I was blessed to be invited to present a workshop at this year’s Praise Covenant Interdenominational Fellowship Conference in late June. They gave me the freedom to create my own workshop and I decided to begin crystalizing some of my thoughts and readings on the church today. What came out was a workshop entitled, “Never Ever Go To Church Again.” I can’t say that any of the information that I shared was revelatory; (most of it can be found somewhere within the genre of “emerging church” literature/media), but experiences that I’ve had over these past few years in particular in addition to authors that I have been exposed to have really helped me to articulate what I’ve been feeling since graduating from seminary.
It was truly a transformative experience for me and hopefully for the other participants as well. What made it particularly interesting was that the participants were comprised of church leaders for the most part and at different points they would share perspective that made clear that they were being burdened by the weight of “corporatized ministry” – that might be a crude term, but by it I’m only pointing to some of the components of institutionalized church.
Enjoy this clip of the workshop and I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts on the dialogue.
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I think the church is shifting from being spiritually based to becoming morally compromised. The conservative church with it's zero tolerance on personal sin and the liberal church with it's willingness to overlook peoples sin and advocate for their rights. I believe that both are extreme and dangerous. I understand the teachings of Christ to be hard on sin and merciful on the sinner. This is not a life that can be lived out by subscribing to moral teachings. Morality is relative depending on time, place, circumstance and self interest. The Christian life can only be lived through a heart that has been regenerated / transformed by the power of God.
Definitively speaking, there are no clear, concise answers to the questions posed. The "what would Jesus do" application is probably the only address that would allow a dialogue in and through a situation and it is our continuous re-interpretation of Scripture along this basis that keeps the name of Jesus Christ relevant in todays changing world. Just Do It.
I would be very interested to hear more of the comments made throughout the presentation as well as your own conclusions. This is a good opening for all of us to address these issues-keep the dialogue going-share as much as you can.
Back to the future? One of Jesus' final instructions to his disciples was that they were to go to Jerusalem and wait there…, What he didn't say, but it had been implied was as follows:: don't go to the Temple (that was built to be the habitation of God by the Kings) where the 24 courses of priests, levites, altars … were present, and don't go to the Synagogues where the rabbis … were in charge. The prototypes of today's church, had gone off course then,just as the institutionalized church in America has apparently veered off course as well. Jesus abandoned the house that was built by Kings for God. Someday believe it or not, we may have to do the same thing! Too many of our churches today are 'in bed' with the America Idol, and I am not referring to the hit television show~