The Contemporary Calvinist: A Message to Pastors and Churches

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

A Message to Pastors and Churches

3 comments:

Rachel R. said...: I get the basic idea here. And, clearly, some of this is just ridiculous. Motorcycles in the sanctuary? Who are they kidding when they call that a "worship" service? But what [i]does[/i] this man expect to hear when he goes to church? "God doesn't have a plan for you. This brain tumor - it caught Him totally by surprise"? Does he expect pastors to stop teaching on most of the topics the Bible addresses - like sex? If so, I guess we'll all have to adopt some Jefferson-style Bibles (you know, with the parts we don't like cut out).

I really do appreciate the point, but I find him to be just as over-the-top as the people he's criticizing.; 4/14/09, 3:38 PM
Lee Shelton said...: The guy is a Christian who wants to see pastors just preach the Word of God, not twist it or resort to silly gimmicks. He provides more of an explanation here. He also has some witnessing videos on his profile page. (I haven't watched any of them yet.); 4/14/09, 6:04 PM
Rich Schmidt said...: Ditto what Rachel said.

While it's a sobering thought that on any given Sunday, someone in our service may have just been given news that they don't have long to live, that doesn't mean we don't continue to creatively proclaim the good news of God on all the topics that Scripture addresses (which includes just about all of them).

What it does remind me of, as a pastor, is my need to clearly articulate the hope of the gospel in each and every service, and to be compassionately aware that we have folks in our midst in all sorts of different places emotionally, spiritually, relationally, etc.

Apart from that, it seems a bit unfair to pull 5- or 10-second clips out of Sunday messages as if that's all that pastor said that day. For example, the clip about the pastor not visiting people in the hospital was from a VERY welcoming message about how imperfect people are welcome at that church. Also, let's not ignore that in his attempt to make his point, the creator of the video even pulled clips from interviews and other communications that no first-time guest would bump into in a Sunday morning visit. Mischaracterizing pastors isn't a horribly "Christian" thing to do, especially when you're doing it publicly on YouTube.; 4/23/09, 11:22 AM

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