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Building Lives… Living Dreams…
Thursday, August 19, 2010 No Comments
The next chapter of the book deals with music. Again, the authors trace the history of how music is incorporated in the church service and how that usage has evolved. They deal with the funeral dirge and procession soon into the chapter, which seems irrelevant to many Christian traditions (mine included), and again, the criticism [...]
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Thursday, August 12, 2010 No Comments
I’ve talked in the past about the church being faced with enshrining the past (whether the recent past or the distant) it that it “freezes” at a particular cultural expression and staying there indefinitely. The alternative is to change with culture and continue expressing the message of Jesus in the continuously changing language of the [...]
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Thursday, July 22, 2010 No Comments
This chapter deals with the perceived need to “dress up for church” on a Sunday morning. Again, the authors trace the history of the phenomenon. Not much to say about this chapter. It’s bang-on all the way through. The strongest statement they make is that “[w]earing our ‘Sunday best’ conceals a basic underlying problem. It [...]
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Saturday, July 17, 2010 No Comments
The next chapter in Pagan Christianity deals with “the pastor.” The authors claim that the contemporary version of “pastor” comes from “an implicit desire in people to have a physical leader to bring them to God.” This desire, it seems, stems from “the Fall” (p. 108). They trace the history of church leadership, which, with [...]
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Saturday, July 10, 2010 10 Comments
“Culturally relevant” is what some people might call “seeker sensitive.” I use it in terms of “speaking the language of the culture around us.” There is a blurred boundary between “church” and “world.” We are in the world but not of the world. We speak the language of the world. This has been supremely modeled [...]
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Friday, July 9, 2010 No Comments
I’m just finishing a book called The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions. It reveals a contrast between liberal theology (represented by Marcus Borg) and conservative theology (represented by N.T. Wright). Christianity says of God that he is both “immanent” and “transcendent.” Transcendent means that God is “above and outside” the universe. He is the Creator [...]
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Tuesday, July 6, 2010 No Comments
The tradition that Viola and Barna attack next is the Sunday morning “sermon.” I have my own issues with it. I remember taking a Homiletics class in Bible college (i.e., the “art of preaching”). At one point I asked the teacher why we “preach in church.” I asked me what I meant. I said, “The [...]
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Friday, July 2, 2010 No Comments
The next topic dealt with in Pagan Christianity is the “order of worship.” Viola and Barna rightly trace the elements of our “order” throughout history. Generally speaking, a church service is structured around singing and then preaching (they also add “closing prayer or song” (p. 50), although I’m not sure it’s a given; at best, [...]
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Monday, June 28, 2010 No Comments
(This is a break from the Pagan Christianity blogposts, which will resume later.) The recent activities of protesters in Toronto during the G20 Summit have raised numerous issues close to the hearts of many – the economic crisis, the environment, international policy, to name just a few. The actions of a minority of violent people [...]
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Friday, June 25, 2010 No Comments
The Argument The first subject that the book addresses is the church building. The basic premise here is sound: the church is not a building. The church is people. It took a few hundred years for church buildings to be built. Christians met in homes. Viola and Barna’s conclusion is that church buildings shouldn’t exist. [...]
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