At Dave Ramsey’s company, enforcement of sexual ethics under scrutiny
Accusations and counter-accusations center on incidents in which the company allegedly enforced or failed to enforce its sexual ethics requirements. - RNS
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That’s very restrictive criteria for a church. I am sorry your experiences have not been good. One anecdote:
- We haven’t had Sunday PM for years. We’re likely going to shift Wed to something better suited to get our community to corporate prayer. Details are still fuzzy, but that’s the direction we’re going.
- We have no youth group.
- We sing songs written by charismatics, along with other folks. Hillsong regularly shows up in our songs, on Sunday morning.
I think you will have great difficulty finding a congregation that meets all your criteria.
Tyler is a pastor in Olympia, WA and works in State government.
[Mark_Smith]1- A church that has Sunday AM, PM, and Wed services. Do you know how rare that is? NO CHURCH I can find in my city lists that that is not KJV only as far as I can tell.
2- A church with biblical expositional preaching (not topical). Again hard to find. I have visited a dozen large, prosperous growing churches in my town, all topical. Also smaller churches as well.
3- A church with a youth group not led by latest “cool dude” and where the students are actually Christians. Again, almost impossible. You should see the average evangelical youth group.
4- An evangelical church that sings worship songs NOT WRITTEN by Charismatics. Again, nearly all pastors who trumpet how bad charismatic Christianity plays their music every Sunday. I mean Bethel, Jesus Culture, Hillsong, etc…
That’s probably my top 4. You tell me if that is an absurd list.
For the most part, the church that I am a member of in SC meets all 4 of your criteria, and it is not KJV (some of the individual messages and some of the preaching series have been topical—all have been solidly biblical, whether they have been topical or not). Maybe, you should consider moving to another area where you can find a suitable church.
[Mark_Smith]Not absurd at all. But I agree that it can be hard to find. My daughter is looking into grad school and one of the schools is in a place with very limited decent church choices. She may end up at a KJVO church for a couple years, which I originally was very much against, but I would take that over CCM and grunge youth groups.That’s probably my top 4. You tell me if that is an absurd list.
[Mark_Smith]1- A church that has Sunday AM, PM, and Wed services. Do you know how rare that is? NO CHURCH I can find in my city lists that that is not KJV only as far as I can tell.
2- A church with biblical expositional preaching (not topical). Again hard to find. I have visited a dozen large, prosperous growing churches in my town, all topical. Also smaller churches as well.
3- A church with a youth group not led by latest “cool dude” and where the students are actually Christians. Again, almost impossible. You should see the average evangelical youth group.
4- An evangelical church that sings worship songs NOT WRITTEN by Charismatics. Again, nearly all pastors who trumpet how bad charismatic Christianity plays their music every Sunday. I mean Bethel, Jesus Culture, Hillsong, etc…
That’s probably my top 4. You tell me if that is an absurd list.
I agree that that list is not absurd, but I think that it will be difficult to completely meet.
- I don’t live in KS, but at my church we do > 75% traditional hymns, some new hymns, and some Getty and similar. No Hillsong, etc.
- We don’t have a “cool” youth group. (In fact, our youth group is pretty small, but is based on teaching, prayer, and only a few other outside activities, and although the teens can certainly invite others, it’s not geared towards catering to the unsaved.)
- We have mostly expositional sermons, but there are certainly occasional topical messages, when warranted.
What we do NOT have:
- A Sunday evening service
- Politics (of any persuasion) from the pulpit
- KJV-onlyism (though outside speakers can and do occasionally do preach from the KJV, and I do agree with Andy that a KJV-only position, while not desirable, is better than some other things).
- A requirement that everyone wear masks (but no one will give anyone grief for doing so).
- A praise band
- Wednesday night seminars of Dave Ramsey (which we have NEVER done in the 19 years I’ve been at this church).
So outside of what some would call our “lackadasical” handling of Covid and not having a Sunday night service, I think we’d meet most of what you are asking. I’m sorry you can’t find that in Kansas.
Dave Barnhart
On moving, I used to consider this regularly. I believe Larry is in Michigan and, every time I’ve been there, I’m in total disbelief how many excellent churches there are there. I don’t think people know how bad it is out there. When I went to a conference at DBTS I was Horace Greeley “Go west young man.” I really wish good seminaries would plant churches outside of the Midwest but still in this country. We really have not one IFB church in our county that is not KJVonly. Unlike Andy, that is a non-starter for me. But, everyone needs to decide for themselves.
On the multiple services requirement: There is no biblical command for multiple services. It’s nice but it’s not required. Same goes for youth group, although to me it’s not that nice either :). Maybe your presence would help encourage (facilitate?) more services.
I think it would be fairly remarkable, statistically speaking, if most of the evangelical/fundamental Baptist churches around Wichita, where I think Mark lives, were that into Dave Ramsey, but the thought occurred to me “what if these churches are predominantly reaching a demographic for which debt is a gigantic issue?” No doubt it can be overdone, and I’ve personally got my own differences with Ramsey (starting with he’s weak on the issue of covetousness, especially in his own life), but if you’ve got a church filled with debtors, maybe a little bit of that tough love is in order.
Or maybe it’s the fad du jour, and that’s a bad thing, of course.
Regarding Mark’s list, I don’t mind it that much, but I’ve got my quibbles with #1 and #4. Sometimes it seems that three services a week can add a lot of burden on the church without adding any real spiritual growth, and I’ve seen a ton of good through small grouops as an alternative. Regarding #4, my objection to a lot of songs is not their origins (that’s really the guilt by association fallacy), but rather that too many songs, especially in modern times, simply don’t have much content. If a major purpose of song in the church is to impart the Word of God to the people of God in lyric form, “low content” songs would seem to be working against that purpose.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
I don’t live in Wichita, or KC, or Lawrence, or Manhattan. I know of great churches in all those cities.
I am willing to compromise around my list, my problem is there is no church in my city of 130,000 with anything close to the list. NO CHURCH other than fundy KJV only or pentecostal/charismatic has a service other than Sunday AM (a few do a Saturday PM).
I am adamant about singing Charismatic songs… I’m done with it. Yuck. As a former Charismatic it almost makes me sick to sing them. I see all the bad theology you don’t see in them.
isn’t guilt by association. Its supporting a brand of Christianity I believe is wrong. The same pastor who called me a heretic for being too Calvinistic has no problem supporting Bethel Music (aka Brian Johnson Redding, CA). I asked him about it more than once. Showed him books, Comments, etc. I know them because I used to be trapped by that. He had no problem with it. Yet, the mere idea that Jesus died for the elect only made him furious and he would rant against it…
isn’t guilt by association. Its supporting a brand of Christianity I believe is wrong. The same pastor who called me a heretic for being too Calvinistic has no problem supporting Bethel Music (aka Brian Johnson Redding, CA). I asked him about it more than once. Showed him books, Comments, etc. I know them because I used to be trapped by that. He had no problem with it. Yet, the mere idea that Jesus died for the elect only made him furious and he would rant against it…
What’s difficult is the money that is made for the Bethel and Hillsong brand and organization when one sings Bethel or Hillsong, which makes things more murkier. I’ve never been involved in the Pentecostal or Charismatic movement, which is probably why I don’t have the passion that Mark has against songs that from these groups. Our church doesn’t sing any Bethel songs but we sing about 3 or 4 Hillsong songs on occasion. What’s also difficult is that many of these churches/church movements that write songs are performing/publishing each other’s songs so you don’t know if it is an actual Hillsong song or a Matt Redman song or a Chris Tomlin song unless you actually do some research. And I just don’t have the time or motivation to get worked up about it. While I wouldn’t ever want to violate Mark’s conscience, I wonder what will happen down the road when groups like Hillsong or Bethel fade into history? Will we treat any of their songs (if they have any lasting influence) the way that that Western Christianity has viewed the song, It is Well, since Horatio Spafford, who penned the words to It Is Well, went off the rails and ended up starting an end times cult with his wife in Chicago that eventually moved to Jerusalem. Around the time that he wrote, It is Well, he was “deconstructing his faith,” by not believing in eternal punishment and combining strange charismatic-like teachings with with outlandish end-times view and eventually got kicked out of their Presbyterian church. As their cult developed, They wouldn’t allow medicine and doctors to treat any of them. They repeatedly attempted to raise the dead among those who had died in their group. Horatio even had a divine revelation that abolished marriage among their group. That marriage was giving license to sexually sin. But when his wife Anna (who was a priestess in their cult) cheated on Horatio, she claimed that it was good spiritual training for Horatio that she became one with another man. I could go on and on. There is a historical account of all these stories from Jane Fletcher Feniesse’s book “American Priestess. The Extraordinary Story of Anna Spafford and the American Colony in Jerusalem.”
Joel brings up something important. Way more attention needs to be paid to the songs we are singing in church. I’m not concerned with who wrote it but what it communicates. For instance, we use the masters seminary (or whoever it is in that orbit) hymnal and it has Fosdick’s song in it. That’s crazy to me. It’s not communicating what we as a church believe about fundamental doctrines. This is true of many other songs as well.
[josh p]I’m not concerned with who wrote it but what it communicates. For instance, we use the masters seminary (or whoever it is in that orbit) hymnal and it has Fosdick’s song in it.
Just out of curiosity, are you referring to “Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah” or to some other song by Fosdick?
Dave Barnhart
For instance, we use the masters seminary (or whoever it is in that orbit) hymnal and it has Fosdick’s song in it.
How many people in your church would know Fosdick or his song? Or would be led into Fosdick’s theology because of that song?
Last night we sang “Victory in Jesus.” I love that song, but years ago a friend of mine said he did no want to sing it after what he learned about the author. I wish I knew nothing about the author. I like to sing songs in the same way I eat meat I buy in the market- not asking questions, but looking at what is in front of me and throwing out anything that looks rotten.
A lot of great hymns come from Catholic sources, some use pagan root music (“Be Still My Soul” and “JoyfulJoyful”, etc..), and then a fair number are from liberal churches, not just Hillsong. I can see a reluctance to assist Hillsong through royalties, but all in all, if we eliminate every hymn with objectionable associations, it’s going to be awfully quiet in church until the preacher steps up.
(another reason to be cautious with Hillsong is that they have a recent history of tolerating some pretty serious sexual abuse among their leaders, FWIW)
All in all, I’d still argue that if we take a good look at lyrics and such, we’re going to make a lot of the same decisions Mark would like us to make. I’m all in favor of modern music in the church and the broadening of genre to include a lot of “other peoples’ music”, but that is not equivalent to “anything goes in terms of lyrics.” My particular bete noire are songs that bear way too much similarity to Air Supply and thus force male congregants to sing in a pretty effeminate way.
Back towards the subject, if indeed a large portion of churches in Mark’s area are spending a disproportionate amount of time and effort on Ramsey’s contribution vs. other areas critical to growth in Christ, absolutely that is an imbalance that needs to be corrected. Not being from along the old Santa Fe route, though, I can’t speak directly to it, though.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
[Larry]For instance, we use the masters seminary (or whoever it is in that orbit) hymnal and it has Fosdick’s song in it.
How many people in your church would know Fosdick or his song? Or would be led into Fosdick’s theology because of that song?
Maybe two besides myself. That’s not the issue though. The issue is that we are singing things to God that are not true. We (the church general) carefully guard the pulpit but sometimes not what we sing.
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