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."
And ampu stated that just where?
Or are you mind reading or making assumptions to slam someone's character?
Why are you assuming that they don't do those other things?
Why are you judging on appearances?
What business is it of yours how others choose to worship?
And where exactly is that interpretation found?
Has the Catholic church yet put out a commentary of the complete Bible?
If not, then it's all up to the individual Catholic's own personal interpretation of Scripture (as they like) for the rest.
Why do you condemn in others what is allowed for Catholic themselves?
What are "confirmation marks"? That's a new term.
Jewish sages put an emphasis on performing “Mitzvot” or commandments& good deeds in this life in order to prepare the soul for the after life...much of what is to be done is in the down, dirty and gritty of this world.
You're trying to claim that every catholic priest, Sunday school teacher, bible study leader (if catholics have those), youth group leader, individual, etc, is using approved study guides or lesson plans made by the Vatican??
They're not coming up with anything on their own at all? Never?
I've asked this question numerous times and no catholic has been willing to answer.
Right. For the ENTIRE service?
‘”Watered-down Christianity” = Protestantism, no requirements at all, none.’
God puts the same requirements on all Christians, there are no special rules just for some of us.
Well, except for when they don’t:
While within Gnosticism you had the belief that Christ only looked corporeal but was not (matter being held as evil), in Catholicism you have the belief that (in transubstantiation) the body and blood of the crucified Christ only looks, feels, tastes and would test as non-corporeal, as bread and wine, but is not. And even that these elements no longer actually exist despite their appearance and provable, testable properties (and even though these elements can decay, at which point the body and blood of Christ no longer exist as them). Thus the lack of such Biblical proofs of the real body and blood of Christ, nor the evidence to the contrary, do not matter here, and are treated as deception.
The issue here is not that God could not perform the novel miracle of transubstantiation, but besides the possibility of particles being airborne and thus God ending up in the carpet, etc., and of organic decay being continuous (thus Christ ceasing to exist in the hosts before being eaten), the problem is that the Catholic interpretation of the words of the Lord's Supper and the discourse on the bread of life in John 6 is contrary to both a plain literal interpretation of them, which Catholics often assert they hold to, and to how the body and blood which Christ refers to was really "present" in His incarnation. And thus to the evidential warrant God provides for faith in the Christ of Scripture.
For as John teaches (in contrast to the Christ of certain Gnostics), that "Christ is come in the flesh" is true in the light of His manifest physicality, "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life," (1 John 1:1) "This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth." (1 John 5:6)
And the words said at the Last supper which Catholics claim to take literally say that this body was the body that would be "broken for you," (1Co. 11:24) "my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world," Jn. 6:51) and the blood that would be "shed for you." (Lk. 22:20) And which certainly looked, felt, smelled, and would taste like and scientifically test as literally being real flesh and blood. And which I think also would the body that Thomas was invited to touch as proof that Christ arose, (Jn. 20:27) though He can materialize appear at will.
While we are to believe on Christ by faith now, the Christ we believe on is one whose incarnated body was manifest as being so — its appearance corresponded to its reality — and appeared bodily even in His resurrected state. In contrast, worshiping a Christ that looked like, felt like, smelled like, and would taste and scientifically test as an inanimate object — and in multiple locations, at the same time — would be worshiping a false Christ. Anyone could say that an inanimate object was God, and imagine the apostles trying to preach that a loaf of bread was really Christ!
Trent says, "Because Christ our Redeemer said that it was truly his body that he was offering under the species of bread [actually after breaking bread He said "this is my" body"]... by the consecration of the bread and wine there takes place a change of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood, (Trent, 1376) if not in any evidential, or provable way.
However, at the Last supper the Lord did not say anything like "this bread is changed into my body," or that the bread "becomes" it, while if the apostles could believe in transubstantiation, then the same souls could certainly have believed that what they consumed at the Last supper was the same manifest flesh and blood that would be on the cross. That would be 100% literal and easier than requiring belief in a novel miracle that relies on specious Neoplatonic thought and Aristotelian metaphysics to explain.
The only problem is that Catholic priests cannot come up with the same manifestly incarnated body and blood that was crucified, (purported "Eucharistic miracles" are contrary to the doctrine of transubstantiation), thus instead we have the Catholic "real" body and blood of Christ" that does not correspond (in the ways Christ was manifestly incarnated) to the real incarnated Jesus which a literal reading of the texts at issue speak of.
While within Gnosticism you had the belief that Christ only looked corporeal but was not (matter being held as evil), in Catholicism you have the belief that (in transubstantiation) the body and blood of the crucified Christ only looks, feels, tastes and would test as non-corporeal, as bread and wine, but is not. And even that these elements no longer actually exist despite their appearance and provable, testable properties (and even though these elements can decay, at which point the body and blood of Christ no longer exist as them). Thus the lack of such Biblical proofs of the real body and blood of Christ, nor the evidence to the contrary, do not matter here, and are treated as deception.
In other words, they are claiming that the bread and wine are really the body and blood of Christ — being present whole and entire in His physical "reality," corporeally present...", (Mysterium Fidei) even down to subatomic particles (until they begin to decay) — which is what He said would be crucified. And they present a Eucharistic Christ as being same sacrifice as at Calvary, yet they deny that it is physical in the ways that proved Christ was incarnated and the ways define physical. but which does not physically belong to this universe as He did when He was crucified.
Anyone could say Christ was an inanimate object but this Catholic Christ this is not what the apostles and NT church preached, nor as being the gospel, nor of the Lord's supper. Instead, in preaching His life, death resurrection and reality they they invoked His manifest physicality. by whom "God was manifest in the flesh." (1Tim. 3:16) When invoking proofs for the resurrection, it was that Christ was actually seen by multitudes, not that He appeared as a piece of bread. The Lord's supper was said to proclaim His death, (1Co. 11:26) not manifest Christ, and the church is called "one bread" and the body that believers needed to discern.
Yet in Catholicism believing that the bread and wine is the very body and blood of Christ is a required belief. Not only must Catholics believe that the incarnated Christ who so identified with us that He manifestly became man and manifestly felt our pain now identifies Himself as a wafer of bread (but does not feel the pain of being eaten), that what they see as a wafer of bread is "the very body which he gave up for us on the cross, the very blood which he "poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins," (CCC 1365) but (whether they realize it or not) consequently they also are to believe the bread and wine no longer exist after the priest utters his words of consecration, "since transubstantiation means the Real Presence of Christ, it also means the real absence of bread and wine. To believe this is to be a Roman Catholic." ( John A. Hardon, S.J., Part I: Eucharistic Doctrine on the Real Presence)
In contrast, the language of "take eat, this is My body" easily conflates with the use of metaphorical language in Scripture, and endocannibalism and drinking blood is forbidden in Scripture, (Lv. 17:10) and that the bread that Christ broke at the Last supper easily represents the Lord's real body that was "bruised [dâkâ'=broken] for our iniquities" and the wine represents the shed blood of the Lord who "poured out his soul unto death." (Isaiah 53:5,10,12) Ps. 22:14 prophetically says, "I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels."
And in John 6, this "eating" and "drinking" can only represent receiving the words of Christ as food, which is what the Lord said man is to live by, (Mt. 4:4) and conforms to the means of obtaining spiritual life elsewhere in Scripture, and to living by Christ as Christ lived by the Father, (Jn. 6:57) with doing His will therefore being His "meat." (Jn. 4:34)
In addition, Catholics do not take the Lord purely literally when He said to “drink this cup,” for you do not literally drink a cup (though if transubstantiation is allowed, so a means of ingesting a cup could be explained), but it is manifest that the cup represents what it contains, likewise the contents represent what would be visibly shed.
Moreover, in every other miracle which the Lord did that changed something material then there was an obvious tangible change — water really become wine which only existed in that location — versus a change of substance while the appearances remained the same, and so the body of Christ could be sitting at a table before them while being in the stomachs of the disciples.
Therefore, the Catholic understanding of the Lord's supper is both contrary to a purely literal reading of the words at issue, and contrary to how the incarnated and crucified and risen Christ was presented as really "present" body and blood, soul and Divinity" on earth. And preaching inanimate objects as "really" being the Lord Jesus body and blood is that of preaching "another Jesus," and preaching that the Lord's supper is how one obtains spiritual life is that of preaching "another gospel."
But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him. (2 Corinthians 11:3-4) ^
Much more by God's grace.
Wrong: Catholicism was a progressive later development, and is substantially absent in the inspired record of the NT church and . contrary to it
Which NT church manifestly did not teach perpetual ensured magisterial infallibility, which is unseen and unnecessary in the life of the church, nor did it have a separate class of believers distinctively called "saints" or distinctively titled "priests, " offering up "real" flesh and blood as a sacrifice for sin , which is to be literally consumed in order to obtain spiritual life.
Nor is it otherwise Scripturally manifest in the life of the church as being the sacrament around which all else revolves, and the "source and summit of the Christian faith," "in which our redemption is accomplished."
Nor is the NT church manifest as looking to Peter as the first of a line of exalted infallible popes reigning over the church from Rome (which even Catholic scholarship provides testimony against), and praying to created beings in Heaven, and being formally justified by ones own sanctification/holiness, and thus enduring postmortem purifying torments in order to become good enough to enter Heaven, and saying rote prayers to obtain early release from it, and requiring clerical celibacy as the norm, among other things.
No wonder Catholics rely on amorphous "oral tradition," for under the premise of magisterial infallibility all sorts of fables can be chanelled into binding doctrine, even claiming to "remember" an extraScriptural event which lacks even early historical testimony. , and was opposed by RC scholars themselves the world over as being apostolic tradition.
You mean like eating Maror, a bitter herb, symbolic of the bitterness of slavery, and green vegetables in salt water, symbolizing the replacing of our tears with gratitude, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haggadah
Liberals are all about skin and want lots of it... Men on men types and they want the church to bless their weddings.
If that is your criteria then you can dismiss Catholicism, which, as evidenced daily here, is certainly not one in word or spirit.
And even Catholics have a great deal of liberty to interpret the Bible within the broad of Catholic teaching, while evangelicals typically also have limits in their churches as regards interpreting the Bible.
It is actually those who esteem Scripture the most as literally being the word of God thathat testify to the most unity in basic beliefs and values .
See Church history from 1 A.D. until now. There WAS no other Church until the defrocked, disgraced Father Martin Luther led the way for MORE "protesters."
Which is so ignorant a statement that you should not be in debate.
Besides the basic absence of the Catholic church in the record of the NT church,Rome split from the Orthodox long before Luther was compelled to do so, and remains with substantially difference s.
Oh well, it's time for me to fold up my tent. G'night.
Yes, you should fold up your tent and find solid evangelical fellowship.
I for one enjoy the iron sharpening here. If done right, one goes to the Bible to prove their point, at least in my opinion. On second thought, it is not so much proving a point as revealing the truth.
And that is obviously the issue and revelation here. What is the “touchstone” to test the truth? Some use the Bible, some use tradition, some use “experts” to do their thinking, Some use their own worldly thinking, etc..........
But the following did come to mind this morning:
1Co 11:19 But, of course, there must be divisions among you so that you who have God’s approval will be recognized!
God is involved in the process here. He is listening. A reminder to me also.
Now for you thinkers, WHAT IS THE SOURCE OF TRUTH?
What if that priest was Father Pfleger or a Father Bernard Lynch type?
Who is Joel? or did you mean John?
Articles ALWAYS have an agenda.
The Authors has an agenda here, it is obvious, can anyone tell me what it is?
The subject of the article also has a major message. Can anyone tell me what it is.
1. Catholics must attend Sunday Masses EVERY week.
Protestants NEVER have to attend any Sunday service.
2. Catholics must attend Mass on "holy days of obligation" (Christmas, Assumption, etc.).
Protestants NEVER have to attend any of these services.
3. Catholics must receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation at least twice a year.
Protestants don't have this Sacrament. They need only say: "Sorry, Lord" and they are forgiven, even if it happens ten times a day.
4. Catholics must receive Holy Communion at least twice a year.
Protestants don't have to do this.
5. Catholics must observe some Lenten fasting .
Protestants don't have to do this.
6. Catholics must observe the MEATLESS Fridays during Lent and on Ash Wednesday
Protestants don't have to do this.
7. Catholics may not remarry after divorce. Divorce/remarriage = forbidden by the Church.
Protestants can marry, divorce, remarry, divorce, remarry, divorce...just like the long-dead King Henry VIII. HIS wives: divorced; beheaded; died; divorced; beheaded; survived.
8. Same gender marriage is FORBIDDEN in the Catholic Church.
In some Protestant denominations men are allowed to marry other men; Protestant women are allowed to marry other women.
9. Catholics must wrestle with both mortal and venial sins.
Protestants don't have that equivocation. I don't know it they recognize if there is a difference. Perhaps all sin is the same.
10. There IS one unforgivable sin in the Catholic Church.
Protestants don't have this.
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