trance-like state". Yikes! The word is in the Bible! Maybe the Holy Ghost overlooked it while inspiring the sacred writers?
That's why the fastest growing churches
Its easy to grow fast on the gospel of a fat wallet, full belly and empty testes. That is exactly what man wants to hear. "For many walk, of whom I have told you often (and now tell you weeping) that they are enemies of the cross of Christ: Whose end is destruction: whose God is their belly: and whose glory is in their shame: who mind earthly things." (Philipians 3.18-19)
We on the contrary: "But our conversation is in heaven: from whence also we look for the Saviour, our Lord Jesus Christ, Who will reform the body of our lowness, made like to the body of his glory, according to the operation whereby also he is able to subdue all things unto himself. Therefore my dearly beloved brethren and most desired, my joy and my crown: so stand fast in the Lord, my dearly beloved." (Philipians 3.20-4.1)
Last I checked, Victoria's Secret still was not heaven.
also have the largest array of ministries.
How is ministry related to ecstasy? Only when Pastor Bob does some horizontal counseling of the married women of the Parish in his office, is he ministering to their ecstatic "needs", from what I can tell.
They are ministering to the whole person, not just the head.
My Church ministers to God, not man. God ministers to man, not the Church.
If you love your spouse you want to do what pleases them
No, you want to do what is right for and by them. There are many physically and mentally "pleasing" things that are repulsive sins because they stem from concupiscible disorders.
just like if you love the Lord you want to do what pleases Him. You don't go to church in an "old bathrobe", why would you think it is any different with your spouse
So we should have sex only while wearing a nice suit and dress? Or maybe women should go to Church in a nice silk teddy, thong underwear and stockings with garters?
if you could afford something more alluring?
My wife is alluring. If I found clothes alluring, I'd be a clothes fetishist, like panty sniffers and sock sniffers.
It's called basic respect.
So now it is disrespectful to one's spouse to not dress her erotically and support a quasi-pornographic business that objectifies women?
Priests read from Lectionaries and Evangelaries at Mass. These are a series of pericopes from the Bible excerpted for liturgical purposes and not necessarily in a set order by chapter and verse. They aren't in the order they appear in the Bible, but rather in the order they are needed in the Liturgy.
At Masses for the dead, the readings vary depending on what day the Mass is being celebrated. The Priest probably was just looking in the wrong place and realized he needed to find the right one.
He even made a joke (which flopped) by saying that he and his wife were going home after service and do some worshipping.
I have no doubt that they may have started with that intent. Many have merely become money machines, with no regard for lost souls, no compassion for its older members, and no message of Redemption or Salvation. It is just a "seeker friendly" megachurch that makes tons of money for someone, and it doesn't appear to be for God's glory, but a man's.
you had to turn down that alley didnt you ?
ewww - just eeeewwwww
Thank you Hermann, it looks like we just didn't understand the procedure and that maybe the priest had other things on his mind at the time.
I'm not going to let my husband read this thread, he might want to switch denominations and attend an Assembly of God church. On the other hand, some christian disciplines are quite rewarding, he would be interested in this suggested way of worship. Have you and your wife considered the AOG? ;)
"So you determine a churches validity by how fast and large it grows?"
I don't see anywhere in my statement that says that. I simply agreed that we define success Biblically.
"If you need anything outside the realm of what's already been provided, then your efforts are already doomed to failure."
Whoa, then we are to go around naked? The scriptures are full of examples of brides being adorned for their husbands. Read the story of Abraham and Sarah. She was a trophy wife, a real "hotty". Even the Egyptian soldiers were after her and she wasn't wearing a 30 year old bathrobe. "She was very fair", so easy on the eyes that Abe was afraid.
"Because with true love (both for Christ and your spouse) anyting "external" is not needed."
So you don't shower, shave, brush your teeth and use mouthwash, deoderant, brush your hair and put on clean clothes for your wife like you do for the world?
A Mega-Church is generally a cult of personality revolving around the preacher.
If it was not, the congregants and Church would do the normal thing and the congregation would divide by creating daughter Churches to keep the size manageable. After all, if it is the message that is important, than the messanger is not important and there should be nothing holding one back from calving off new Churches.
Heh...we went to the funeral of a friend's RCC grandfather once. It was all in Korean.
"Remind yourselves of Isaac fooling around with Rebeccah
I'm ignorant of any knowledge of this "fooling around". Please enlighten me." Gen. 26:8
"My Church ministers to God, not man. God ministers to man, not the Church."
Eph. 4:12 says the work of the ministry is to edify, build up the body, i.e. the church.
As far as how you and your wife interact, "a chacun, son gout". I take the "Victoria's Secret" statement as an outrageous statement meant to shake people out of their complacency and taking each other for granted, but you seem to be threatened by it.
"Ecstasy" from the Random House Dictionary of the English Language is 1."rapturous delight. 2. an overpowering emotion or exaltation; a state of sudden intense feeling...". Now I don't know about you but often when I sing praises to my Lord or hear His Word read or hear a testimony to God's faithfulness I have an overpowering feeling of praise and gratitude for God. Often times when I'm with my wife or thinking about her I am in this state of sudden intense love for her, overpowering at times so that when I am away I have to call her just to hear her voice. That's called prayer when I think of my Lord that way. Now I suppose you can go to any dictionary or lexicon to find a meaning for the word that will drain its meaning of any usefulness in worship or love, but that's what I mean by "dry, boring, scholastic exercise."
Of course, you realize that this guy at the Wake Forest AoG isn't mainstream, right? He is only a Rick Warren wannabe.
I'm ignorant of any knowledge of this "fooling around". Please enlighten me."
Gen. 26:8
"Abimelech king of the Philistines looking out through a window, saw him playing with Rebecca his wife"
So you think this verse says Isaac and Rebecca were having sex? Do the words "looking out", strongly implying that the King was within and Isaac and Rebecca were outside in the open, change your view of this? You think they were having a literal "role in the hay" in the open view of all?
"My Church ministers to God, not man. God ministers to man, not the Church."
Eph. 4:12 says the work of the ministry is to edify, build up the body, i.e. the church.
"in order to perfect the saints for a work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ"
The work of ministry is minstering to God, not to men. The Church is built up by bringing more men to minister to God, not by ministering to men. The only ministry to man is that of reconciliation from sin (2 Cor. 3.18-4.1, 5.18-20), so that a man might be reconciled to God and become glorified by Him by then ministering to Him. This might be called the ministry of rescuing man from himself, not the ministry of indulging man in himself, which is the health, wealth, and prosperity gospel.
"Ecstasy" from the Random House Dictionary of the English Language is 1."rapturous delight. 2. an overpowering emotion or exaltation; a state of sudden intense feeling...".
"Feelings! Nothing more than feelings!"
Rapturous delight and overpowering emotion involve the loss of reason and the control of the rational powers over the concupiscible appetites. The belly, emotions and generative organs gain triumph then over heart, mind and soul and race for sensitive and mental pleasures as the highest good.
Now I don't know about you but often when I sing praises to my Lord or hear His Word read or hear a testimony to God's faithfulness I have an overpowering feeling of praise and gratitude for God. Often times when I'm with my wife or thinking about her I am in this state of sudden intense love for her, overpowering at times so that when I am away I have to call her just to hear her voice. That's called prayer when I think of my Lord that way.
Intense feelings are prayer? Aren't intense feelings just intense feelings? And aren't feelings of all thing most suspect to deception by the demons of the air and the false Angel of Light?
The Pharisee had intense feelings of gratitude. "I thank thee God that I am not like other men ..." Was he praying? Our (OUR, not MY) Lord didn't think so.
Now I suppose you can go to any dictionary or lexicon to find a meaning for the word that will drain its meaning of any usefulness in worship or love, but that's what I mean by "dry, boring, scholastic exercise."
I know exactly what the word means. I'm wondering why you think it is a good thing to experience taking leave of the senses in this life.
"Do the words "looking out", strongly implying that the King was within and Isaac and Rebecca were outside in the open, change your view of this? You think they were having a literal "role in the hay" in the open view of all?"
Of course they were outside, that's what the verse says. What do you think they were playing, hopscotch? Abimelech says "look she's your wife, why did you say she's your sister". Now why would he know she was Isaac's wife if they weren't doing something husbands and wives do?
God created emotions, feelings. He wants us to worship Him with our whole being including our emotions. That is what the poetry and music of the church is for. It involves our emotional response to God, weeping and rejoicing. That does not mean you shut off reason, in fact to understand the emotional response, heightens the experience.
Guaranteed OT and NT readings at mass.
"My Church ministers to God, not man. God ministers to man, not the Church."Matthew 20:25 But Jesus called them unto him, and said, Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them.How is it that your church ministers to God ?
26 But it shall not be so among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister;
27 And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant:
28 Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.
What is it that you (and your church) do for Him ?
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