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Posted on 08/12/2013 5:32:45 PM PDT by LUV W
Unintended Consequences: How the “relevant” church and segregating youth is killing Christianity.
I recently spent six-months doing a rotation as a hospital chaplain. One day I received a page (Yes, hospitals actually still use pagers). Chaplains are generally called to the rooms of people who look ill: People gray with kidney disease, or yellow with liver failure, discouraged amputees, nervous cancer patients. In this room, however, was a strikingly attractive 23 year-old young lady sitting up cheerfully in the hospital bed, holding her infant daughter and chatting with family and friends.
Confused, I stepped outside and asked her nurse, “Why did I get paged to her room?”
“Oh, she looks fabulous. She also feels great and is asking to go home,” the nurse said.
“…And you are calling me because?” I asked in confusion.
The nurse looked me directly in the eye and said: “Because we will be disconnecting her from life support in three days and you will be doing her funeral in four.”
The young lady had taken too much Tylenol. She looked and acted fine. She even felt fine, but she was in full-blown liver failure. She was dying and couldn’t bring herself to accept the diagnosis.
Today I have the sense that we are at the same place in the church. The church may look healthy on the outside, but it has swallowed the fatal pills. The evidence is stacking up: the church is dying and, for the most part, we are refusing the diagnosis.
(Excerpt) Read more at thegospelside.com ...
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Jesus took our Sins. The legalist can’t control you if that gets out
There was a Church here that at one time was doing WWF smack down for Christ.
Egad!
That is what I said!!
Then they would testify!
Then there are all the Cowboy Churches.
It’s just to much.
...and that teaches “love thy neighbor” how??
There is a lot of truth in that article.
I think the problem can be boiled down to trying to reach people where they are, when in fact the whole point is to worship God. It’s as if people think that The Son of God is not attractive enough to people so they have to entertain them.
If we focus on our relationship with Jesus, as individuals and as a Christian community, and let Him show forth in our lives, the pews will be full (which they are, by the way, in Arizona).
Of Course, Father Mapple preached from the ships bow in Moby Dick.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IctEOuPGddM
bump
The Church is the body of born-again believers around the world, not the individual church building or denomination - the Bible says that nothing will prevail against it. The little-c church will fall when it no longer follows Biblical principles, but the Body of Christ will overcome.
Nope, the last one I dropped in to just had a 5 piece band and a video screen high and to their right.......
The Baptist church I attended before that didn't even have a standing crucifix.........When I asked my friend about that, he of course had a prepared church statement why they didn't.
And Pastor Bob gave me the creeps.......
I'm still looking..........
ever heard of "Breaking 4 Jesus"?
I was at a Truck Stop Church in Terrell, TX before
I’m done with churches with segregated services - traditional and “contemporary.” It is a travesty of the highest order.
A church doesn’t need a cross. A church doesn’t need symbols.
A church just needs people to worship and glorify God. It is the message not the messenger (besides Jesus) that is important.
Where the gospel is preached isn’t as important as WHAT is preached. It must be truth...as taught in the Bible. Anyone can preach the Word anywhere. “Where two are more are gathered in My name, there I shall be also”...said Jesus. Matt. 18:20.
Filling young minds with “pablum” doesn’t give them anything to grasp and it becomes meaningless.
Many churches are just club houses....................
It is new to me.
I never was comfortable with that stuff.
Indeed. He IS the message!! The church is His body!
I agree.
I have no problem with that.
It is difficult to get your rig in over at the Baptist church.
My second baptism happened in a horse trough
Supercool rock band church.
Aw shucks! I thought it was the colored sailor told to preach to the sharks and stop “de smackin’ o’ de lips” as they ate a whale.
Slightly off topic but how much is “ too much Tylenol “ ?? Enough to cause liver failure?
I’ve never heard of such a thing.
***A church doesn’t need a cross. A church doesn’t need symbols.***
Ever see the movie CROMWELL with Richard Harris? He really gets upset seeing gold crosses in his church. Starts a Revolution against Charles I.
I’ve mentioned it before here on FR on various threads, but my brother attends a mega church here in Illinois called Willow Creek. They are not allowed to mention the word “sin” as it may turn off their patrons “ie costumers” , they are all “pro choice”, the church is closed on Christmas, and they’ve had Bill Clinton out there several times as a guest speaker (and Dick Durban as well). This church is MASSIVE. The cops have to direct traffic on Sundays. I mean MASSIVE as in more parking then the Allstate Arena or Soldier Field, and the lot is full on Sundays.
They get bands there, entertainment, etc, but don’t mention the word “sin”.
Nope.
If you try to replace worship of God with symbols and ceremonies, you deserve a good revolution. Although Cromwell proved that power corrupts, absolutely it corrupts.
To me a church should be like a hospital for the soul. If you lose your connection with God, you should be able to go to church to get plugged into the vine again, plain and simple, then be on your merry way again.
Christians to me are people who live life, wholesome, generous, active, holy lives. When confronted with difficulties, meet them head on with a grateful heart and with that still, quiet core of knowing that “All will be well”. Christians shouldn’t even have to wear a cross or proclaim Jesus, people will be drawn to him or her and start to ask questions and want to go that way, be free to be their innocent little selves. Haven’t you ever seen happy, glowing, people who don’t waste their time gossiping or assuming. But do what they love?
Roy Masters and Jesse Peterson are that way for me. There are others, but I know these two. They have helped me and maybe millions of others. Forget about how many angels dance on the head of a pin, or which is the correct translation of the bible. Use your own intuition, see for yourself because you are grafted to the vine and get your intuition directly, just enough when you need it. Jesus said call no man father. Go to the father yourself and if you have lost your connection find a church that will lead you back to it and let you free.
Jesus Christ and His being crucified for our sins are no longer taught in churches. Feel good about yourself is. I know one church who teaches teen-age girls how to cook.
All that stuff about crucification, is, like, gross, man, we want something amazing, incredible and unbelievable, like Justin, what his name!
One of the reasons that a church I pick won’t have “fathers” or anyone who gives themselves a title that presumes importance. The people running the church are no more holier than the ones in the pews, the ones running the church are no less sinners than the people in the pews.
The services can take place anywhere, it doesn’t even have to be indoors. Any 2 or 3 can hold service in a living room or backyard on Wednesday night and it is no less “church” than Sunday morning in the building with others.
So I agree with you mostly.
Justin Case, I meet him a number of years ago.
Tylenol overdose
http://www.webmd.com/pain-management/news/20051201/tylenol-overdoses-liver-failure
Mix with alcohol, and it takes less to kill the liver. No alcohol takes more, but it will work.
Some gals take an overdose to fake a suicide attempt, and then really end up dead a few days later.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one:
A rabbi, a mufti and a Scientologist walk into a church...
HAHAHA!
LOL! :D
"Cool" churches see the frightening specter of dreaded "legalism" in more corners than even the older denominations do.
If the "cool" churches have inherited anything fronm older churches it is the paranoid fear of "legalism."
Willow Creek is mentioned in the article. We’ve got a church kind of like that where I live but not so political. Several campuses; a thousand teens every Wednesday night; endless programs. They seem to hide the fact that they are Southern Baptists and give almost nothing to support any other Baptist organizations. We visited on Easter with some friends and in addition to one of the worst, most vacant sermons I’ve ever heard on any Sunday there was nothing I would call worship.
Is a word a symbol?
If the anti-poisen measures are not given soon enough, between 15 - 20 pills taken at one time, will cause death, due to liver failure.
A word is a word.
It is an agreed-upon set of sounds (spoken) or images (written) intended to represent or refer to something real.
The written string of symbols: "s t o n e" is not itself a stone, nor is the verbal pronunciation of those symbols in sounds instead of writing a stone either.
They are both symbols that refer to either an actual stone or a concept that is symbolized by using those characters or sounds.
It happened to my wife at age 36. She was on some medication containing aceitominophin and took Tylenol on top of that. She, fortunately, did not damage her basil cells and her liver regenerated. Its probably better than mine. No, she isn’t a drinker nor a pill popper. She will never touch pain medication again. Some people may have various assumptions when it came to her particular overdose ... I can assure you that it didnt involve any abusive amount. It was the single most terrifying experience we lived through to date.
Some people cannot process that drug. Its a very low percentage of the population. Tylenol overdoses do happen though. I had a flashback to that week reading this article ... I feel for that young woman they described.
The symptoms are similar to so many different illnesses. Her’s were flu like. The strange part was that she seemed disoriented. I took her to the ER ... They ran tests and eventually saw that her liver enzymes were high. At that point, she was jaundice and unable to recognize anyone. She was rushed to intensive care. They were able to neutralize the Tylenol in her system with an antidote. She was put into a coma. They had her on a transplant list at that point. They saw her enzyme count drop after a few hours.
I wish I could go into more details, but I cannot type well on my phone. I just wanted to convey that it can happen and the victim may not necessarily be abusing the medication. Fortunately for her, she made a 100% recovery.
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