I listened to a radio program on 1210 am today where Mike Horton, a professor from Westminster, was complaining how the church doesn’t teach enough doctrine and theology. People don’t know what propitiation, justification, sanctification or atonement mean anymore. Instead we are always trying to translate the bible into everyday “real life” when the bible, doctrine and theology actually define real life.

I’m also reading this book Redeeming the Routines by Robert Banks where he says, “Doctrinal topics or broader social and political questions… tend to squeeze out more everyday concerns in study groups.” He also says, “Most Bible studies are of little help here. They tend to concentrate on the exposition of biblical books or on the discussion of theological themes.”  He goes on to talk about how pulpits have lost touch with the everyday lives and concerns of people… i.e. “real life.”

Not only does it seem like the two guys have totally different points of view, they also seem to have totally different ideas of what is actually taught in churches. But perhaps their points of view color what they think is actually taught in churches.

Photo by Cindy

1. Never talk to them again!

Hahah, just kidding. Sometimes when you don’t agree with a person, you still have to deal with them. Perhaps they are in charge of an important ministry of your church or maybe they’re the pastor. You need to not only deal with them, but also convince them to agree with you sometimes.

I have disagreed with church leaders many times. I have to admit that I’m not “successful” at getting people to agree with me a lot of the times, but I have learned a lot of lessons throughout the years.. so I’m sharing those with you :p.

The real way to “deal with” church leaders is relationships.

1. Build relationships with the church leaders.
They may disagree with you on your stance on some issue, but buy building a relationship with the church leader, they understand that you are a person and you understand that they are a person. There are feelings and inherent biases in every person. We are much less critical of our friends. We tend to accept people we like and want to agree with people that we like. Show the church leader that you truly care about him/her and they’ll begin to truly care about you. Friendship is very very powerful. Make friends with the church leader.

2. Build relationships with other people in the church.
Have genuine care and friendship with the church body. A church leader may distrust your ideas if they don’t believe that you care about the body and really love the body as much as they do. If they see that you really do care about and love the church body, your motives become unquestionable. A person who has the wrong idea but correct motives is much more palatable than someone with wrong ideas and wrong motives. They might not agree with your ideas right away, but they will see that you have the right motives.

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photo by xip

I know the “in a building type” Christian church is unpopular these days, but I just can’t get myself away from it. I love the church. I love it for a lot of biblical reasons, but I think those have been delved into by many books already. So here are the one that are not necessarily biblical reasons.

1. I love that it’s organized.
I know people hate organized religion, but I love structure and organization among people. I myself am not an organized person in terms of things, but when I get people together, I love it when everyone knows their roles. I love it when people work together as a team. I love it when people follow the leader. Which leads me to the next reason…

2. I love heirarchy.
Yes, another really BAD word. I said it. I love heirarchy. I like knowing who is in charge and who is in the middle and who are the followers. When I was little, we made up a “spy” club and assigned everyone in the club ranks. It places responsibility on certain people and defines clear roles for people.

3. I love big groups of people.
Walking into a room where there are 50… 100 people or even more waiting for an event to start is an awesome feeling. It’s even more awesome when you know the names of most of the people in the room. Everyone is greeting each other. Everyone has smiles on their faces, laughing at jokes and is generally happy to be there.

4. I love good worship bands.
Good worship bands make it so easy to get into worship! The music sounds so good! The guitar, drums, bass… every instrument contributes to the wall of sound. The worship leader knows the exact words to say to manipulate the feelings of the congregation into pouring out their hearts to God. I know that it doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with God and it’s a superficial thing without true spirituality, but I love the music anyway. Who doesn’t appreciate good music?

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Logo for MallChurch … a church inside a mall.

Are we supposed to “market” the church?

Just the initial thought of that is so repulsive. For some reason, when I think of marketing, I think of “flash but little substance.” Things with substance are supposed to market themselves right? We don’t need a smooth talker to “sell” the gospel message. We don’t need fancy ads or great graphic design in order to make the gospel appealing to people. It appeals to the consumerism of our culture. How are we supposed to teach our people that they should not have a consumer mentality with church when we feed that consumer mentality?

Here’s a quote from the website Church Marketing Sucks:

“We love the church, but it needs some help. Typos, cheesy logos, and bad clip art aren’t helping the cause.”

The website helps churches to market themselves, do advertising, networking, public relations, branding and identity.

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An interesting question posed by thecuttingtruth :

Which would you prefer:

• A highly-polished worship team at your church comprised of at least a few non-believer muscians; or
• A run-of-the-mill, aesthetically inferior worship team comprised only of believers?

For me, this isn’t even a question of aesthetics. It’s a blessing just to have a not-yet Christian want to take part in worship.