Oh my goodness!! You mean we have to try them to come more than one day a week?? OY!!
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Is a 1 1/2 hour Sunday morning service to long ?
- Thread starter jeben
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Oh my goodness!! You mean we have to try them to come more than one day a week?? OY!!
Don't we Christians worship the Lord every minuteof the day....in everything we do and say....aren't we set here for example? I personally do not diminish church but I don't diminish Christian involvement with the outside world either....there has to be a balance.
Who is THEM?
The people who come to our church.
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DMLJ preached (reluctantly) at a radio broadcast service. Of course he continued on preaching after the radio spot ended. Later on the people complained to the station for cutting off his message. They wanted to hear all of it.
Perhaps a lot of "THEM" have been burned by church..... or perhaps "THEM" dont see the significance of church, or perhaps "THEM" dont have any meaningful experience with church. We as the "church" need to recognize this & perhaps adjust to what is now happening in the world......And recognize that the world is a fallen place. so before we start demeaning "THEM" (IE calling them the "Goats") perhaps we should look inward, pray & ask the good Lord how we can be salt & light to the world. And I say this in all do respect to all of us struggling with reaching out to a fallen world.
I think one issue sometimes becomes the error that Christianity is primarily defined as a personal relationship when just as many passages present the faith as inclusion in the people of God functioning towards accomplishing the purposes of God by working together through the Provision of God. One problem with a strict individualistic view of what it means to be a Christian is that salvation becomes centered on the redemption of man rather than the glorification of God. In other words, we are not saved for our sake but for His purposes.
Sent from my TARDIS
Sent from my TARDIS
Jon, I do not see anyone taking an individualistic approach.....however I also don't see church as being the cohesive entity that you portray. And I find that frankly very sad. God is active in the world, He doesn't operate in a box. So (from my humble prospective anyway) one has to first examine how God is working in their lives & then extend that out over ones community. Failing that you have no starting point from which to extend the love & peace of Christ and isn't that His purposewhen he commands us to go out & bring the gospel to every corner of the earth?
EW&F, I certainly was not applying that you hold an individualistic view and apologize if it came off that way. I was thinking of other people I have spoken with in church and the focused away from the local assembly. I grew up when it was common to hear "I can worship on the lake fishing just as I could in a church".
And yes, I am speaking idealistically. I think often times the local church is addressed in the Bible as if all were actually born again believers striving for the faith while at the same time there is an acknowledgement of tares growing among the wheat. It is indeed sad that the local church isn't the cohesive entity it should be, and it is unfortunate that divisions have arisen out of differences. I guess we can look for what is perfect and right in the church, realizing these flaws are temporary.
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Jon, never thought you did brother. My fustration for a few years now has been with finding a church that is real ( what I mean by that is balanced) & I finally found one this year but they are an hours drive from me, so I go when I can but not weekly. And since they are not close by, I don't consider them my community & thus I wont join because I cant fully contribute.....and I have told this to both pastors. See Jon there has to be something in my living area that is more christian for me to be comfortable....then I can contribute more of my time & talents.
New Jersey is a funny place......lots of Catholics & Main lines but little in content....so I search. If anyone wants to plant something here let me know.
We too enjoy meaty sermons--but too many preachers confuse substance and length.
Our leavers are strong, committed, serving people who happen to have children, or who are elderly.
And guess what? Many of us do not try to get all the meat for the week in one setting.
The elders have talked to the pastor and timed the different elements of worship. We spend more time not singing or preaching or praying than we spend doing those things.
It is lack of for better term stage presence and wasting time happening, not deep sermons or great prayer or praise.
Our leavers are strong, committed, serving people who happen to have children, or who are elderly.
And guess what? Many of us do not try to get all the meat for the week in one setting.
The elders have talked to the pastor and timed the different elements of worship. We spend more time not singing or preaching or praying than we spend doing those things.
It is lack of for better term stage presence and wasting time happening, not deep sermons or great prayer or praise.
In other words, "you are not being fed"
That has been a difficulty for me. I grew up in churches where the local church formed a substantial portion of our lives. It was not about the sermon, or the music, or even the service itself. It was about God and believers worshipping together...not just in a Sunday service but throughout the week...by being the body of Christ.
I lived in Europe for several years, moved back to the states, but found things different. Church had become, it seems to me, something that one went to...a moment set aside from normal life (even the normal life of a Christian). We stopped being the church and started attending church. I do not know if this is just me, and maybe it was always that way but I just didn't notice. Maybe EW&F is right about my view of the local church being idealistic. It doesn't seem like it was always this way, but I could be wrong.
Complain, complain, complain!... We are all Gods children yet you want to quench the Spirit?... I've been over 50 years in the Old Baptist Church and I have heard men get up and try to direct their sermon and drag that sermon on for thirty minutes. It would have been better if they never got to the pulpit. That being said I have seen others with a fire in their bones preach for an hour and you were sorry when they quit... Is it the man speaking to us for what he has to say or the Lord by the Holy Spirit directing him what to say... There is a difference!... In God's house of worship we can't give the Lord and his messengers 1 1/2 hours of our time?... Shame on us!... How many of us give so much time to ourselves and I do not excuse myself and give our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ so little?... The OP felt that the time spent hearing the message was too long... Really?... Are we in a hurry worship service?... Some need to see the sermons of our forefathers and those preachers could preach... Maybe we just want convenient worship in our fast pace society?... I wish I could have sat under the peaching of some the theological giants of history of whose sermons I can only read... WOW!... My Lord and Savior Jesus Christ for what you have done for me 1 1/2 hours is to short to hear it all... I for one give you my life in your service as should we all and stop complaining... When you do remember Acts 20:9 and ask yourself was this young man being bored by Paul's preaching?... Brother Glen
Acts 20:9 And there sat in the window a certain young man named Eutychus being fallen into a deep sleep: and as Paul was long preaching, he sunk down with sleep, aand fell down from the third loft, and was taken up dead.
10: And Paul went down and fell on him, and embracing him said, Trouble not yourselves; for his life is in him.
Nobodies trying to quench the spirit brother .....but have you been to lame service before.....there is little of spirit there to begin with! So after a few of those services (posing as spirit filled services) why continue on? And I will tell you why, we are to not shun christian assembly (its supposed to nourish us). If I were to advise Nodak at all, Id advise that he or she leave and find a much better church with the proper balance, one where you will be fed.
I can only speak where I come from and those are only my thoughts... In the church I grew up in, it was a small church only 100 members. Dwindled down over the years... Singing, opening prayer, preaching and closing prayer... The other added functions other churches had was not needed... Everyone knew what was going on in a small church... If one feels they are not being fed in the church they attend go to another... That was not easy in a Primitive Baptist Church as most of them were over a hundred miles apart at least that was true in California... Only traveled across distances if there was a group of churches getting together in a big meeting usually lasting 3 days... I only speak where I came from and my thoughts are my own!... Brother Glen
Jon, I grew up in a Catholic environment where we lived our faith daily & we went to church sometimes daily & always on Sunday. Now with the RC's, you have a very rigid script & timetable you have to follow.....and you adapt to it cause your a Roman Catholic. But you very seldom get a spirit filled sermon & most of the time a 45 minute Mass drags on & on & on. Don't stand next to the door on the way out...you will get flattened. Still there are families in the RC faith that believe that they serve their God best in the home & only pay homage (most regretfully at the RC Church).
So where we going with this......do we need stop watches to time our services or do we allow people who are poor in sermon giving to blather on. God help me, I don't know but when there is a spirit filled assembly, you know I aint a walkin out.
I'm not so much on timelines. Often church seems to become a program or production, and I don't think we've quite figured out how to fit God into the church bulletin. Personally, I think that much of this has to do with the "professionalization" of the ministry (although I realize many deny such a thing exists). I remember one "Spirit filled sermon" which lasted 3 hours (seriously, my wife and I thought we had been there an hour or so, but it was right at 3 hours when we left and we would have gladly stayed longer). I've also sat through 20 minute sermons that felt like a week.