I have read some interesting takes on the UCC commercials showing bouncers at the door to churches. Michael Spencer in his blog I think asks some important questions that deserve to be addressed. Near the end of his article (in otherwords go read the whole thing) he writes:

“My Christian friends need to ask themselves how they are going to answer challenges and critiques made from the Old Testament. Are we going to answer as if we haven’t read the book? As if the violence is tolerable? Are we going to say that God can do what he wants and whatever he tells us to do is automatically right? (That will be comforting in a post 9-11 world.) Are we going to deal with the Old Testament as if it can stand alone, without Christ? Are we going to excuse the violence and intolerance in our faith as not important, when the culture is demanding an answer? Are we going to say the critics are unfair and idiotic for bringing this up? None of that is going to work, nor should it.”

He is correct in his assesment that if the Old Testament is read the same way that the Koran is read on talk-radio then we have just as much of a PR problem as the muslims. But I think his main premise is still correct - we must deal with it - the question is how? Scripture tells us to be ready with an answer - are we? Could I hold a reasonable conversation with a friend and “explain” the laws in Leviticus? Or would I do a quick slight of hand and try to get him to look over at New Testament because those are all shadows?
Not sure that kind of answer will work anymore - Post 9-11

michaelspencer.us: Christian Intolerance: We’ve been outed! What now?

40 Bicycles makes an interesting comment on youth groups:

Growing up in various evangelical youth groups, I encountered a form of faith that was often infantile, unwilling to progress beyond a gooey affection for Jesus. The intense focus on an emotional relationship and ‘asking Jesus into your heart’ led to a suspicion of theology and careful Bible study. Thought-provoking questions were often defused with trite and insubstantial platitudes. Peter Pan Christianity was the order of the day. The gospel had little to say about the real world. We were more concerned with going to spiritual Neverland when we died. I do not doubt for a moment that this experience has served to stunt my spiritual growth in a number of respects. I still struggle with its legacy in my life.

Boars Head Tavern picks up the thread and lists a dozen reasons why Youth Ministry should be abandoned. But the point that caught my attention was part of reason “I. Make them go to church” with the statement:

The reason the boomers have turned the church into a circus is they’ve simply brought their idiotic youth group ideas into the adult service.

Ouch!

The Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church responded to the way the Mississippi Valley Presbytery portrayed their teachings. As with almost every treatment, as I have mentioned earlier, those who attack the Auburn Avenue ideas either are incompetent or have ulterior motives. Near the end of the response is a clear plea:

“We find ourselves left with no alternative but to plead with the members of the Study Committee and Mississippi Valley Presbytery to reconsider the statements and accusations in this report. Taken as a whole, the report as it presently stands is altogether inadequate as a fair and faithful representation and evaluation of our position. It is filled with misstatements, misinterpretations and misreadings. We have many times expressed our willingness for brothers to study and interact with our teachings and continue to be open to such critique and discussion. This requires, however, that our brothers be willing to deal with our actual teachings and not those they merely suspect us to hold.”

Doug Wilson was not so kind (in his own sarcastic way) in his article Mystery Theology Theater where he goes through the presbytery’s report and gives “play by play commentary” and near the end concludes:

I would give up some more, but I already did that.

Reply from Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church

I don’t usually post personal stuff here - but will make an exception. My grandmother passed away last week - 105 years old! Today we had her funeral and I was blessed to be asked to be a part of it. As part of the rememberance of her life I was able to tell about the summer of 1978 when I acted as valet for my two grandmothers as we travelled through Europe by train, and I may post that story later, but what I wanted to put here was the ‘Prayer of Committal’ that I gave at the conclusion of the service.

Let us commend Isabella to the mercy of God our Maker and Redeemer.
Eternal Father, before whose face the generations rise and pass away:
We praise and thank you for the gift you gave us in Isabella
whom today we commend into your sure keeping.
Merciful Father, who gives every good and perfect gift:
We thank you for Isabella, for the years we shared with her,
We thank you for every memory of love and joy,
We thank you for every sorrow shared.
We thank you for her life and for her death,
We thank you for the rest she now enjoys in Christ,
We thank you for giving her to us.

Heavenly Father, God of all comfort:
We know that in death, life is changed, not ended.
You turn the darkness of death into the dawn of new life.
Yet despite our faith in the promise of new life, death still causes us grief and pain.
Just as Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus, so we weep because of our own loss.
Show compassion to your people in our sorrow. Give us peace in our grief and mourning.
And lift us from the darkness of grief to the peace and light of your presence.
Help us to go into the world this day strengthened by memories of joy and laughter we have shared with Isabella.
As your word says:

When this corruptible shall put on incorruption.
And this mortal shall put on immortality.
Then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written,
Death is swallowed up in victory.
O death, where is thy sting?
O grave, where is thy victory?

Triune God, our creator, redeemer, and friend:
By your power Christ conquered death and entered into glory.
Confident of his promises, we entrust Isabella to your merciful keeping
as a lamb of your own flock a sinner of your own redeeming.
Enfold her in the arms of your mercy, in the blessed rest of everlasting peace,
and in the company of your saints forever.

We ask all these thing in the name of your son, Jesus Christ. Amen.

An interesting article on the fact that our attendance at church has more in common with other recreational activities we participate in than it does with meeting the King of the Universe.

…

The very fact that religion is privatised in America tends to make the practice of religion into a leisure activity, howbeit a regular and important one, whether we like it to be so or not. This is because the choice is made to go to church rather than to go to the Mall, the Golf Course, take the kids to soccer games or to creative dancing or the like. Church-going is one of the many choices (in a society which celebrates choice as a “value”) open to people to engage in when they are not at work or in school.

…

Further, the way that “worshippers” and “worship leaders” dress appears to be conditioned by (certainly very much related to) the type of services in which they participate. Services are often informal, easy-going and participatory and to dress up for them in formal clothing is seen to be “over-dressed”. In this kind of assembly, as the style, the words and the music appear to indicate, the presence of “God” seems to be perceived or thought of as being that of an Invisible Friendly Spirit and a “Father-God” whose function is to make people feel good about their religious exercises and experience together and to bless them according to their needs. [The classic sense of the presence of God as above and beyond (transcendent) in his holiness and glory and yet present to the humble and lowly soul does not seem to go with the leisure-style mindset, dress and deportment, and neither does the classic doctrine of worshipping the Father through the Son and with the Holy Spirit in the beauty of holiness and in spirit and in truth.]

…

Of course there is a minority of middle-class churches where people attend dressed in their “Sunday-best” because they have been taught that in going to meet with God one should dress in at least as formal a way as one would if one were going to the White House for an audience with the President. (Usually these traditional churches have a formal liturgy with minimal participation by other than ordained ministers who are dressed in some form of vestments.)

…

This gives me pause to think, when I get up Sunday morning and prepare to go to church, am I getting ready for the most important thing I am going to do this week, or am I just ‘going to church’?

Originally spotted at 40 Bicycles

(from George Grant’s 12.15.04 blog)

I stumble at the thought of God sleeping on hay,
With scent of cow manure and cud-chewing blank stares;
Or of God twisting a tiny finger around the young mother’s hand,
As he nurses and drifts to sleep to her weary psalm.
I stumble to see the slow afternoon, the rhythm of planing wood,
Halting to fetch Joseph a saw.
Or figuring accounts of his father’s business
As God plans to change his career.
I stumble to believe that he fluffed and propped a pillow,
Then fell into sleep too deep for storm to waken;
Or to see God, dust covered, with tired feet resting;
Longing for a drink and talking to a cheap woman.
To be found wandering Roman territory without papers—
No letter from Heaven certifying his claim.
To be lumped with every radical with blazing eyes
And visions who portrayed the certainty of society’s fall.
A wine making, mud dabbing, temple brawler God,
Broke, homeless, surrounded by weak and foolish men.
God can be myth and metaphor and image;
A rock, a mountain, sun, light, or sea;
But the sweating flesh of a middle age man—
A descent that would often be heresied away.

I stumble at the thought of God incarnated—
But not drunken night stumbling down an empty road;
I stumble at the thought of God incarnated—
Intensely light blinded, fearfully secured, irresistibly drawn.

Originally spotted at Boar’s Head Tavern