Posted on 04/02/2007 8:52:50 AM PDT by Terriergal
I don't know...Did your Valentine's banquet include your pastor singing about a LSD high?
More like, “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy”.
Ah... Those were the days.
Once, our music pastor had the sound guy play Manheim
Steamroller as pre service music. As the service
director, I asked him to change to worship music.
The sound guy refused. We left that church.
All right...you do belong on pby isle, then.
You said — “The Beatles offended my ear.”
That takes me back a while. “Meet the Beatles” was my first album purchased, and I had to buy a stereo player, too, to even play it. And, that was the time that the music was changing over from mono to stereo.
I liked them; perhaps my ears weren’t as sensitive as yours — no perfect pitch...
Regards,
Star Traveler
You said — “The church we used to attend was into drama. Every Valentine’s Day we had a romantic evening with music and candle light dinner for couples. It was in the fellowship hall, but we did all secular music, comedy sketches from Seinfeld, Saturday Night Live and famous sitcoms. Were we in sin too?”
Well, no...
Not everything a person does, day-in and day-out is going to be a Bible study or a sermon or a teaching or a praise service or whatever, like that. Now, of course, our conduct and attitudes (towards what we do) should be governed by what the Bible tells us. This doesn’t mean that every word we speak to one another is going to be a Bible verse or a Biblical principle of some kind.
There are normal and okay things in society. Overall, though, our culture and society is rapidly sliding down that slippery slope to where it will be, when Jesus said “as in the days of Noah”... But, even as everything isn’t a Bible verse or teaching, likewise in our own culture, “everything” isn’t anti-God, either.
So, a Valentine’s evening dinner at church with those other things (which I’m sure was tastefully done) is part of normal life. We are to live as real and normal people, while we follow the teachings of the Bible.
My two cents there...
Regards,
Star Traveler
P.S. — Do you have to go to a Christian restaurant, or be in sin? Or perhaps if you buy from a store whose owner is not a Christian, are you in sin, helping promote evil? And, if anyone is in sin — it would definitely be the parents who send their kids to public schools, right (since they are so anti-God and teach *specifically* against anything to do with God). Well, anyway..., it can get pretty far out that way, if one goes down that track.
[... We are to live as real and normal people,
while we follow the teachings of the Bible...]
Yes. That’s pretty much the way I feel about it,
otherwise you become legalistic - behaving more
like Muslims who are paranoid about being defiled.
Trust me. I’m defiled, but saved by grace.
That was not the only reason we left that church.
It was hard, because we left some amazing friends.
There were Pastor issues too. We could see some
things others couldn’t. A few years ago, what we
saw, others began to see. The church imploded.
I was used to Mitch Miller and Julie Andrews and
classical music. Remember the Reader’s Digest Classics?
That’s the music I was raised on. We weren’t allowed to
listen to the radio. It didn’t hurt us. I’m a 70’s
generation baby, but I feel more like a 40’s baby.
Sorry to hear that.
You don’t need to go to pby isle...you were born and raised there!! :)
Pretty much. LOL!
Now instead of one church, there are two churches.
One of the issues was church expansion. IMO and
from examples in history and Scripture, it appears
that churches grow the same way cells grow - through
splitting or division. Mega churches are fine if
they are not “induced” to be that way. Historically
the church seems to grow through persecution.
You said — “ was used to Mitch Miller and Julie Andrews an classical music. Remember the Reader’s Digest Classics? That’s the music I was raised on. We weren’t allowed to listen to the radio. It didn’t hurt us. I’m a 70’s generation baby, but I feel more like a 40’s baby.”
Yeah, with that music, I would guess you would feel like a 40’s baby... :-)
Actually, my mother and father got my brother and I a radio, pretty early in our lives. And also, they got a TV very quickly, too — when TV was relatively brand new. The reason for that is that my parents were deaf and so, I (in particular) had no exposure to “talking” people. I had to be taken out of my home for about a year (over to my mother’s sister’s home and family) and taught how to talk. I knew sign language, but not speech. Therefore, a radio and TV was thought (by them) to be a sort of “tool” to learn (and keep learning) how to talk.
My mother and father were in a deaf church, so you can imagine there was not much “talking” (the speaking kind) going on there. And all their friends were deaf. So, there it was. My first language was ASL (American Sign Language) and my second language was English. I still slip back into an ASL type syntax, sometimes in my typing and talking, and so it makes some things sound strange. Plus, I’ll catch a pure ASL phrase in typing and I’ll have to correct it. Anyway, that was my exposure to the “hearing world” — through radio and TV.
Say..., do you remember, or have you ever heard of the Singing Nun — Soeur Sourire (or Jeannine Deckers)? That’s a good album. It hit the charts way back then, and it was sung in French. It was popular for a while. She’s dead now, but, at least her music lives on.
http://www.famousbelgians.net/deckers.htm
The tune for Dominique (not the words) play here on this web site, when you first access it —
And there’s an actual sample of the song, Dominique, on this Amazon web page, scroll down for the songs...
http://www.amazon.com/Singing-Nun-Soeur-Sourire/dp/B00000I9FP
I always liked that one, and that was the big hit...
Regards,
Star Traveler
Wow! I had a friend in High School (Up With People)
who had deaf parents. His first language was also ASL.
Because he didn’t use his vocal chords, his voice changed
later than most boys. Did you have that too?
The other day I was at a flea market and came so close
to buying the album of “The Singing Nun”. The cover was
beautiful, but I really liked her music and the way she
sang. I remember Dominique. I think that’s why I took
French in High School.
You’re pretty interesting ST.
You said — “One of the issues was church expansion. IMO and from examples in history and Scripture, it appears that churches grow the same way cells grow - through splitting or division. Mega churches are fine if they are not “induced” to be that way. Historically the church seems to grow through persecution.”
Talking about splitting churches reminds me of the Baptists. They split faster than you can spit on the sidewalk... :-)
But, at the same time, I’ve attended a Baptist church in Portland that was the “mother church” for a lot of other churches in the area (further away). They would sponsor another church for those who might be coming a long way to this one, and there were enough people to start another one. So, they would fund it as a sort of missionary project. Thus many other churches were started this way. This is a bit different than splitting churches.
Then, before I went to that one, there was a very small one that I went to that had a membership of about 90-100 people. And there was another church (of the same Baptist denomination) that was only a few miles away that had maybe about 120 people. But, that other church (for some reason) had a big piece of land and a big sanctuary. A while back they had build it, but it didn’t really grow bigger. So they had a lot of room, but not a lot of people.
And so, both of these churches got to talking about merging. It was told to them (both of the church congregations) that what happens when churches “merge” is that eventually the membership goes back down to the level of either one of the two churches (that come together, in the first place). So, essentially (the denomination was saying) you lose an entire congregation when you merge. That was the general rule of thumb.
However, it was decided upon, by both congregations to merge anyway and the one move into the larger facility with the other. And then, there was a new pastor for the bigger-building-church. And so, we had two pastors. They were considered “co-pastors”.
Well, within a year or so, that comgregation that had merged (90 from one and about 120 from the other) had grown to 1,000 membership. And it went bigger still, after that. So, that was a different situation than normally happens.
And talk about “induced” — I’ve been in some churches where they start using “business techniques” on the congregation for either persuading them to go along with a new program that they are doing (some church program) or for a new building project or whatever. It’s a situation that you find in many companies when they are making major changes. They go through a process of discussion groups, people are involved in discussing things and the new direction — and it’s made to seem that the people are involved. And actually the “outcome” is *already* predetermined and all they are doing is elminating the opposition and basically fooling everyone into going into a particular direction, by making them think it’s their idea.
And those who oppose, still, after this is over, are politely asked to leave. And, by the way, talking about these Emergent Churches, people who are opposed to what is going on in their own churches are also asked to leave, and not disturb the people who want to go along in this new direction. There are many stories of people who have been opposed to these new “Emerging Chruch” ideas and their implementation, and they were just told to leave.
Well, anyway, enough writing...
Regards,
Star Traveler
You said — “Wow! I had a friend in High School (Up With People) who had deaf parents. His first language was also ASL. Because he didn’t use his vocal chords, his voice changed later than most boys. Did you have that too?”
I learned to talk at around five years old, when most would have been talking before that. So, I don’t think I had that particular problem.
And then — “The other day I was at a flea market and came so close to buying the album of “The Singing Nun”. The cover was beautiful, but I really liked her music and the way she sang. I remember Dominique. I think that’s why I took French in High School.”
I took French in high school, too. That was after I had taken Latin in Junior High and didn’t like that. So, I always thought French was a very musical language. However, I don’t remember much of it now... I had a “hot” French teacher though... :-)
I would have married her if I could have. She was just out of college and teaching French in our high school. Oh well...
Come to think of it, I was also in love with my Geometry teacher. She got me to take one of the first computer classes, after school, and no credit — at my high school. This was before there were any desktop computers and it used a $50,000 “training computer” that had only red lights blinking, no monitor, no hard drive, no floppy drive, used a TTY (teletype machine) and you had to program it in raw Base Two (just 1s and 0s). It “saved” programs on paper tape, a roll of one-inch wide paper tape that had about six holes punched across it for lines of code, so you could put it back into the computer the next day. Oh, there was no programming language for it, either — that had to be invented as we went along.
If I didn’t like her so much, I wouldn’t have taken that class. As it turned out, when I went to Portland State University, I started on their big mainframe computer, using a TTY (for access — again no monitor and so on). But, this was a much more sophisticated computer, for its time and was the first one that had “time sharing” — meaning that more than one person could use it at the same time. Before that time, the computers could not accommodate more than one job and one user at a time.
I remember when I applied to Portland State and they accepted me, I was asked if I wanted to participate in an experimental type of university learning. I would still get university credits, but they said that I could design my own courses (in conjunction with an special advisor assigned to me for this purpose) and curriculum and put together any kind of college program that I wanted to. I thought about it, but it seemed like an awful lot of work for me to do that. So, I turned it down. I always wonder about that. Interesting memories when I think back then...
And so it goes...
Regards,
Star Traveler
About Church Growth Techniques:
Our church was over flowing and needed a bigger sanctuary.
That’s fine, but I looked around and wondered - if instead
of fluff, the pastor taught the tough stuff like “Those who
practice unrighteousness will not enter the kingdom of heaven”
(Galatians 5:19), this “country club” church would lose half
their population and wouldn’t need to build.
Our church needed money for this project.
That’s fine, but I looked around and wondered - if God
wanted this to happen, the money would be there.
Our church needed permission from the city council.
That’s fine, but I looked around and wondered - if God
wanted this to happen, instead of pounding the table and
demanding the city council give permits, the city council
would be begging them to build a new church.
In Jo’s world, God would open the doors, instead of the
church busting through them to get their way. In the end,
the church split and the building program left them with
a huge debt and a poor community image.
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