[George W. Bush]

Does everything have to be deconstructed to the lowest common denominator?

Looks like the milk-sippers must be catered to. Ignore the needs of meat-eaters. They aren't important.

SBC and others have an ongoing and escalating debate on this topic. They seem to be reaching the conclusion that if you don't build up your members in strong doctrine and thorough teaching, you will lose them. What merit to a worship service that only offers fundamentals? Why should someone want to join such a church? Why support something that recycles the same seeker-level material every few years and never progresses to full doctrine? If people can only get full doctrine (meat) at their bible study, then why go to church at all if they know they're only going to hear an inane variant of some simplistic sermon over and over? Maybe for variety, you can mix in a screening of Passions of the Christ (no warnings about the unscriptural portions though) or maybe discussion of the latest (My) Left Behind movie/merchandise offering?

If your primary worship service caters only to the milk-sippers, how can you expect a sound membership? I see this in my local church. You wouldn't believe the kind of mischief it leads to. I would observe that the soundest members will be driven out by those who don't want to be governed by scripture or study doctrine. Not talking about Calvinism/Arminianism here, I mean any doctrine. Then they start the usual refrains about how they're opposed to teaching doctrine because it's divisive. Of course, what you then have are a group of people who hold entirely different ideas about scripture and Christian life, namely members of a church who are not and have never been brethren in any sense of the word. And the first major crisis that arises, they'll be fighting like cats and dogs.

The idea that the Sunday morning worship should be no more than a seeker-friendly evangelical outreach is fundamentally unsound. If you only offer milk at your primary service, your flock will be weak and childlike. And they won't be able to resist false and divisive doctrine.

Got milk?

[xzins]

There is nothing that says a sermon or service cannot be designed to feed both ends of the spectrum.

HOWEVER, there is nothing wrong, if there are multiple services, to have them focused on different things.

There's nothing unscriptural, illogical, or immoral about it. It's one of those do it if it works for you kind of things.

After all, we are free.

[Gamecock]

Teaching doctrine is not only Biblical, but essential in growing mature Christians.

Part of the muddled thinking in much of the church was brought about by an abandoning of doctrine. All of a sudden the guy in the pew can't even recognize that there are cults circaling Christianity that use the same "words" as Christians, but those words have different meanings.

We have abandoned perfectly Biblical terms for catch phrases that make the church seem less daunting.

I'll bet every person sitting in any church in America participates in some hobby or profession that has a precise vocabulary that others in the same activity share and know the definition of, and newcomers learn as they become, more advanced.

Whether golf, fly fishing, medicine or law. Quilting or making preserves or blogging, every activity has a language. Why are we afraid of perfectly good biblical words?