Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Megachurch
43,500 weekly attendance
Posted on 08/27/2013 11:53:37 AM PDT by NYer
Megachurch. Two young ladies. Both had left the Catholic Church. Both were now attending “megachurches.” We had a good chat together. I wanted to understand their reasons for why they left the Catholic Church for a megachurch.
Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Megachurch
43,500 weekly attendance
I was at the bank and somehow I got into a spiritual conversation with two Hispanic executives that worked there.
When I asked why they exchanged the Catholic Church for the megachurch, they gave me a number of reasons:
Although these two ladies didn’t articulate it explicitly to me, I could tell that they were very proud of their new churches. I could also discern in them a surprise that I am so “spiritual” and yet I am very excited about being Catholic. They assumed the “with it” people were leaving Catholicism for the bigger and better and deal.
I asked them what they miss about being Catholic. They replied with two answers:
I asked both about the Eucharist: “Don’t you miss the Eucharist?”
This question didn’t phase them one bit. “Oh we still have communion. They pass out little crackers and cups of juice. I like this better because I thought drinking from one big cup is icky. Spreads germs.”
“But in the Catholic Church,” I replied, “we believe that the Eucharist is the real Body and Blood of Jesus?”
I may as well have said, “Don’t you know that there are Martians in my back pocket.” She was unaware that the Catholic Church taught this. No idea.
This, my brothers and sisters, is the crux of the problem. These girls were raised as Catholics, but did not know about the Eucharist. They did not know that the Eucharist is God. They did not understand the Holy Eucharist is the center of the Catholic tradition.
So when they compare our ho-hum Catholic music and pedestrian sermons to snazzy well produced musical productions and highly polished bulleted sermons from handsome professional speakers…where are they going to go?
If they had believed that the Holy Eucharist is truly the Lord Jesus Christ, then they would have stayed. This is the task of the New Evangelization if there is going to be one. Can we communicate the mystery of Eucharist. If we fail in that, everyone is leaving the building.
Godspeed,
Taylor
PS: I don’t mean to suggest that having the Holy Eucharist is an excuse for bad music, bad vestments, bad architecture, and bad sermons. The Eucharist is like a precious diamond. It deserves a platinum setting…not a plastic setting. We can’t say, “Well, we have the Eucharist – so you’re forced to stay and have a miserable experience every Sunday.” We can’t keep the sacraments hostage to mediocracy.
PPS: With 1 billion strong, the Catholic Church is the real megachurch!
Pope Francis at Rio de Janeiro
3 million people
Right. So the truth is objectively unknowable. I understand. I can ask for inspiration from the Spirit, study the Scripture and be convinced that I am right. Even if I am wrong. But it doesn't matter.
That's quite a system.
I am trying to figure out if you believe God is working in you to perfect you. If you believe grace is transformative.
There is no point to trying to argue higher level things if you don't believe the lower level ones. Do you believe Mary is the Mother of God?
Exactly my point. The only way to know that you are "saved" is to walk the walk. You can be deceiving yourself.
No.
Why do you try to equate "grace" with "believing"?
Because God does.
You’re batting a thousand.
Intellectual assent is not saving faith.
True faith produces works as evidence of that faith being active. It is not completed by the works as in apprehending salvation.
Salvation itself is by grace through faith in Christ and NOT OF WORKS.
Paul could NOT have been more clear about it.
There is a difference that escapes Catholics about working out our salvation in meaning to become more Christlike in our salvation that we now have, and working out our salvation to earn it.
We are not saved by works nor are we kept by works. (Galatians 3, which I have already posted here before)
Jesus said the work of God is to BELIEVE Him who sent Jesus.
You say this, but also say that you do not agree that faith must be accompanied by works.
You contradict.
Romans 8:9 You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.
If Catholics don't believe that anyone but certain representatives have the Spirit, then precious few of them are saved.
ALL the saved have the Spirit of God in them and when you do you KNOW it.
Grace is saving. The Holy Spirit transforms us into the image and likeness of Christ.
Thanks. I agree (more or less).
But I don't know what Iscool believes. Maybe the Holy Spirit has convinced him of some other truth.
Not so. There are many who will say to Jesus, Lord, Lord, did we not perform many wonders, etc. and Jesus tells them that He never knew them.
Adding works to mental assent can deceive someone into thinking they are saved when they are not.
Salvation, being born again, changes one from the inside, not the outside. Lot was called *righteous Lot, hardly a title I would confer on him and I doubt many people of ANY religion would consider HIM saved. But God knew.
The Pharisees kept the law perfectly but were white washed tombs.
God prepared works in advance for us to walk in, that is true, but the fruit of the Spirit is not works, but rather Love, joy peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
Now, tell me. What good works does Catholicism teach we have to do to be saved and how do you know when you've done enough, and how does that pay the penalty of death that our sin demands?
Are you trying to lead down a rabbit trail here or something? The Greek word there that is translated Scripture is used 24 times in the New Testament. Perhaps just a little study on your part would help?
OK. So I might believe myself to have faith and show it by good works, but am completely deceived anyway.
So how do you know that you are "saved"?
The Pharisees kept the law perfectly but were white washed tombs.
I thought no one could keep the Law perfectly, that it was only there to convict us?
What good works does Catholicism teach we have to do to be saved and how do you know when you've done enough, and how does that pay the penalty of death that our sin demands?
They same works you would use to see if your faith is true (unless you just go by a warm fuzzy feeling inside), when we die and are rewarded (though we can have a good idea if we have fruits of our faith, as long as we aren't deceiving ourselves), and it doesn't.
Right. So the truth is objectively unknowable. I understand. I can ask for inspiration from the Spirit, study the Scripture and be convinced that I am right. Even if I am wrong. But it doesn't matter.
Westminster confession
All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all (2 Pet. 3:16); yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation, are so clearly propounded, and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them (Ps. 119:105, 130).
So you agree? We can never know anything other than the bare essentials and it doesn’t matter.
It seems to me that if Scripture study can never lead us to objectively-understood truth and it generates the amount of hostility we see here on things like Calvinism threads, then maybe we should limit the reading of Scripture.
Because you may have thought He meant the church?
Ephesians 1:22 And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, 23 Which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all.
Ephesians 5:30 For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.
1 Corinthians 12:27 Now you are the body of Christ, and members in particular.
Catholics have serious problem with that whole eating Christ’s flesh thing. Next thing you know they will be eating each other or something.
I'm eating Chinese tonight.
Quite true.
"[In Revelation] it just says he [the angel] offered the incense at the same time."
In Revelation 5:8, John depicts the saints in heaven offering our prayers to God under the form of "golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints." [The Jerusalem Bible has it as, "bowls full of incense made of the prayers of the saints."] So if the saints in heaven are offering our prayers to God, then they must be aware of our prayers: they present them to God by interceding for us.
And if the prayers being offered were not addressed to the saints in heaven, but directly to God? Even then, it only shows that the saints are aware of our prayers even when they are not directed to them!
Either way, you can see from Revelation 5:8 that the saints in heaven do actively intercede for us. We are explicitly told by John that the incense they offer to God consists of the prayers of the saints. Prayers are not physical things and cannot be physically offered to God. Thus the saints in heaven are offering our prayers to God mentally. In other words, they are interceding.
"I have no argument at all about praying in one accord, in agreement, with anyone with whom I can communicate here on this earth."
But why would you exclude the members of the Body of Christ who are actually with Christ in Heaven? Christ's Body is not made of clumps of live cells and organs, interspersed with clumps of dead cells and organs. No, Christ is fully alive, and those who have gone on before us are not to be thought of as 'dead'.
(Matthew 22:31-32) "Have you not read what God said to you, 'I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? He is not the God of the dead but of the living."
But, you say, "... that still does not justify a practice that is neither commanded or endorsed by Scripture."
Jesus actually demonstrated this for us on Mt. Tabor when He communicated with Moses and Elijah. What do you think they were, dead?
The only ones who have no part of this, are the souls n Hell, And this is, as Jesus taught, there is a "great chasm" between them and us. And since the basis of this constant intercommunion in the life of Christ which we share, the damned are excluded from all this circulating love and prayer because they are not united with us in Christ.
In your church, do you say the Nicene Creed? Do you believe in the doctrines of the Trinity and an orthodox Nicene Christology and so forth? (I'm just looking for a point of clarification here.)
Jesus Himself communicated with those who had gone before; St. Paul explained that we are all as close as members of one Body. Members of one Body influence each other, benefit each other, rejoice together, are in living, effective contact with each other.
I can expect that you'll end up saying "But Mrs Don-o, that Scripture doesn't mean quite as much as you think it does." And I'll be replying "But metmom, that Scripture doesn't mean quite so little as you think it does." This is always going to happen when you have two people with two minds at work.
So how can such disputes ---which are incessant among people who love Scripture --- be resolved? I would say, "How has the Holy Spirit guided the Church?" (You knew I was going to say that!!)
If you know the history of the first millennium-and-a-half, you know that myriads of things were disputed; we have tons of written documentation of matters they argued about; but nobody ever disputed that we pray to and for and through and united with saints on this earth and in the homeland of Heaven, and angels as well, in Jesus Christ Our Lord.
We know that all are alive, because we and they are alive in Christ, one in the Spirit, and together form one Body.
Most Christians worldwide understand it this way (Roman Catholic + Eastern Orthodox + Oriental/Coptic Orthodox + Anglicans and a few others) -- so the most ancient and most widespread communities of the Church are in accord, going all the way back to the the Catacombs of St. Pricilla, where you can find a drawing of Mary with words "Sub tuum praesidium" (We fly to thy patronage) 3rd century AD,illustrating the intercession of Mary.
Either the modernist no-Mary no-saints no-angels Christians are right, and the Holy Spirit was asleep at the wheel for a millennium and a half?? Or --- it's the ancient Christians who were right, and the moderns too prone to abandon the shared Christian life.
Seriously, if it were that important, do you not think that God would have told us about it or to do it?"
Seriously, I'm saying He did.
Seems to me Jesus Himself answered that question rather succinctly.
“Then said they unto him, What shall we do, that we might work the works of God? Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.” John 6:28-29
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