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 hope I haven't crossed the line into sacrilege. I'm probably way, way over into Strangeness of the Faithful territory.)
That raises all kinds of speculative questions. Would we have to exclude every member of the Body of Christ, or just the BVM? Do I have to ask the people who are praying for us, not to pray for us anymore because we're just going straight to Jesus?
We address the Angels and Archangels and ask them to join us in praise in all Masses. I am realizing it would be hard to get an antiseptically isolated prayer here, even for experimental purposes.
For a month? Yeesh.
I can't speak for others, but I sure wouldn't do it. I suspect that he Catholics I know, rascally romanists that they are, would go in exactly the opposite direction: try to get EVERYBODY praying: Mary * Joseph, Peter, James & John, apostles, martyrs, cousins by the dozens, all the faithful who have gone on before us, that whole "cloud of witnesses," Grandma and Grandpa, everybody.
This doesn't seem to be the time to minimize the prayer community!
So, on to Maximum! Please pray for us!
Tagline to you!
John 20:30-31 Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
If a teaching is not found in Scripture, no one is obligated to believe it or follow it.
Being Holy Spirit inspired, God breathed, makes Scripture Truth. It can then reliably be used as the standard to measure all truth claims. If a truth claim doesn't agree with Scripture, it can be dismissed as false.
Catholics twist the term *sola scriptura* to mean things that it doesn't mean and they have been corrected time without count, and yet persist in repeating the same errors.
All faithful, well-informed Catholics believe that we are saved by grace, and by grace alone; the Church has always taught that, and it condemns as a heresy any idea which denies that fact.
Scripture teaches that it's by grace THROUGH FAITH IN CHRIST. FAITH is the mechanism by which salvation is attained, not sacraments.
Ephesians 2:4-9 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
Catholics can claim salvation by grace all they want, but until they agree with Scripture that it's through FAITH and not works, sacraments, or anything else they have to DO, they are not being in accord with Scripture about it.
Anything one has to do to apprehend grace, immediately puts it on the works level, something that is earned for behavior performed. It's wages due, not grace.
Gotta go for a bit.
Back later with a response.
[Jesus]said to them, "But who do you [humeis = "ye" or "you", plural] say that I am?" Simon Peter replied, "You [su = "thou", singular] are the Christ, the Son of the living God." And Jesus answered him, "Blessed are you [ei = "thou art", singular], Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you [soi = to thee, singular], but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you [soi = to thee, singular],you [su = "thou", singular] are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it. [19] I will give you [soi = to thee, singular]the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind [deses = thou might bind, singular] on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose [luses = thou might loose, singular]on earth shall be loosed in heaven."
Just reading through your post here, metmom, I wanted to ask you a couple things about it.
First you imply that if you can't detect something with your five senses, it can't be there. Then further on in your post you mentioned "faith". Do you believe in the literal presence of "faith" within some people? If you see a person of faith, can you see their faith by just looking at them, or do you just see a person,, and not their faith? If you placed a stethoscope anywhere on them, could you hear their faith? Can you smell their faith? Can you taste their faith? Can you detect their faith by touching them?
If the answer to all of these questions are "no" (as they certainly should be), and you cannot detect the presence of "faith" whatsoever by your five senses or any other physical means, but you are still convinced that faith can and does really, truly, literally exist within some people, why do you have trouble considering the possibility that Jesus really told the truth when He said that His Glorified Presence will be in His Holy Eucharist (in spite of the fact that we cannot detect that Holy Presence with any of our very limited human physical means)?
Um, I don’t think it means what you think it means.
http://biblesuite.com/strongs/greek/4983.htm
sóma: a body
Part of Speech: Noun, Neuter
Transliteration: soma
Phonetic Spelling: (so'-mah)
Short Definition: body, flesh
Definition: body, flesh; the body of the Church.
From sozo; the body (as a sound whole), used in a very wide application, literally or figuratively -- bodily, body, slave
Here it’s used again.
1 Corinthians 10:17 For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread.
Nope, they will say you’re wrong! It’s how they get Christ in them. The Jesus explained the rest.
Matthew 15:17 Do not ye yet understand, that whatsoever entereth in at the mouth goeth into the belly, and is cast out into the draught?
Just got back from my CT scan. Doc says the lung pic looks OK. So we're good to go.
First of all. Jesus didn't say "My Flesh" profiteth nothing. In John 6, He had just spent about 34 verses talking about the great profit in eating His Flesh. He's not confused about this. He is the Word Made Flesh.
He said "the" flesh profiteth nothing, which means, OUR flesh: our carnal, thud-headed, clueless, spiritless, graceless way of thinking: reliance on fallen humanity.
The "flesh" can refer to the intellect relying on its own powers, preferences, appetites and drives, and not relying of God. As you surely know, both Jesus and Paul often referred to "the flesh," not meaning "hrist's body", but rather "YOUR unredeemed mind, ya meathead!"
2. Eating the scroll. You don't think Ezechiel and Jeremiah actually ate a scroll on those occasions?
Now, I don't imagine that means chowing down on a pound and a half of papyrus. But yeah, I'm sure if it says they ate the scroll, they ate the scroll. Keep in mind that in Hebrew, even a very tiny small parchment --- like the little script of short verses written for the tefillin--- is called a "scroll," or even a "book".
I think when He says eat, He means eat. Just like His Jewish Mother used to say.
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Did you read the second half of that same post (#727)?
It says there (and in metmom's link) that that same Greek word ("soma") was also used in the very next chapter of Matthew, referring to the physical body of Jesus being obtained by Joseph of Arimathea and being placed in a tomb. (In other words, Jesus Christ's body was referred to there by that same Greek word, "soma".)
"When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who also was a disciple of Jesus. He went to Pilate and asked for the body [soma] of Jesus. Then Pilate ordered it to be given to him. And Joseph took the body, [soma] and wrapped it in a clean linen shroud, and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn in the rock; and he rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb, and departed." Matthew 27:57-60Are you saying that was NOT the literal physical body of Jesus Christ being referred to in that passage from Matthew 27:57-60?
Didn’t you see that he bolded “figuratively”?
>>Are we to understand that Christ had just commanded his disciples to eat his flesh, then said their doing so would be pointless?<<
Just can’t get past that physical flesh thing can you. NO, He was explaining that it was spiritual not physical flesh.
Really now, CynicalBear, do you actually think that Jesus Christ did not know that what He was referring to there was the waste matter, AFTER the benefits of vitamins, and minerals, and proteins, and other bodily health and cell building and sustaining elements were removed from the food, and retained and built into the healthy growing human body?
(Keep in mind, God created our bodies, and knows exactly what our bodies need in the way of healthful nutrients.)
Jesus also knows exactly what we need for optimal spiritual health, including, as He clearly said, His Holy Presence in His Holy Eucharist,and when He speaks about those things, we all should put our sarcasm and skepticism aside, and simply listen to Him and believe Him.)
God inspired the words in scripture for a reason.
Yes, and bolded "the body of the Church" as well!
"Body" "Flesh", and "Literally" must feel pretty neglected and overlooked there! :-)
There, fixed it for ya.
See HiTech, words mean something.
Where else but the God Breathed Scriptures, should we look for salvation requirements?
Funny how Romanists instist on wooden literal interpretations for John 6 but then deny that those who eat, have eternal life.
Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.
Catholics can only have conditional life at best until death.
Fantastic! That has to be a relief.
>>First of all. Jesus didn't say "My Flesh" profiteth nothing.<<
Whoa there. They were just speaking of eating His flesh. He didn’t change the subject.
>>He said "the" flesh profiteth nothing, which means, OUR flesh<<
Not likely. As you said. The entire passage is talking about His flesh. I would suggest you do some re study in the Old Testament about “eating the word”.
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