Posted on 09/05/2006 2:24:04 PM PDT by Terriergal
With all who have left, I imagine those church pews have some pretty big gaps. :)
Dogeared
Yet, as we see on this thread, it also unites. What do we have in common with Rome except the Trinity?
thinking....thinking...thinking...
8~)
hear hear!
:-) I thought of it myself! -grin-
Bahaha!
The trinity is essential yeah but I would also say that works vs grace alone is of utmost importance.
STICK WITH GOD'S PLAN!
And all God's people said "AMEN!"
Our church did the 40 Days thing. Basically nothing much came of it. I think we ducked a bullet.
This "seeker-friendly" nonsense is a cult, IMHO.
It died in the '80s, but the "church" always seems to be about 25 years behind the curve.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing if the refugee was a bona fide troublemaker.
It really depends upon the circumstances. I know certain contentious, my-way-or-the-highway types who have no business in any leadership position. Under those circumstances, the pastor is doing exactly the right thing.
I don't have any trouble with people having different goals going their separate ways. What's the problem? The goals are mutually exclusive.
Personally, I wish the wreckoncilers in my denomination would hit the road.
I would have thought that a TULIP congregation would have been resistant to that particular virus.
Most TULIP congregations are.
Unfortunately, our PCUSA church has never been very TULIP. Like all PCUSA churches, we affirm the Westminster Catechism, but I think many of the congregation would be surprised to read what the Westminster actually says. More's the pity.
For years ours was a traditional, conservative Presbyterian church, and we found God's word righteously preached there.
Our minister left last year and the new one is bringing Warren with him.
Thus we're looking for a PCA or OPC to fill our Sunday mornings with praise to God. It's no surprise that the PCUSA is declining in membership while the PCA and OPC are growing by leaps and bounds.
Political agendas seem to storm ahead, regardless of the opposition.
He isn't talking about any kind of Scriptural discernment.
He is explicitly saying that his only standard of discernmentis whether someone is on board with the "purpose-driven" agenda. His colleague is saying that people who are not "purpose-driven" should be driven from, i.e. "helped to leave", the church - and he is saying that they should be labeled troublemakers as revenge for interfering with the "purpose-driven" agenda.
It really depends upon the circumstances. I know certain contentious, my-way-or-the-highway types who have no business in any leadership position.
Of course there are such people. But the people we are talking about are the victims of the my-way-or-the-highway attitude.
They are being told that if they refuse to cooperate with the pastor's latest little trendy thing, they should be forced out of their own congregation.
It is obvious to me what is going on here: anyone who gets in the way of the Purpose Drive is pushed out, but the Purpose Drive people know that the people they forced out will seek a new congregation that is unpolluted by the Purpose Drive.
The Purpose Drive is afraid that this new Purposeless congregation may be inoculated against Purpose by timely warnings from the castaway, so they move immediately to marginalize the castaway in order to keep a potential new host open to Purpose in ther future.
This is a typical corporate strategy - give a carefully worded negative reference about a recently forced-out employee to prevent him from eating into your franchise at another company.
Everything Purpose is culled from corporate training seminars.
It's painfully obvious to anyone in upper-tier management at a large company.
Even if he/she was, what business is it of the former pastor to track down the new church of the troublemaker? This amounts, at the very least, as "gossip," and at the very worst as character assassination.
I've been a Christian for about 34 years, and for most of that time have been within the evangelical wing of the church. It's my observation that most (not all, but most) of the American church is horribly shallow, incredibly worldly, is self-absorbed, and gravitates toward the latest fad. It's no wonder that So. Korean and African churches send missionaries to the United States. The American church is in deep spiritual decline and in need of reformation and revival.
By all accounts, this is exactly the response of the masses to Billyboy Clinton. Even Newt fell in love with the big lovable lug. Too bad he's a clinical homocidal psychopath.
Almost sounds like a sci-fi movie where some hideous alien creature is waiting to pounce on an unsuspecting victim & extract the life from it. Excellent!
Everything Purpose is culled from corporate training seminars.
And it shows. The new pastor at the church I used to go to is a media consultant. The messages sound like seminars. It's shocking how many churches are doing this now.
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