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
Would you please prove that either scripturally (book, chapter and verse please) or scientifically? Citing the scientific research on Jesus DNA would suffice.
This sounds excellent. Really excellent! I have been praying for their conversion. This is a joint Evangelical-Catholic effort. by the way. I find that people from different kinds of churches work and pray together very well in the pro-life movement. We have the BEST Catholic-Baptist alliance here.
Thanks for your "strategic vision."
If I may ask, pray for us!
And napping. Zzzzzzzz......
Wait…..what? There’s a different God now then there was during Old Testament times? I’m really hoping you didn’t want it to come across that way.
Not even close. It comes from the long history of the RCC accepting pagan beliefs from as far back as Babylon.
In my Hermeneutics, I use the principle of first use The first use of the word: church i.e ekklesia I do not choose to have man or a man-made Revelation 22:18 - 19 Clearly I did not make myself clear enough.
shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach
of a word in order to exegete the WORD.
is in Deuteronomy 4:10
corporation re-define the WORD of YHvH. Mat 5:18 "For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away,
That seems to be at least the time of the end of the Book of Revelation.
not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law
until all is accomplished.
Or there’s a whole lot of backbeddlin goin on. I think it’s coming down to what the meaning of is....is.
There’s an awful lot of -isms and -ists in that post, isn’t there?
What I see with the transubstantiation debate is a lot of hair splitting.
Catholics claim that in order to be saved, we have to eat the eucharist, the literal body and blood of Christ. And yet eating of blood is forbidden clearly through out Scripture. Eating of human flesh, strangely, is not forbidden anywhere directly that I can ever recall seeing, but it really goes without saying that it’s wrong.
And then there is the issue of the fact that the bread and wine LOOKS like bread and wine, TASTES like bread and wine, TESTS as bread and wine, and for all practical purposes IS bread and wine.
SO now there’s a quandary that Catholics and Catholicism has to explain away. Well, it’s only it’s APPEARANCE, we are then told. Well, then that fits PERFECTLY with communion being a ceremony/celebration of REMEMBRANCE with the bread and wine symbolizing the body and blood of Christ.
Demanding a literal interpretation of eating literal flesh and drinking literal blood demands contradicting and violating passages of other Scripture.
Adhering to a symbolic interpretation does not do that, it does not contradict the body of previous Scripture.
Salvation is b y faith, not by the works of the Law because by the works of the Law no flesh shall be justified. And Sacraments do not confer grace because if one has to do something, then grace is not grace but wages due for action performed. It is earned, not lavished.
Can’t be. That would be like slipping between opulence and opulence. We have been told there ain’t no opulence there.
There’s a town in CNY where the local Masonic Lodge shut down and became an Evangelical church.
God can do it.
One challenge that I’d like to throw out to Catholics, is to focus on Jesus and the Father for one month. No Mary anything.
I know it would be hard to do going to mass where Mary is mentioned, but aside from what cannot be helped in overflow from the mass, make it Jesus only.
I can’t help but wonder how difficult it would be for most Catholics.
Paul, that super apostle, the Pharisee of Pharisees, explains the purpose of the Law and that is to lead us to Christ.
Too many people think that keeping it earns salvation.
Galatians 2 and 3 explain it well.
Now, now. You know them higher ups in the RCC don’t technically own all that. So technically they get a pass on that “take no thought” thing. The don’t have to give it any thought at all! See! It’s all good. They’ve taken the vow of poverty. I mean look at em. They can’t even afford a pair of long pants most of um. They just don’t cut the bottoms of their shirts off so nobody notices.
Absolutely.
Aw man! There ya go messin up a whole good made up story with facts.
Great way to look at it.
We can pray specifically that people would blinded to PP's location.
That they would feel the evil that dwells in that slaughterhouse and they would find that they cannot enter it.
We can pray that those in a crisis pregnancy would encounter someone else BEFORE they get to that point of going there.
We can pray for exposure of the evil and policies of PP and confusion, discord, and mismanagement within the organization.
We can pray for funding to be cut. Starve the beast.
And of course, the salvation of those inside and conviction of what they are really doing. It's been know to happen.
Too many people think that keeping it earns salvation.
There is only ONE YHvH. He is the same forever. As there are many who reject the majority of the WORD of YHvH,
shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach
because their new god, jesus has replaced the old G-d.
John 6:63 It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.
But I suppose that Catholics will always try to insist that it’s literal. Not thinking much about the rest of scripture.
Ezek 3:1 Moreover he said unto me, Son of man, eat that thou findest; eat this scroll, and go speak unto the house of Israel. 2 So I opened my mouth, and he caused me to eat that scroll. 3 And he said unto me, Son of man, cause thy belly to eat, and fill thy bowels with this roll that I give thee. Then did I eat it; and it was in my mouth as honey for sweetness.
Jer 15:16 Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart: for I am called by thy name, O LORD God of hosts.
I fear there would have been a host of constipated Catholics.
But the meaning of TA's special status is debated and a source of much tsuris to some of my homies. A friend teaches, and has for many years, at, guess what, St Thomas Aquinas College. And one of the continual debates is the status of Thomas's thought with respect to framing/directing/controlling the conversation.
Interestingly those on the faculty (he reports) who are most devoted to Aquinas are least interested in the thought of JPII, presumably because he shows the "personalist" and Heideggerian approach too much.
And my friend, and many other Catholics, would agree with your attitude. I get razzed by one of the Friars here for the Heideggerian slant of my thought and exposition. BUT they let me teach nonetheless. And my impression from the one Polish friar I got to know a little (on his wall was a calendar of WWII warplanes -- you would have like this guy) was that JPII's thought arose from and reflected what was going on in Catholic theology in Poland. Good for the Poles, say I!
I DO think, that starting, probably, before Descartes western thought took a wrong turn. And I really think that more attention and openness should be given to Aristotle and the schoolmen.
And, once again, I think Feser's book would be a good place to begin. Yeah, he's combative, but he's funny with it.
John 6:30 begins a colloquy that took place in the synagogue at Capernaum. The Jews asked Jesus what sign he could perform so that they might believe in him. As a challenge, they noted that "our ancestors ate manna in the desert." Could Jesus top that? He told them the real bread from heaven comes from the Father. "Give us this bread always," they said. Jesus replied, "I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst." At this point the Jews understood him to be speaking metaphorically.
Jesus first repeated what he said, then summarized: "‘I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.’ The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’" (John 6:51–52).
His listeners were stupefied because now they understood Jesus literally—and correctly. He again repeated his words, but with even greater emphasis, and introduced the statement about drinking his blood: "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him" (John 6:53–56).
Notice that Jesus made no attempt to soften what he said, no attempt to correct "misunderstandings," for there were none. Our Lord’s listeners understood him perfectly well. They no longer thought he was speaking metaphorically. If they had, if they mistook what he said, why no correction?
n John 6:60 we read: "Many of his disciples, when they heard it, said, ‘This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?’" These were his disciples, people used to his remarkable ways. He warned them not to think carnally, but spiritually: "It is the Spirit that gives life, the flesh is of no avail; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life" (John 6:63; cf. 1 Cor. 2:12–14).
But he knew some did not believe. (It is here, in the rejection of the Eucharist, that Judas fell away; look at John 6:64.) "After this, many of his disciples drew back and no longer went about with him" (John 6:66).
This is the only record we have of any of Christ’s followers forsaking him for purely doctrinal reasons.
But he did not correct these protesters. Twelve times he said he was the bread that came down from heaven; four times he said they would have "to eat my flesh and drink my blood." John 6 was an extended promise of what would be instituted at the Last Supper—and it was a promise that could not be more explicit. Or so it would seem to a Catholic.
John 6:63 It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.
Are we to understand that Christ had just commanded his disciples to eat his flesh, then said their doing so would be pointless? Is that what "the flesh is of no avail" means? "Eat my flesh, but you’ll find it’s a waste of time"—is that what he was saying? Hardly.
The fact is that Christ’s flesh avails much! If it were of no avail, then the Son of God incarnated for no reason, he died for no reason, and he rose from the dead for no reason. Christ’s flesh profits us more than anyone else’s in the world. If it profits us nothing, so that the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Christ are of no avail, then "your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished" (1 Cor. 15:17b–18).
In John 6:63 "flesh profits nothing" refers to mankind’s inclination to think using only what their natural human reason would tell them rather than what God would tell them. Thus in John 8:15–16 Jesus tells his opponents: "You judge according to the flesh, I judge no one. Yet even if I do judge, my judgment is true, for it is not I alone that judge, but I and he who sent me." So natural human judgment, unaided by God’s grace, is unreliable; but God’s judgment is always true.
In John 6:63 "flesh" does not refer to Christ’s own flesh—the context makes this clear—but to mankind’s inclination to think on a natural, human level. "The words I have spoken to you are spirit" does not mean "What I have just said is symbolic." The word "spirit" is never used that way in the Bible. The line means that what Christ has said will be understood only through faith; only by the power of the Spirit and the drawing of the Father (cf. John 6:37, 44–45, 65).
Paul wrote to the Corinthians: "The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?" (1 Cor. 10:16). So when we receive Communion, we actually participate in the body and blood of Christ, not just eat symbols of them. Paul also said, "Therefore whoever eats the bread and drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord. . . . For any one who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself" (1 Cor. 11:27, 29). "To answer for the body and blood" of someone meant to be guilty of a crime as serious as homicide. How could eating mere bread and wine "unworthily" be so serious? Paul’s comment makes sense only if the bread and wine became the real body and blood of Christ.
The early Church took John 6 literally. In fact, there is no record from the early centuries that implies Christians doubted the constant Catholic interpretation. There exists no document in which the literal interpretation is opposed and only the metaphorical accepted.
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