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 - Endorsed - Indifferent - Contested
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| The Nashville Statement
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Name:Daniel
Home: Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
About Me: I used to believe that evolution was reasonable, that homosexuality was genetic, and that people became Christians because they couldn't deal with the 'reality' that this life was all there was. I used to believe, that if there was a heaven - I could get there by being good - and I used to think I was more or less a good person. I was wrong on all counts. One day I finally had my eyes opened and I saw that I was not going to go to heaven, but that I was certainly going to suffer the wrath of God for all my sin. I saw myself as a treasonous rebel at heart - I hated God for creating me just to send me to Hell - and I was wretched beyond my own comprehension. Into this spiritual vacuum Jesus Christ came and he opened my understanding - delivering me from God's wrath into God's grace. I was "saved" as an adult, and now my life is hid in Christ. I am by no means sinless, but by God's grace I am a repenting believer - a born again Christian.
My complete profile...
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Daniel's posts are almost always pastoral and God centered. I appreciate and am challenged by them frequently. He has a great sense of humor as well.
- Marc Heinrich
His posts are either funny or challenging. He is very friendly and nice.
- Rose Cole
[He has] good posts, both the serious like this one, and the humorous like yesterday. [He is] the reason that I have restrained myself from making Canadian jokes in my posts.
- C-Train
This post contains nothing that is of any use to me. What were you thinking? Anyway, it's probably the best I've read all day.
- David Kjos
Daniel, nicely done and much more original than Frank the Turk.
- Jonathan Moorhead
There are some people who are smart, deep, or funny. There are not very many people that are all 3. Daniel is one of those people. His opinion, insight and humor have kept me coming back to his blog since I first visited earlier this year.
- Carla Rolfe
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| Hallmark Holidays... |
There is nothing wrong with giving some day on the calendar some sort of significance. In a secular society especially, these can be days that we as a culture agree to recognize things that we as a culture respect and admire. We are not commanded in scripture to ignore such things.
Having said that, my little girl came up to me just now for a hug and was interested in what I was doing. I explained that I was trying to talk to people about how we as Christians sometimes don't see how the church is influenced by secularism. I didn't use the bigger words though, because she doesn't know what secularism is. But I basically said, people like to do what everyone else is doing, and they bring that into church too. So that we sort of mix the things of the world, with the things of God, because every person who is in our church also lives in the world, and because we are social, we tend to talk about worldly things in church too.
On Mother's day, and Father's day, we tend to get sermons about mothers and fathers. On Halloween we usually get the anti-Halloween stuff (or not). Even Christmas isn't really a biblical thing - Jesus didn't record the day of His birth, nor command us to celebrate it - but it makes for a lot of sad kids if we don't.
I was just thinking about how we really do expect the church to cater to the calendar, even if most of the stuff on the calendar has nothing to do with our faith, or our walk. As someone who has preached, the one thing I have kept myself from, is catering to hallmark holidays. If you ask me to speak on Mother's day, I will gladly wish all the mothers in the congregation a Happy Mother's Day, maybe if the church wants to, we can give out roses or some such nicety - but once the service starts, the Hallmark Holiday ends. The singing is about God, not mother's, the bible reading is chosen to support the coming message, and the message is tuned to the needs of the congregation and not the significant day on the calendar.
I take a lot of flack for this attitude also. Lighten up Dan, they say. You're bitter. No, I say, I am not bitter, I am just sold out to the world in so many other ways, I want to limit, wherever I can, the amount of worldliness that creeps under the door and saturates our services.
I don't write this to criticize any congregation, I write this because I think it's true. It is fine to recognize a secular day, just don't make it the focus of your Christian worship, don't even let it give direction to your worship. Really, there are only 52 Sundays each year, and in some congregations, several of those are set aside because of the secular celebrations on the calendar. How many sermons have you heard on hell? How many on Mothers or Fathers? We let these days dictate the point of our sermons, and that's wrong.
Now, I admire my pastor's work this Sunday, because he has been preaching on the theme of love and what love looks like for the sake of getting our congregation off it's butt and learning to love one another and others, so that the message we got was about parenting new converts and immature believers in the context of love - that is, he didn't really step out of what he has been preaching these last few months, he just preached on that angle, and I thought that was a fair compromise. There is almost a silent pressure to cater to the calendar when you preach because if you don't everyone who is immature will freak out because you "forgot" to preach about whatever the world is celebrating that day.
I must go to work, but these were my morning thoughts. I may be an humbug, or overly sensitive. Who knows? |
posted by Daniel @
7:43 AM
 
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| 3 Comments: |
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Amen brother, I agree with your thoughts here wholeheartedly.
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Jim, It is interesting how many people think it is over-the-top to even talk about such a thing.
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I hear what you're saying, BUT . . . :)
My experience (which, granted, is very limited) has been that church has gone out of its way to NOT preach about mothers and fathers on those particular Sundays that it has erred on the other side of ignoring mothers and fathers. I cannot remember a sermon ever preached about mothering or fathering specifically. I, personally, think such a topic would be very helpful given the declining family life of today. If a secular calendar holiday can open the door to addressing how Biblically important mothers and fathers are, then I'm all for using that day to preach on it.
Now if you want to talk about church Easter Egg hunts, then I'm behind you 100%. :)
- Jen
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Amen brother, I agree with your thoughts here wholeheartedly.