Amid cell phones ringing, video cams rolling and ice cream melting under the Florida sun, a blood-spattered Jesus stumbles through the crowd on his way to Golgotha, where nasty Roman soldiers strip him, nail him to the cross and crucify him—while perspiring tourists look on in Bermuda shorts. After the resurrection sequence, visitors applaud and line up for a photo op, not with Mickey or Minnie, but a disciple or bloody-handed yet friendly centurion. Welcome to Orlando’s most unusual theme park, the Holy Land Experience.

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Already established as perhaps the most important voice in contemporary American Evangelical Christianity, Rick Warren last week pressed the button that he hopes will take his “brand” to the ends of the earth. Almost offhandedly at the conclusion of a three-day meeting of 1,700 pastors that Warren later told TIME was “the most important conference of my life,” the author of the Purpose Driven Life threw open participation in his PEACE coalition to the wider Evangelical community. It was the Evangelical equivalent of a long-awaited IPO of a tech start-up whose brand the cognoscenti have predicted will become a global juggernaut: The PEACE coalition is a plan of epic ambition, to turn at least half of the world’s tens of millions of Christian churches into a giant “network of networks” dedicated to relieving the poverty and misery of the developing world.

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From Frank:

PROSPEROUS pastor Benny Hinn flew into Brisbane a multimillionaire. He left, 28 hours and three shows later, an estimated $800,000 richer.

The Queensland capital was a goldmine for the flamboyant televangelist who left with cash, cheques and the bank account and credit card details of more than 50,000 Australians fans. Some attendees, who travelled from as far away as Hong Kong and Perth, handed over gold earrings and wedding rings instead of cash.

An Australian Taxation Office spokeswoman said Pastor Hinn’s Australian haul – part of an estimated $110 million donated to the World Healing Centre Church each year – was seen as a “love offering”.

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I found this at Lifechurch.tv, complete with registration and “Tithing Challenge” stories:

The word “tithe” is derived from the Hebrew word ma’aser and it literally means a tenth. Ten percent of everything belongs to the Lord. In Malachi 3:10-11, God says, “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse that there may be food in my house.” The ‘storehouse’ is the Old Testament picture of the New Testament church. So as New Testament believers, we worship the Lord with the tithe; or the ten percent.

But giving away 10% of your income can be a big – and often frightening - commitment! That’s why we created the Three-Month Tithing Challenge: a money-back guarantee of sorts. Essentially, it’s a contract based on the promises of God in Malachi 3:10-11. We commit to you that if you tithe for three months and God doesn’t hold true to His promises of blessings, we will refund 100% of your tithe. No questions asked.

God doesn’t need our money. He owns everything. But we give first because it takes faith to give first and God wants us to trust Him. He tells us in Proverbs 3:9-10 to “honor the Lord with your wealth, with the first fruits of all your crops and then your barns will be filled with overflowing.” We give first and the blessings of God follow.

Go to website…

Frank Viola and George Barna, Pagan Christianity: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices. Tyndale House, 2008.

The role of the writer is to describe a situation so truthfully … that the reader can no longer evade it. (Anton Chekhov)

This is a revision and update of Frank Viola’s book which was first published in 2002; it’s been re-packaged as a companion to Barna’s book, revolution. Since Barna’s book has already drawn a lot of controversy (e.g., this post and this article), it’ll come as no surprise that this present book has also drawn the wrath and ire of many Christians. Indeed, even the publisher has added a disclaimer in their Publisher’s Preface: “Tyndale does not necessarily agree with all of the authors’ positions and realizes that some readers may not either.” Positively, and to their credit, they add, “the authors raise important questions based on their careful research, study, and experiences, and we believe these questions should not be ignored.”

The hard-hitting (though certainly not shrill) preface by Viola sets the tone for the rest of the book: “Contemporary Christianity has fallen into the errors of both the Pharisees and the Saducees. … We break the Scripture just as much by burying it under a mountain of human tradition as by ignoring its principles.” Barna follows on in his Introduction with these questions: “Does it surprise you that most of what we do in religious circles has no precedent in Scripture? … Does it really matter how we practice our faith, as long as the activities enable people to love God and obey Him?”

This theme of human traditions in contrast to the teaching of the Bible is further explored in the book’s opening chapter, Have We Really Been Doing It by the Book? Here, Frank cuts to the chase and asserts, “If the truth be told, we Christians never seem to ask why we do what we do. Instead, we blithely carry out our religious traditions without asking where they came from. Most Christians who claim to uphold the integrity of God’s Word have never sought to see if what they do every Sunday has any scriptural backing. How do we know this? Because if they did, it would lead them to some very disturbing conclusions that would compel them by conscience to forever abandon what they are doing.” (5)

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This was posted a while ago, but there is still time to contribute. Let’s all help out Barb!

My name is Barb Orlowski. I am on the Doctor of Ministry program at A.C.T.S. Seminaries in Langley, B.C., Canada. In order to conduct the research necessary to complete my dissertation, I could use your help. I am conducting a survey among Christians who have experienced emotional and spiritual distress under authoritarian and controlling church leaders and have recovered from this experience.

Here are the criteria that I am looking for in participants:

1. Christians who have experienced emotional and spiritual distress under authoritarian and controlling church leaders and who have ceased to be associated with those congregations;

2. Christians who subsequently have recognized and processed their spiritual grief and pain and have experienced spiritual recovery;

3. Christians who are willing to share how they have processed their negative experience and have recovered spiritual harmony; those who can share what has happened since this painful episode. Christians who can answer this question: What factors have helped you to restore your confidence in God and His people?

If people feel that they fit the criteria for this study, please contact me.

I will give you further details about this study, and then I will send you the questionnaire along with the consent information. The responses given by those participating will be kept confidential. Your responses will be put in anonymous form and may be kept for further use after the completion of this study.

Thank you for your interest and participation in this study. I appreciate the time and effort that it takes to complete a questionnaire.

In Him,

Barb

churchexitersq@telus.net

Comments and questions are welcome.

When you respond to this request by emailing me, please let me know which site you saw this information. Thanks.

[ You can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here ]

Many in house churches react strongly against sermons. They much prefer an informal and conversational approach to sharing the scriptures. Most would probably not be comfortable having one person stand up and share a teaching for 20 or 30 minutes. Yet, from passages such as 1 Cor. 14, there seems to be room for a variety of ways to participate when believers gather together:

What has been your been your experience in your own gatherings as well as other gatherings you’ve visited? It seems that many groups tend to fossilize into a rhythm or pattern that’s eventually just as structured and predictable as a typical church service in an institutional setting. Often they get very comfortable and inward with 20% of the folks doing all the talking. How do we guard against such tendencies? Especially if you have “no leaders”?

[Frank]: With respect to the churches I’ve been a part of and have worked with, we firmly believe in the exercise of all spiritual gifts and all modes of ministry. Teaching, preaching, exhortation, prophesying, etc. are included. What we don’t have is weekly “sermon” given by the same person week after week, or by the same group of people week after week.

There needs to be a distinction made between “apostolic meetings” and “church meetings.” In an apostolic meeting, a Christian worker will minister to a particular church for an extended period of time. The worker (or workers) will preach and teach regularly. But these sorts of meetings are temporary; they don’t extend on forever. And their goal is to equip a particular body of believers.

In the church meeting, everyone is free to share. In those meetings, you may have one or two people give extended messages from time to time. But all are free and encouraged to share in the meeting. All things are fluid, and there is tremendous variety.

1 Corinthians 14 envisions a “church meeting.” Paul’s ministry in Ephesus in the school of Tyrannus and his one week with the church in Troas (where he preached a young man to sleep and out a window!) is an example of an “apostolic meeting.”

That said, you are right in that many house churches do not have a fully functioning spiritual priesthood. In many house churches, most of the believers are passive, and some (a few usually) tend to over-function and monopolize the gatherings.

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Paul, the recent discussion on Paul Washer’s sermon was interesting. Since we have both been exposed to relational speakers recently I have a question for you. Can the message of Paul Washer be reconciled with the message from relational teachers such as Wayne Jacobsen and Paul Vieira or are they completely at odds with each other?

Anyone else who has been exposed to these teaching please feel free to join in.

For anyone not familiar with these teachings here are two links on relational teachings in regards to sin and shame, and hell preachers:

Sin and Shame
The Hell Preachers

Here are links to 2 sermons by Andrew Strom which some might refer to as performance Christianity:

Are You Walking in Romans 8
The Old Testament God

Some questions to ponder:

Is shame and guilt good or bad?

Is our relationship with God a friendship or one of complete servitude?

Does condemning a person’s sins directly help or hurt them?

After accepting Christ do we have any spiritual obligations besides attempting to refrain from sin?

I have discovered the path to God is paved with strange - sometimes threatening and frightening - questions. Typically we assume people who question things, or at least the well-established and widely held things, are “not well-read,” are “doubters,” or “lack faith.” But I’ve discovered people who ask a lot of questions, particularly the hard ones, often develop a more solid and authentic spirituality and faith. One reason traditional church life is sometimes not a helpful stimulus for spiritual formation is that people are normally rewarded for reinforcing the status quo and frowned upon for upsetting it, which questions often do. Church history is littered with troubling stories of what happens to people who question things.
- Jim Palmer, Wide Open Spaces: Beyond Paint-By-Number Christianity, p. 63

We mistook our contingent knowledge of God for God, trading the worship of God for images fashioned in our own likeness in what Peter Rollins, echoing Jean-Luc Marion, has named conceptual idolatry: “any system of thought which the individual takes to be a visible rendering of God.” Thus, our faith became domesticated, made in our own image, deprived of its wildness. In our pursuit of the systematic, rational, objective, and universal, we lost the particular, intuitive, imaginative, poetic, and creative. I am afraid we lost the ability to discern and follow the Spirit of God, especially as he leads us in places unfamiliar and unknown to our domesticated faith.
- Tim Keel, Intuitive Leadership: Embracing a Paradigm of Narrative, Metaphor and Chaos, p. 43

Vocal atheists Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion), Christopher Hitchens (God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything), Sam Harris (The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason), and Daniel Dennett (Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon) are featured together discussing their views on religion in this 2 hour video.