Steven Curtis Chapman Song for this Blog Entry
Art by Simona Carlini
FYI, the featured song has nothing to do with the ideas in this blog. I couldn’t really find any Steven Curtis Chapman songs that really lined up with them, and in fact, if I had to guess, I’d say the Chap would likely vehemently disagree with a lot of what I’m about to say. Let’s consider this a disclaimer going forward that my linking SCC songs to my blogs should by no means be considered an implication of any kind of endorsement by Steven of the ideas contained therein. This also applies to the featured artists. Most of them are freelancers who agreed to take a job, and their involvement should not be considered their endorsement of my ideas in any way.
So, I was recently attending a church for a while where I disagreed with probably around 30% of what the pastor preached. We’ll call this church Church A. This isn’t too surprising as this church was your typical conservative, evangelical church and I am what your typical conservative evangelical would consider a liberal Christian. I’ve even been called a heretic and/or accused of not being a real Christian at all by typical conservative evangelicals on more than one occasion in my life. Specifically at Church A, I served on the praise ministry, and a fellow praise team member was quite committed to having me removed (and in a roundabout way, eventually succeeded). Of course, my disagreement doesn’t necessarily mean anything, which is why I had no problem attending this church.
Nothing in this blog entry really invokes any imagery, so here’s a quokka.
Anyway, one of the prayers that were consistently prayed by the praise team and others was for God to “speak through the pastor,” “put His words into the pastor,” or something else along those lines during the service. A common prayer, certainly. From the attitudes I observed of the members of this church including the praise team, they generally believed that that prayer was granted, meaning this pastor spoke the words of God Himself.
Cool. One problem (well, of many), though. I previously attended another church, which we’ll call Church B, whose pastor agreed with me on let’s say 40% of that 30% of the theology that I disagreed with Church A on, and consistently preached as such. Understandable of course, as they were of completely different denominations. Their praise team, of which I was also a member, and the others of the church also consistently prayed for God to “speak through the pastor,” and also seemed to consistently believe this prayer was granted.
I also attended a Bible university for undergrad, from where Church B’s pastor had also graduated and which is where I pieced together that 30% that I disagree with Church A’s pastor on. Let me note that I don’t necessarily mean they specifically taught me that 30%, in fact I’d guess that many of the professors there would disagree with me on quite a bit of that 30%. But, they taught me the bits and pieces which I quilted together to form that 30%. Being a university, of course we didn’t have a pastor. But, we did have two weekly chapel services with a revolving door of guest speakers. Many of these guest speakers gave messages that contradicted each other and further often contradicted messages from the pastors of both Church A and Church B. I was not on the praise team there, but I did participate in the praise ministry now and then, and there were also consistent prayers for God to speak through the speakers and a general belief that those prayers were granted.
At my own current seminary, we also have two chapel services a week, though I can only attest to one of them since the other is conducted in Korean and I have never attended it. There is also a revolving door of speakers at these services, and various professors have expressed disagreement with some of them, some of whom are professors and/or graduates of Torch themselves. These messages also sometimes contradicted messages given at Church A, Church B, and my undergrad university. I am not a member of the chapel praise team, but I have participated in it, and there have also been prayers for God to speak through the speakers and a common belief that those prayers were granted.
They’re a type of marsupial found in Australia. They have no fear of humans, so it’s common for people to take selfies with them.
So, here we have a sample of, at minimum, a few dozen speakers across two churches and two institutes of Biblical education through whom God, partially in answer to our prayers, was apparently communicating contradictory ideas. Along with this comes the claim by some people that the Holy Spirit spoke to them through those speakers and convicted and really moved them, which apparently also served as evidence of God’s power resonating through those speakers, just as they had prayed for. A bit of a circular argument, but we’ll let it slide. Of course, since some of those speakers gave contradictory messages, for a large segment of these people, that would mean God spoke a false, incorrect message through their speaker and imprinted a false conviction into their hearts since only one of two contradictory messages can be true.
In addition to speaking through the pastor, apparently God works miracles during the rest of the service as well. As we sing His praises and participate in the service accoutrements, this somehow invokes the presence of God, resulting in His “inhabiting His praises” and blessing the church with His Holy Presence or some such thing. I was always of the impression that God was everywhere all the time, and in fact, Church A, Church B, my undergrad university, and my seminary all teach that idea. So, not really sure why they would make a big deal of Him being at any particular occasion, including services, which should be sort of a “duh,” but whatever. Anyway, the presence of God, invoked by the trappings of the church service, apparently serves as some level of validation of what’s going on in the church, including the procession of the service and all the elements.
A rather stark and simple, though imperfect, example. I recall one church I attended in California, which we’ll call Church C, was a firm believer that communion should be done every Sunday and is indeed what made church “church” and not just another gathering of people. The pastor even went as far as to say that that is something modern churches are doing flat out wrong, and the resulting “presence of God” during Church C’s services was seen as a validation of how correctly they were conducting the services.
They are a big part of why Australia is so high on my bucket list.
Well, we go back to Church A, where communion was only done once a month. The explanation of the guy who conducted the membership class I attended was that they wanted to keep communion “special,” and they felt doing it every week would likely dilute and saturate it. But, if Church C is correct and communion is indeed a cornerstone of proper ecclesiastical practices, then of course, God would not bless Church A with His presence, since their services are not being conducted correctly. But as mentioned, a common sentiment among the congregation of Church A was that they “felt the presence of God” during their services. Clearly, this means that their church services were being conducted just fine, since God blessed them with His presence. Then, this also means that Church C was wrong and their enforcement of the idea of communion being necessary for every church service is an affront to God, therefore God would not bring His presence there. Yet, according to the members of Church C, they did indeed feel the presence of God and took that as a sign of validation, so clearly what they were doing is correct.
I think you can see where I’m going. I might note, I’m not saying that every church that practices communion every Sunday is that militant about it, but Church C certainly was. Church C’s pastor also eventually resigned from his position because he was caught in an ongoing scandal, but clearly God, who once decreed that people couldn’t even enter into His presence without being completely ritually purified, was still speaking through him during that time since people felt the Lord convicting them through his words.
So, these people expect me to ignore all this and the glaring conflicts of interests it creates and believe that God’s presence has indeed alighted on the services of all three churches and both universities, citing the incontrovertible evidence of their having felt the warm fuzzies in their stomachs, a tugging at their hearts, a tingling down their spines, experiencing emotional catharses, someone somewhere having been moved by the message or music, or some other such thing, for which clearly there can be no other conceivable explanation than the Holy Spirit moving through the church. It couldn’t possibly be that each pastor and church had their own philosophies, theologies, and interpretations that create a bias that will inherently leak into their sermons and that each Christian has the further responsibility to study the Bible themselves in order to build a spirit of discernment and evaluate the ideas for themselves and hold the church and themselves accountable, and all the feels they experience are physiological, emotional responses to music and a formula of service designed precisely to invoke those very emotions. Nah. It’s absolutely the presence of God which is everywhere all the time and yet is different, just different okay, in the church building on Sundays during a particular timeframe, which incidentally/coincidentally/conveniently makes studying the boring old Bible obsolete since God just imprinted His truth directly into their hearts and His presence in the service is a sign of His validation of all that had happened there including their own contribution to it anyway, so why bother.
Yeah. Not sold. You know, I think I’ll continue going to church because it’s my duty and privilege to do so for various reasons rather than some formulaic expectation of God doing something just because a certain combination of elements are there, and continue the grind of studying Scripture and trying to understand it better and learn more about God and His will and letting that determine which of my behaviors are validated instead of just trusting that God will send me the warm fuzzies anytime I do something right and give the preachers all the right words that I never need to verify since God Himself gave it to him, and further expect others to hold me similarly accountable when I am placed in any kind of leadership position myself. I guess I’m just old-fashioned.
See you next time!