**Yes, I am using a FOXNews article. I still despise any network stupid deluded enough to put people like Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, and Hannity/Colmes on the air. It does, however, show some of the fallacies of the megachurch movement.**

I suggest reading the article before reading my comments. (Article via Theosebes)

Don’t get me wrong — it’s good that churches are growing and all. The problem is that the churches are glossing over the whole message of sin to “give people a boost for the week.” According to Joel Osteen who pastors Lakewood Church (whose website is in deep need of the ministry provided by the good folks at HealYourChurchWebsite.Com):

“…for years there’s been a lot of hellfire and damnation. You go to church to figure out what you’re doing wrong and you leave feeling bad like you’re not going to make it. We believe in focusing on the goodness of God.”

Ummm… can we say “forgetting the Gospel”? Apparently, Osteen is forgetting that Christ was sent to save us from our sins, not to make us feel all warm and fuzzy. Sin is a serious issue. We can’t gloss over it just because it makes people feel bad. Jesus was not about giving people warm fuzzies. Jesus was all about reconciling people with God — a process that is not full of happy and joyous occasions but instead is gut-wrenching and emotional in many cases. A church that merely gives its people warm fuzzies is doing more to hinder their spiritual development than promote it.

A re-iteration of the problem:

“It’s not a churchy feel. We don’t have crosses up there. We believe in all that, but I like to take the barriers down that have kept people from coming. A lot of people who come now are people that haven’t been to church in 20 to 30 years.”

Maybe it’s the Lutheran in me, but… ISN’T IT ALL ABOUT THE CROSS?!?!?!?!?!?!? Yes, the crosses make people feel uncomfortable — THEY SHOULD!!!! Someone endured pain and suffering and agony for their sins — it shouldn’t be simply a warm fuzzy feeling!!!! If the crosses are a barrier to people coming to church, I’d say these people have more barriers that need to be taken down before they can even talk about the crosses. These churches are places where people can go and hide, not face the issues that are barriers to reconciliation with the Lord.

Another completely grating thought:

Some Lakewood qualities that appeal to a younger set are “the best lighting and the best sound system,” a youth ministry program that attracts hundreds, and every service kicks off with 30 minutes of upbeat contemporary music — not hymns — played by a live band.

If you’re going to choose a church based on their sound and lighting system, I’d really reconsider your motives for even attending church. “Entertainment evangelism” (a term coined by the pastor of a church that falsely claims to be Lutheran) is doing more harm than good to the faith. We’ve got a generation that wants to be entertained and churches are bending over backwards to do that. Newsflash: that’s not the Gospel.

My confirmation kids have to do two sermon notes a month (which is more relaxed than I’d be — if it was my call, it would be *EVERY* Sunday) and the music questions are “of the hymns we sang today, which one did you like best?” and “what did you like best about it?” I do get answers like “it was the only one that was familiar” but much of the time, the kids give me some pretty interesting reflections on the words. Their favorite by far is “Amazing Grace” (not unexpected) but they also like some of the more unique ones like “Built on a Rock” and “Thy Strong Word” and the ideas conveyed by them. Compared to some of the worship music out today that is insipid at best and could best be described as “Jesus is my boyfriend” music, the older hymns are theological masterpieces. They convey messages of faith succinctly and poetically and are a form of evangelism in themselves. I’m not saying that all contemporary worship music is bad — there are some good ones out there and I have served on many worship teams where we sing them. It’s just that a lot of the worship music coming out has the “rah rah Jesus” feel to it and that’s not the way Christ was. That kind of music would have been more appropriate if Christ had ridden into Jerusalem as the triumphant conquering king and kicked the Romans out. Praise the Lord that His mission was something else!

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***This entry is in response to this entry on Mike and Kristen’s blog where Mike talks about non-Christians who like Jesus but hate Christians. I’m responding here so that I don’t take up lots of space in their comment section.***

Mike wrote the following:

This postmodern world is driving me mad. You can’t go anywhere near an evangelist (or anything of the sort) without hearing something along the lines of non-christians liking Jesus but hating Christians.

This drives me mad.

I imagine goats saying to each other: “Man, that’s one cool Shepherd, but his sheep stink.” “Yeah man, they suck. I don’t want to hang out with them.”

My response: “You know what?! You suck too!! Come and join up with the sheep who stink and suck. You fit in FINE!”

I hate to say this Mike but… it’s not totally a pomo theory — it’s something I heard frequently from my non-Christian friends in college. There were a lot of people who either saw some really catty behavior from people in church, had Christians get in their face for soul winning purposes, or saw examples of intolerance from people claiming to be Christian (example: the “people” from Westboro Baptist Church). It drives me mad because these people will say that the violent people who cause mayhem at WTO protests don’t represent the protesters but… they refuse to make the connection that not all Christians are vicious, nasty, hateful, catty people.

My main group of friends in college was not overwhelmingly Christian and I spent my first year of college having to defend my faith to them. During my second year, someone actually made the comment “Jen, you’re not like other Christians — you’re nice.” It was hard to hear (since I knew that a lot of my Christian brothers and sisters were just as nice if not more so than I) but I was thankful that they knew they could be real with me about their frustrations. There were a lot of ministry opportunities that I got because people needed someone religious to talk to but didn’t want to be preached at about how evil and sinful they were. My friend Melissa was the same way and I think the Lord worked some good things through the two of us because we were willing to listen to people’s frustrations about how they had been treated.

This raises some interesting points about how we deal others. Firstly, our movements are scrutinized because we are Christian. There are people who are always looking to criticize us because they expect us to be nasty people; but there are also people who might be seeking and who are looking at us to see what Christians are like. I know that as a seeker, the example of my neighbor was a positive thing — she practiced what she preached and that really was an influential factor in my conversion. The people who got in my face about my lack of faith were really a deterrent — there is a huge difference between “speaking the truth in love” and being in my face so that my conversion will win you brownie points with God. (Ask me why I think “soul-winning” is a stupid practice.)

Secondly, we have to realize that as representatives of the faith, there is a fair amount of apologetic stuff that we have to do. Some people are smart enough to distinguish between true Christianity and the behavior of some of our most vocal members (Pat Robertson, for example *shivers*); but others aren’t, and we need to be aware of this. I frequently had to say stuff like “I’m sorry that ___________ traumatized you but that doesn’t mean that I’m like that” when people would tell me about really bad experiences they had in church, when people would conduct “soul winning” missions on them, or when people treated them badly at other times. It probably sounds stupid, but you need to validate people’s frustrations even if it’s not directed at you. If you don’t admit that they do have a right to be frustrated, you’re basically saying that the purported wrong was never committed. The key is getting them to move on from it and to see that not all Christians are nasty/in people’s faces/hateful and that the Bible does not condone such behavior.

Thirdly, we have to deal with the remainder of the problem which *is* postmodernism — I swear that I will cover the next person who tells me that “it’s all relative” with honey and tie them to a tree in Alaska, letting them deal with some grizzly bears. Mainline Christianity (my own denomination included) is guilty of this inasmuch as they preach a Gospel of inclusion. It’s kind of like they see the situation as black and white with one solution being to completely exclude people in sinful lifestyles while the other is to say that some things aren’t sin in order to get people into church. As Gerhard Forde has said, “[we] have failed to take sin seriously.” Yes, Jesus hung out with the sinners and tax-collectors but He also encouraged them to leave their lives of sin and be reconciled with God.

Getting back to the problem of pomo schtuff, a lot of people think that Jesus was just a really cool teacher. I mean, Buddhists, Hindus, and Muslims believe that Jesus existed — that doesn’t mean that they are saved because they don’t believe that Jesus is the Son of God and died in atonement for their sins. Jesus *did* say some really cool things but we need to get people to understand that these were not just pearls of wisdom, but instead part of His salvific plan. Yes, there are some pretty hard teachings in the Bible; but they exist for a reason and we need to get people to work with those passages and struggle with them because understanding generally comes from that struggle.

Lastly, we need to keep in mind that we are how people are going to image Christ. I think it was Lewis Smedes who said that of 100 people “99 will read the Christian”. (Someone who has read What’s So Amazing About Grace, could you please let me know if it’s the right person and right quote?) Yes, this puts undo pressures on us and we shouldn’t be judging by outward appearances but… if we show that we have a power not of ourselves in our lives that helps us to treat people with dignity and survive the obstacles thrown in our path, we will truly preach Christ to a broken world that needs His healing.

CNN.Com: Protest follows denial of morning-after pill

Maybe it’s just me, but isn’t that illegal? According to the pharmacy board, the rule is that the pharmacist can deny to fill the med if it will harm the patient. It *does not* say that the pharmacist can deny the prescription for moral/ethical reasons. In this case, it wasn’t an issue of harming the patient — the woman had been raped! Instead, the pharmacist chose not to give it to her because they didn’t believe in doing so. It’s not like we’re talking RU-486 here where it is given for the sole purpose of aborting the child — it’s preventitive medicine so that the fetus can’t form — in other words, BIRTH CONTROL.

And for those who want to tell me that I’m a moron and don’t know what the medication does, I’ll explain how it works in plain English. It’s basically a larger dose of birth control and causes the woman to have a brief menstrual cycle that flushes anything that could be fertilized out of the uterus. (If you want to know how I know this, feel free to email me and I might tell you.) It doesn’t operate on the premise that there is a child — it operates on the premise that we need to prevent the child from forming.

Added on, the woman was raped! It’s not like it was stupidity on the part of her or her partner or a birth control method failing — it was RAPE. Consider this prevention of a later abortion as she probably does not want to be carrying a child that is the product of the violation of her body around for 9 months.

(And yes, I know I’m going to catch lots of fire for this entry.)

I am flattened on the ground laughing at this because it is most *certainly* true.

(Thanks Joanna.)

I was reading this entry tonight and getting teary-eyed. All I can say is this:

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. — Romans 8:37-39

A year ago, I never imagined that I would actually be happy again. Thank you Lord.

Part of the Confirmation tradition at the churches is that the kids have to write faith statements. There’s a specific format (mostly to help the kids write it):

Paragraph 1: Your Baptism: what happened and what brought you to this place?
Paragraphs 2-4: Looking at the Apostle’s Creed, explain what you believe about the Father (Paragraph 2), Son (Paragraph 3), and Holy Spirit (Paragraph 4).
Paragraph 5: How do you live out your life as a Christian?
Paragraph 6: How are you connected to the Body of Christ?

I get to start reading these in March and I’m wondering if *I* could write a statement like this. Religion and faith are notoriously hard things to talk openly about in our society and I might have to write something like that for the faith section of my personal website.

Anyone want to take the challenge my confirmands are getting and write one too? Post your answers (and links) in the comments.

One of the exhaust hoses on our furnace came loose and leaked water all over the laundry room and furnace room floors, so I decided to hold Confirmation upstairs around the kitchen table yesterday. It’s been a balmy -42F with windchill, so Jon decided that it might be nice to offer the kids hot drinks when they came. (They like him now and my 2nd year kids hate me less.) We were talking about some basic New Testament facts, Christ’s death, and Christ’s resurrection.

The Good
-Getting through the lesson for both classes with some discussion time.
-My 2nd year kids being very good about the announcement that they have to help with the Passover Seder
-Two of my 2nd year kids volunteering to be readers
-My 2nd year class actually seeming like they were having fun.
-My first year students actually being willing to discuss things.

The Bad
-My first year students wanting to discuss embalming and the medical reasons for the crucifixion killing Christ. Eating has not been pleasant for the last 24 hours. 🙁

The Funny
-One my students singing VBS songs for certain terms we were discussing in the 2nd year class. (It was kind of distracting but quite fun.)
-Responding to the “Jeremiah was a bullfrog” that she was singing with “yeah… he was a good friend of mine”.

I think that our opening song should be something like “Pharoah, Pharoah” or “Father Abraham”. I know that the kids would probably not do it because it would mean looking like fools in front of their friends, but duuuuuude… it would be *FUN*.