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
I don’t rest on me; I rest on what God does. So I am like the tax collector, except having received the forgiveness. Perhaps I was a bit crude in my approach and I hope to get it better in the future... but I do not recant the gravamen of my assertion. That such broad-brush accusations at a system that has many nuances of God’s grace in real life are fundamentally based on pride and thus are blind to the work of God.
Teaching kids to be iterate does not take hours a day as the failed public education system makes it, wasting huge amounts of the kids time in mindless, irrelevant pursuits and teaching methods.
The modern education system is only though to be the norm amongst educrats. Throughout history, kids learned to read at home from their parents, even when they only did their studying for a few hours a day in the winter.
Any biography of those who learned at home can attest to that.
By the way I would tell a lot of Roman Catholics the same thing as they peer over into the evangelical Christian community. I ain’t playing “Good guy, bad guy” here. In a sense we all are bad guys, but some are being saved too and getting less bad as we approach glory, still learning until that final moment of final reconciliation with the Lord.
Anyhow, there are a lot of unfounded assumptions on both sides of the “divide.” Some Roman Catholics get the ecumenism founded on a powerful, barrier-smashing Jesus Christ, like Mrs. Don-O does. They are much easier to spiritually work alongside, than with than those who don’t.
Being the eternal spiritual optimist I am, I even see something else potentially in the cards that may stun us if it takes place. It happens that on the Roman Catholic side (if I understand it right) they have a prophecy that there are going to be a certain number of popes. Well, Francis is that last pope! I do not put it beyond God (with GOD all things are possible... note that does not say that with MAN they are... and yep this has to do with salvation) to raise up such a witness between Roman Catholics and evangelicals (I give better than even odds that it is going to be Baptists) that even the pope can’t deny it. There will be an ex cathedra announcement by Francis to the effect that salvation IS by direct faith in Jesus Christ to save one’s eternal life... and the walls will come a-tumblin’ down.
Catholics and so many others deny the freedom in Christ. They claim that the burden is heavy on the believer. It’s just another contradiction to what Christ said.
Matthew 11:30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
Three kids in their college’s honors programs is 100%, a better success rate than the public schools can do.
Homeschooling works, which is why all those people who lived before modern education came along and ruined them WOULD know how to read and write.
Accolades accepted.
It IS in Catholicism. There is NOTHING that you can do that's enough. There's always more to add to the mix, just to make sure.
And for all that, the best the average Catholic hopes for is a short a time in purgatory as possible.
I would suggest you study what God does to those who pollute service to Him with paganism.
Leviticus 20:6 And the soul that turneth after such as have familiar spirits, and after wizards, to go a whoring after them, I will even set my face against that soul, and will cut him off from among his people.
Psalms 106:39 Thus were they defiled with their own works, and went a whoring with their own inventions.
Ezekiel 6:9 And they that escape of you shall remember me among the nations whither they shall be carried captives, because I am broken with their whorish heart, which hath departed from me, and with their eyes, which go a whoring after their idols: and they shall lothe themselves for the evils which they have committed in all their abominations.
Ezekiel 23:30 I will do these things unto thee, because thou hast gone a whoring after the heathen, and because thou art polluted with their idols.
You may what to read all of Ezekiel 23 to see what “these things” are.
Amen, Amen, and Amen!
The purgatory concept is based on a human view of 1 Cor 3:12-13 and other passages having to do with various kinds of judgment encounters with Jesus in eternity.
My read: Because we will go into eternity short of completed actualization of reconciliation (we are reconciled in status) there will be a final encounter where all is squared between our souls and the gracious, all-forgiving, but never excusing Lord. This is where He will dry our tears; we will weep at the realization of how we disappointed the Lord, as well as in the realized comfort of the reconciling Lord. The heavenly Kleenex folks will have big business here, if I can use such a light hearted metaphor. If this is a “purgatory” we would be stupid to shy away from it. But I understand it as more of a final reconciling moment.
Cynical, cynical, bear, bear, bear.
Remember the milieu for this. The Old Testament, the Law. Where God used the Law to demonstrate His displeasure with sin. Lots and lots of rules, lots and lots of harsh penalties.
Now the Gospel power has come. IT takes care of the sin. God has full confidence in it. It’s His own promise after all!
My dear man, God has told us what is going to happen. I’m not sure where you are getting your information from but it’s not from Biblical prophesy. If you can give scriptural support for your beliefs let’s have it. Otherwise we have to take it only as man’s wisdom.
Dittos... lean not on your own understanding...
It should be really easy for you verga. Simply provide documentation and proof for your statements. Surely you have documented evidence for your position don’t you?
This would not stop the larger sweep of prophecy, Bear.
I am not introducing anything new here. Maybe you would be offended to see this “Whore” disappear (or you might turn on the Baptists for their role in this... I mention Baptists because they seem to be some of the most denominationally allergic Christians on earth... hardly ever does a Baptist boast of being Baptist). But this would not BE the Whore. It might prefigure the Whore in some of the things it did. The Whore is yet to come. Could you consider letting go of your idee fixe about the Roman Catholics and the Whore? Maybe Satan is charging your mind with so many accusations you can’t scope out what really is happening?
Catholicism teaches that purgatory is where the final purification from sins not confessed occurs through suffering.
It is totally unscriptural because without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins and where there is forgiveness, there remains no more sacrifice.
No one can be cleansed from sin by suffering.
If there is sin credited to your account when you die, tough lock. You are not saved and no amount of torment in anywhere can change that.
Well yes, that’s true but if I lived in southern France of a few centuries ago I might be running for my life in some high mountain valley for no other reason than I disagreed with prevailing Catholic interpretation of the Bible.
And yet suffering usually accompanies pushing Satan away, out of a life. I think we need to see the difference between a status salvation and a realized salvation. “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you.” I don’t have a pair of scissors sharp enough to cut that out of my bible. We fear and tremble lest we need to be chastised... not lest we lose our salvation!
I would love to see the scriptural support for that. As I have read scripture there will be no tears or pain there.
Well it says He’ll dry our tears.
I think you guys dance around a lot of scriptures and try to scope it away. What kind of experience do you think 1 Cor 3:12ff will BE then? La di da, okay that horrible area of my life is straw and will burn, but I don’t care? Well I beg to differ... we do not suddenly get transformed to zombies. That will be the LAST encounter with pain, however.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.