As iron sharpens iron,
one person sharpens another. (Proverbs 27:17)
“The UMC’s General Conference 2020, to be held in May in Minneapolis, will consider the structure of what church leaders hope can be an amicable, and orderly, breakup of a worldwide church that is the second largest Protestant denomination in the United States.” - RNS
Gregg Strawbridge continues his series about contemporary music styles in the church. Here, he discusses critical arguments against contemporary music styles.
“The United Presbyterian Church of Binghamton…hosted a fifteen-foot tall totem sculpture known as the Sviatovid…. a local Slavic god of war, fertility, and abundance in the Baltic region” - Christian Post
According to an article in Chrsitianity Today, both Glenn Stanton’s The Myth of the Dying Church: How Christianity is Actually Thriving in America and the World and Rick Richardson’s You Found Me: New Research on How Unchurched Nones, Millennials, and Irreligious are Surprisingly Open to Christian Faith document how the evangelical church is growing or at least holding its own in the U.S.
John Dickerson, in The Great Evangelical Recession says the opposite, that people — especially young adults and single moms — are ditching the church in droves.
“We should not, however, conclude that any old act of worship informed by faith is pleasing to God. The second ingredient — also absolutely essential — to sweet-smelling worship is careful attention to God’s own instructions regarding how he wishes to be worshiped.
“Why do pastors or service leaders use phrases like these? And what are the most beneficial things for pastors or leaders to say at the beginning of a worship service?” - Challies
“The practice is more obvious when the message is not expository or the application is not plainly taught from the text. Preaching is used, not to expound the scripture, but to ‘send a message’ to a specific individual or group of individuals from the pulpit during the sermon.” - Proclaim & Defend
Phil Vischer: “It’s so much easier to just tell a Bible story, pull a moral value out of it, and end with a Bible verse. There is value in that. … But if you stop there… you never actually get to the message that leads to regeneration that leads to new life that leads to the fruit of the Spirit.” - Cranach
This series continues as Gregg Strawbridge examines some common arguments against contemporary music styles in the church.
Bill Gothard (1986), a well-known critic of CM says, “There is no such thing as amoral music.” He diagrams an analogy between other disciplines and music. “The following disciplines illustrate how the purity of an item can be corrupted by adding even a small amount of another element” (p. 124).
“More than two dozen current and former Liberty University officials describe a culture of fear and self-dealing at the largest Christian college in the world.” - Politico
Discussion