General

There are some points in the article you may not agree with but there are some good points to consider.

By Cathy Lynn Grossman
USA Today

This weekend, Jeanne O’Hair, her friends and family will raise their voices in Easter hymns “as the spirit leads us,” she says, in her “house church” — O’Hair’s living room in Brea, Calif.

In a metal outbuilding at a shuttered horse track near San Antonio, Jeff Bishop says he will celebrate at his “simple church” under a rough-hewed cedar cross, with “folks who speak ‘cowboy’ like I do.”

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No matter what you call them, house churches, or “simple” or “organic” churches, have long thrived in Third World countries where clergy and funds for church buildings are scarce. Now, however, they are attracting a small but loyal following across the U.S.

It’s not that Americans can’t find a conventional church congregation. Rather, millions of believers are leaving the pews for small, regular weekly gatherings where they pray, worship, study Scripture and support each other’s spiritual lives.

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Participants are not “Christmas & Easter Christians” — folks who pour into the buildings on peak holy days and fade away a week later. Instead, “they’re intensely active believers who want to take charge themselves and find something that feels more authentic,” said Christian
research expert George Barna, author of a new book, <em>Maximum Faith</em>.

“If you look at the Bible, the church we have today is nowhere to be found. The original form of church was the house church. Older people want to find a more personal experience of God and young people don’t want the congregational structure or process. People don’t want to just read the responsive reading when they are told to,” Barna said.

A January 2011 survey by Barna Research (the firm that Barna founded and later sold) found that 5 percent of Americans — about 11.5 million American adults — say they attend a “house church or simple church, which is not associated in any way with a local, congregational type of church,” at least weekly or monthly.

Before moving to California, O’Hair was on the staff of an Oregon megachurch that pulled out all the stops with Easter pageantry — and later disbanded.

“We just weren’t seeing any fruit, any new members, for all that huge expense of time and effort. I love Jesus and I love the church, but I think the way we do institutional church in America will be extinct before long. It will just crumble,” O’Hair said.

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Traditional churches have taken note of the growing desire for more simple ways to worship.
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 Read the entire article here

I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will revere him.
Ecclesiastes 3:14

The world has been created and established by God. As someone has said, “It is, what it is.” Regardless of how hard man works he cannot add to or take away from the world.

An interesting phrase in this passage of scripture is, “God does it so that people will revere him.” Why does God want man to revere Him? Is God an egotist? Does God have a personality flaw that He needs attention? Of course the thought of such sounds absurd.

So why does God do something specifically so that people will revere Him. Consider that God ALWAYS has our best interest at heart. He cannot compromise who He is without harming us. We need Him to be Holy. We need Him to be awesome and perfect. By definition this perfection has high standards for those who worship Him.

We are created to worship God. This is where we find our ultimate fulfillment. This is where we find our highest level of satisfaction. Revering God places us in the position for which we are created and best suited.

Consider this illustration. When a fork is asked to do the job of a spoon by using it to eat soup is setting it up for failure. It was not made for such. If such a feeling were possible for a spoon, it would be greatly frustrated. Even if it felt like serving soup would be the thing that would make it happy it would experience frustration because that is just not what it is made for.

God knows that what we are made for is to enjoy communion with him and this communion only occurs to its fullest extent when we revere Him.

The Priesthood of Believers is a term that is used to describe the theology behind the truth that all are called to minister in the name of Christ.  Ministry is not just for the paid professional.  The existense of an elder or deacon (or several, whatever the case may be) is not a license for some to minister and others to be passive.

Christ commissioned all who follow Him to minister in His name.  This is not just simply helping out at the church pot-luck dinner once in awhile.  This is a call to a lifestyle of ministry for all believers.

In “Preachers Who Are Not Believers,” a report by Daniel C Dennett and Linda LaScola of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University, there are five case studies of Christian ministers who no longer identify themselves as believers – but their churches don’t know it.

Many of us have known Preachers who have left the ministry for one reason or another, many times due to some loss of faith or confidence, either in the church or even in God. But when preachers lose their faith in God and continue to preach it is a sad commentary indeed on the state of our world.

Different ones who have been interviewed for studies like this mention that they have difficulty believing in many of the extreme stories recorded for us in scripture. Are we looking for a God that we can understand with our own cognitive abilities? I certainly hope not. For any God that I can fully understand is no better than I am and I need a God that is much better than me.

“There have been men before now who got so interested in proving the existence of God that they came to care nothing for God Himself…as if the good Lord had nothing to do but exist!“  C.S. Lewis, ‘The Great Divorce’

Don’t forget to enjoy God today

There was a time when a parent’s main concern was for their children to become honorable citizens.  That sentiment is being replaced by the desire for them to become successful.