Wednesday, April 16, 2008

American church - liberal or conservative?

This is the beginning of an article that speaks for me to the great predicament the American church has painted itself into the corner with... - David Loar

WHO'S RIGHT? THE LIBERALS OR THE CONSERVATIVES?

Today's church is plagued by political bias. And its leaders have turned this bias—whether left/right, blue/red, liberal/conservative—into a pseudo-religion, something sacred in itself.

Yet, there's really no such thing as a "liberal Christian" or a "conservative Christian." The world views of both liberals and conservatives may offer helpful insights into justified concerns, but the tragedy comes when they get trapped—and stay trapped!—in their own agenda. Jesus' message, after all, was never a political message. And in our time, an older and wiser Billy Graham insisted the Gospel plainly "transcends party lines." (more)
from Thomas Hohstadt at "Future Church"

Friday, April 11, 2008

gossips and rumors of gossip

There's been a lot of hoop-la about Jeremiah Wright the recently retired pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, the church where Barack Obama is a member.

It brought some recent memories for us at Fairlawn West United Church of Christ in Akron. About 10 years ago we set out to be a church that is consumed by the mission of Jesus Christ and that we would be sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ with the world around us rather than focused on ourselves and keeping the church more for ourselves, our convenience and comfort rather than being servants of God. That led to some major accusations towards me, animosity by some folks within the church, and a major blow up in the life of the church with some folks leaving to go to other churches. Along the way we took the pews out of our sanctuary and put in chairs and round tables. We gave the pews to a number of churches from Missouri to Pennsylvania that were white and African-American, and pentecostal to fundamentalist.

That latter move on top of the stories floating around these parts of Akron for some years before, led to wild stories about us in other churches and just out on the "street" among folks. It sounded like we had almost become devil worshipers who had sold our mothers into slavery! What we heard is that we were no longer a church...because we got rid of the pews. That we had misappropriated upwards of $800,000. That I had been emotionally abusive of older women in the church. That we had removed our large pipe organ (which apparently grew out of the horror that we had removed the pews.) The stories were legion, and the antipathy toward us by a variety of "church folks" was deep. But we found in the 4 years since that a number of other folks who were looking for a deeply spiritual, outward reaching, not self consumed church found out about us and have become part of our life. Some even heard about us through those wild stories.

Like Rev. Wright and Trinity UCC, people heard blips and decided from that about the whole. Like Jesus said in Luke 6:

22-23"Count yourself blessed every time someone cuts you down or throws you out, every time someone smears or blackens your name to discredit me. What it means is that the truth is too close for comfort and that that person is uncomfortable. You can be glad when that happens—skip like a lamb, if you like!—for even though they don't like it, I do . . . and all heaven applauds. And know that you are in good company; my preachers and witnesses have always been treated like this.

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