Re: NOT Your Grandma's Church
| Posted On: 08/06/07 10:19:31 AM |
Age 53, OR |
All I can say is "thank you!"
I recently left a church that has been slowly marginalizing it's older people and moving closer to the youth-oriented culturalization illustrated in this article. No strobe lights, smoke or pole dancers, but that church definitely separated the old from young and put more emphasis on attracting and pleasing the young. As in your garbage analogy, my former church says it has not departed from the gospel, yet even on Easter Sunday, I did NOT hear a clear proclamation of the FULL gospel (sinfulness of man, man's helplessness in his sinful condition, need for sorrow and repentance of sin, sinless Savior who took the penalty, etc.). As you said, they have smelled garbage too long and don't realize they too have absorbed the odor.
I am not yet a grandma, but I do possess a few hard-won wrinkles and age spots. I am mother to 4 wonderful, thoughtful, college-aged people who are among the few who fit in with the "7,000 who have not bowed the knee to Ba'al". I am grateful there are many out there like you who will be an encouragement to them to "keep the faith".
Click here to reply to this post
|
Re: NOT Your Grandma's Church
| Posted On: 06/13/07 05:48:15 AM |
Age 58, AUSTRALIA |
Excellent sermon on worship at Sermon Audio. Idolatry: Problem of CCM
speaker Mike Harding
Click here to reply to this post
|
Re: NOT Your Grandma's Church
| Posted On: 06/13/07 12:03:49 AM |
Age 58, AUSTRALIA |
Reading these comments again,I think that if we all would put others first, desiring to bless others, we wouldn't have this problem. We are here to give glory to our Father, not to have our desires fulfilled. We need the youth, they need us. I see it as pure selfishness, if we can't get the music right, how will we ever have unity. I know a lot of churches aren't bothered with older members, which is so sad. I feel for all who aren't wanted or needed because of age. The world has taken over the church. I hold on to the thought that this is not my home, but to be faithful, in where the Lord has me now. I know I don't matter, because of age, but granny's and Grandpa's rejoice.Jesus was rejected too. This might be the closest to persecution we will get. Jesus knew persecution as well. Why should we be different.
Click here to reply to this post
|
Re: NOT Your Grandma's Church
| Posted On: 06/08/07 07:07:32 PM |
Age 32, WA |
Someone in my church where I serve as worship pastor sent me a copy of this, so I thought I post the first part of my response. To read my full response which is well beyond 750 words, please email me at ajvox1@gmail.com .
Intro paragraph deleted for space…
I have heard this expression that the blog borrows for a title, “Not your grandma’s church.” This slogan bothers me on multiple levels, and whenever I noticed churches using it, I immediately thought it was a bad idea. First of all, it bothers me because it somewhat displays a lack of creativity as it is stolen from Cadillac, I believe. I wish the church would be on the cutting edge of creativity in the culture not a follower several years later. Second, as the article points out, why in the world anyone would want to exclude the older generation before they even enter the church community is beyond me. I find it offensive and disobedient to the scriptures to exclude older generations from the worship community.
In later parts of the article, though I was a bit confused. It seemed to change subjects rather awkwardly. It became more of a rant in the name of wisdom to excuse oneself from engaging culture with the gospel. I was especially disappointed in her saying she is not impressed by the technological avenues in which to share the gospel today. However, in her generation radio became a huge technological opportunity for the gospel, an opportunity which churches and mission organizations rightly spent millions of dollars to reach cultures beyond our own with the gospel. I would hope that similarly she would view the technological opportunities of websites, the Internet and the ipod to reach the cultures of the youth and the future with the same vigor and resources used in the realm of radio. I would hope that experience and wisdom made this connection of various types of technological opportunities. I would hope also that she would be impressed because I would imagine that using these technological opportunities for the gospel are even more cost effective that money that had to be raised to use radio. Investment in radio ministry is still paying off today and I believe investment in internet and ipod ministry will show returns for the sake of the gospel for generations to come.
So you can see why I was saddened to see she just said she was unimpressed with these things. My prayer is that she will be moved with compassion for the sake of gospel to be given to generation of ipod and internet users. In fact, I have hope for her, because though she admittedly is not impressed with websites and the Internet, but I see she uses a website on the Internet as her primary source of distributing information. She’s quite the mover and the shaker when you think about it considering the Internet has been around for less than 15 years. So if it is just a fad, she is quite invested in it. Perhaps she will come around to using other technological opportunities as well.
I found this statement to be thought provoking. “…the treasures of Christian hymnody, passed down for 2,000 years are not trash to be discarded for something more relevant.” I agree there are treasures in hymnody, and I agree they are not trash to be discarded by any means. I do feel that cultural relevance is important ,and I am quite thankful that we do not exclusively sing the same Greek, Roman, and Jewish songs the original Christians did. I am also thankful for the instruments such as organs, guitars, pianos, and drums that we have that they did not have. I was a bit confused regarding what she calls 2000 years of hymnody passed down because her examples seem to only include songs that I believe only date back to the 18th and 19th centuries…
Please email me if interested in the remining response.
Click here to reply to this post
|
Re: NOT Your Grandma's Church
| Posted On: 06/02/07 10:41:42 AM |
Age 52, INDIA |
I loved this article. What wisdom! How insightful. I thank God and am blessed that this is not happening in my church. I wish every teenager would read this. I am emailing this to my own nephew. Yes its true that so many youngsters are hungry for the truth and are sick of the slickness and loud maniacal emptiness of the megachurch.
I thank God for you and this article Ingrid. Keep it up and keep writing such God honouring truths.
Click here to reply to this post
|
Re: NOT Your Grandma's Church
| Posted On: 05/31/07 12:44:19 PM |
Age 55, OK |
The author of this article made some good points but we have to find a balance. If young people won't come they can't hear the message. Just remember, the oldest hymn ever written was contemporary in it's time. I have to admit the pole dancing thing kinda freaked me out though! LOL lvlp
Click here to reply to this post
|
Re: NOT Your Grandma's Church
| Posted On: 05/31/07 12:25:38 PM |
Age 32, GA |
At the age of 30, I desired a mentor. My pastor was a man, all the books I was reading were by men and even the broadcasts I heard on the radio were mostly by men. I wanted a godly woman to talk to me. My husband and I talked about it and we left our co-ed same age Sunday school class and moved into an older S. S. class. His new, male S. S. class was taught by a man about 25 years older than himself who was about 20 years younger than most of the rest of the class. My new class was headed up by a 78 year old fireball. Let me tell you, those women were compassionate, serious about Bible study and looking out for one another and were such prayer warriors. We were only in those classes a few months before we moved to a different city, our time in those classes has impacted us a lot. Fortunately, the older men and ladies in our classes were welcoming and did not feel we were intruding upon their classes. We have found that sometimes the younger set doesn't want to listen to the older ones and at the same time, some older folks don't want to be bothered with them. Fortunately, we found wonderful Christian people a lot older than us that understood that retirement from the Word is not a part of the Christian life. In moving to a new town, I made a new friend who is just at her wit's end to have an "seasoned" Christian woman to become friends with. Maybe some younger folks don't want the wisdom older people have to offer, but there are certainly many others yearning for it.
Click here to reply to this post
|
Re: NOT Your Grandma's Church
| Posted On: 05/31/07 12:07:38 PM |
Age 52, GA |
I disagree with some of your articule.
I have been to all kinds of churches and tried almost every "religion"; eastern and western, there is. I gave up on "church" about 7 years ago. We'd have Easter services in our front yard of our farm because I couldn't find a church that I liked.
A horseback riding student of mine invited my youngest daughter to her youth group and she had a blast. She had been to youth groups before, but she never went back to those a second time.
So I peeked at the Wednesday night bible study. They talked about music being a ministry to spread the good news. I was amazed. I thought ministry was for the pastor. 6 years later, my husband & I are the Ministers of Drama at that church.
That Wednesday night, there were 12 people of the 35 members present. 6 years later, in a mulitmillion dollar building that we, the church, built with our own hands, we have 3 sevices and average 800 a weekend. We teach the bible and we do it anyway we can.
The modern world has become a 20 minute attention span. Everything is NOW. So how do you reach people that would fall asleep in Grandma's church? Paul said I will become all things to reach people for Christ. In 2 years we went from 60 people in 1 service to 12 short of 1000 in 3 services the week AFTER Easter!
We have people 85 yrs old and down to babies. We sing hymns and we sing contemporary. We have fog machines, a sound board(or 2),a lighting director, a construction crew-shall I go on?
In the last 2 years, over 300 people have been "saved" (I don't like that word but whatelse can you call it?). Almost all have been baptised; yes full body baptisium. The bible is first and foremost above all this stuff. But this "stuff" works. As the people mature spiritually, they look back and see that they had been learning all the time. The Lord God said make a joyful noise unto the Lord and He made music. So however it works we give glory to God for his grase and mercy.We also have built 3 churches in Africa, have numerous out reaches in our community and I'm running ou of words!
Click here to reply to this post
|
Re: NOT Your Grandma's Church
| Posted On: 05/31/07 11:29:13 AM |
Age 46, MO |
Ingrid:
I was just starting to like you and there you go again being devisive, picking on fellow Christians and their gospel just because it doesn't fit your "straight and narrow." What's wrong with improving upon the delivery, after all the message is still the same- Jesus........ Not the same Jesus mind you, this is a Jesus who died for our sins and loves us, and accepts us, and understand us, and will save us from our stupidity and arrogance because we said a sinners prayer, and bake cookies, and sing in the choir, and park cars in the mega parking lot, and plant our rears in a reclining stadium seat with our sippy cups to hear uplifting songs about "LOVE" and listen to sermons about how to enrichen our lives. Yep, you get it, it's all about us not CHRIST and dying to self. I wrote an article about this subject, email me at jchristco@aol.com if interested. John
Click here to reply to this post
|
Re: NOT Your Grandma's Church
| Posted On: 05/31/07 10:23:07 AM |
Age 51, TX |
It is hard to write a feedback on this article as I agree with much of it, yet there are some parts that concern me, especially in music. Please note, that I am not disagreeing with the writer on her loathing of the christian "pole dancers", or even about all the strobe lights, etc. My focus is more on what kind of music is allowable and acceptable in church.
We are told to sing songs, hymns and spiritual songs, but scripture does not precisely define what those are. In fact, the music that was heard in the early church may not even be recognizable by us today. Most of the hymns we sing today were written after the protestant reformation, and the church before that often sang metrical psalms. In fact, I wouldn't doubt it if some of our cherished hymns were looked at with scorn by some when they were first introduced!
Music has evolved, as cultures and language have changed. The musical style of our hymns reflect the musical styles and tastes of the generations and cultures in which they were written. In fact, if you look at mission churches in other countries, they will often develop a musical style that is comfortable to them.
I am in my 50's and a grandfather. I love many of the old hymns as well as the praise and worship music of the 70's - 80's. I also like some of the modern contemporary christian music. I know others in my age group and above who feel the way I do, and I know those who prefer to sing only hymns. The challenge is how to bridge the gap. What music is godly music from a biblical perspective? How much of what we don't like in music in some churches comes from our own preferences, or from the Bible itself?
Does a heavy beat and loudness (which I don't like) alone make it not honoring of God, or is it the lyrics and antics of those performing it? On the other hand, does a pleasant and regal melody make unbiblical lyrics acceptable in the church?
My point is, let's not throw the baby out with the bath water. Musical styles will change over time and those styles eventually find their way into the church. We need to look past they melody (if there is any) and look at the real message. Let's maintain some of the traditional hymnology, while allowing for new styles and types, but maintaining faithfulness to the Word.
Click here to reply to this post
|
Read More Feedback
|
|
|
