Posted on 11/30/2016 2:41:47 PM PST by SeekAndFind
A Canadian study has found that Mainline Protestant churches that have both modern worship services and teach a literal interpretation of the Bible grow faster.
(Photo: Reuters/John Gress)A parishioner cries as he signs a song of worship in the 7,000-seat Willow Creek Community church during a Sunday service in South Barrington, Illinois, November 20, 2005. Institutions like Willow Creek and Houston's Lakewood Church, each drawing 20,000 or more on a weekend, offer not just a vast, shared attraction but a path that tries to link individuals on a faith-sustaining one-to-one level beyond the crowd, observers and worshipers say.
The Canadian researchers who authored the study, "Theology Matters: Comparing the Traits of Growing and Declining Mainline Protestant Church Attendees and Clergy," surveyed 2,225 churchgoers in Ontario, Canada, and interviewed 29 clergy and 195 congregants. The study will be published in next month's issue of the Review of Religious Research.
"This study was important because it quantified empirically something that evangelical renewalists have been saying for decades — theology matters," said the Rev. Tom Lambrecht, vice president and general manager of Good News Magazine, a United Methodist publication, in an interview with The Christian Post.
Lambrecht, who served for 29 years as a United Methodist minister in Wisconsin, told CP that people who are interested in the things of God "want spiritual substance, not just a feel-good message or the opportunity to engage in community service." The Church, he said, has to to be distinct from and offer more than local civic associations and charities.
A solidly Orthodox Gospel that motivates churches to adapt their worship life and ministries to engage the next generation more effectively will be one where the message remains the same, but the means of delivery look different.
The study also showed that services at growing "churches featured contemporary worship with drums and guitars, while declining churches favoured traditional styles of worship with organ and choir."
"The use of contemporary Christian worship music is an example of that adaptation," Lambrecht said. "It has been around for over 40 years, yet some churches still resist making that adaptation." He added, however, that he's seen examples of churches that have more traditional styles of worship that are also yielding growth.
Pastor John Daffern who leads a Southern Baptist congregation in Columbus, Mississippi, calls himself "an apologist for the modern church."
(Photo: Chris Ellis Photograhpy)Josh Daffern, pastor of MTV Church in Columbus, Mississippi.
"I pastor a church that fits that mold," said Daffern, who leads MTV Church, in a recent interview with CP after he read some of the study's findings.
"We are theologically conservative, according to that study, and yet we are unashamedly modern and we are in a sustained period of growth in our church, and that is in direct contrast to many of the Mainline churches and even some evangelical churches.
"And I think the wisdom of that study is the two parts. There does need to be a modern sense of an expression of the faith while at the same time a conservative, Orthodox view of Christianity," he added.
Daffern said he believes that what church growth comes down to is how man-made controls are applied and both liberals and conservatives do that in their own way.
"For those who would say that we want to liberalize the tenets of Christianity and pick and choose which parts we are comfortable with and which parts we aren't, that's man exerting control over the theology," Daffern said.
"In the same way, a conservative theology yet a traditional approach is still trying to exert man-made control over religion, but it's not over the theology but over the cultural expression," which amounts to an approach which he describes as leaders saying, "Hey, we're going to stick to the Bible but we're going to pretend that it is the 1950s or the 1960s."
Those man-made controls rob the supernatural aspect out of Christian faith, he asserted.
Lead researcher of the study, David Haskell, said in an interview with The Guardian earlier this month that Christians who rely on a fairly literal interpretation of the Bible, "are profoundly convinced of [the] life-saving, life-altering benefits that only their faith can provide, [and] they are motivated by emotions of compassion and concern to recruit family, friends and acquaintances into their faith and into their church."
The study also found that only half of the clergy interviewed who are presiding over declining churches agreed that it was "very important to encourage non-Christians to become Christians," whereas every member of the clergy in a growing church felt that way.
A whopping 93 percent of clergy and 83 percent of worshipers from growing churches believed in the literal bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, compared to 67 percent of worshipers and 56 percent of clergy from declining churches. One hundred percent of clergy and 90 percent of worshipers from growing churches believe God does miracles in response to prayer, whereas only 44 percent of clergy and 80 percent of worshipers from declining churches say so.
"One of the reasons that people are drawn to modern churches is because people don't want to be part of a monument." Daffern asserted. "They want to be part of a movement. One of the greatest beauties of Christianity is that it is living and active."
"In my world, as a Southern Baptist pastor, I tend to deal with churches that have a conservative view of the Bible yet a very traditional mindset, often times it is monument to a bygone era of what they imagine to be the golden age' of Christianity in America."
Such churches are perfectly poised to come back were the 1950s ever to return, he mused.
However, the problem with some more modern churches, he added, is that people sometimes make the modern expression itself an idol of sorts.
"But the key is to be modern enough while not being a mere imitation of everything else around in culture."
Golly!
What a concept!!
Osteen
Oh?
Got a link to the List of these?
Acts 15th chapter.
Remember the early days when SCROLL and MARQUEE worked?
We’d forget to close commands and upset the rest of the thread for a while. Big fonts; RED ones; crazy Italians everywhere.
;^)
.
Nothing in your list is anywhere to be found in the word of Yehova.
They are all tenets of a purely man made, man worshiping false “Faith.”
.
Yeah; Pharaoh's daughter had HER hands full!
Oh?
To be 'delivered' from WHAT???!!??
She was SINLESS doncha know!
Well we don’t need to get sarcastic about it.
Anyhow, we can see Jesus’ gracious answer to the bit of over-eagerness shown by the woman who certainly had the bragging rights if she wanted to be the proudest Jewish mother evah... that’s an example of how He delivers.
The text says “woman” which probably doesn’t carry the tone well in English. It would be as though He said “Ma’am.” He had to step a bit out of His role as earthly son, because his job as heavenly Son had to take precedence here. A miracle was about to take place, a gracious answer to His mother’s urging.
Are you in the year 3100? LOL
Lol. Since you KNOW darn well what I was talking about, it DOES seem useless to talk any more, doesn’t it?
I see.
Now you know what I went through when I left that "other religion" I had to unlearn more than a little bit. 😆
Hey MM, I don't have any questions, if you know what I mean. And Arlene 66 is here in the Philippines now. 😃🇵🇭
Thanks but I don’t want to be a Catholic again. I love my church, the Nazarene. Jesus was from Nazareth. Growing up we never had Bible studies. We learned our prayers, the Saints, went to confession, went thru the sacraments, etc.
I drew closer to God then ever before in the Nazarene Church- it was filled with lot of former Catholics. I went to Bible studies and learned so much about the Bible, the Lord’s word. So many things that didn’t square up to Catholic man made laws.
The Catholic church and schools were good to me for discipline, morals, etc. But I couldn’t handle all the “guilt” that was piled on as well with their teachings.
Prove your claims are facts.
Unless you can document your accusations they can be written off as opinion.
But then so can the soi-disant reports be thus written off, leaving the field even again.
It really goes to show that the non-Catholic leadership has more trust and confidence in the maturity and discernment of their flocks than the Catholic church does.
Clearly the Catholic church doesn’t trust its membership to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit or have any wisdom or discernment.
There’s a lot of artifacts of self-aggrandizing bureaucracy that appear in that earthly body, in fact.
Is it something Jesus can’t or won’t get souls past to heaven? No indeed. It isn’t.
But we’re wrong to bow down to it.
Leaning on Jesus is a difficult thing for we fallen mortals to learn. One’s resources, one’s wealth, may seem to initially decrease when one does that. But this is the process of shedding the unneeded. Once the seed grows, it will flourish better than what it replaced.
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