Category Archives: Contemporary Church Culture
A Strong Argument Against Calvinisim? Part 3 You Decide….
Over here at Not For Itching Ears we like to discuss issues that challenge our view of Christianity and the Church. It is healthy to consider what one believes about the Christian faith and how we express that faith in our corporate church life. If all we ever do is listen to ourselves, we can inadvertently become the kind of people Paul warned Timothy about: People who surround themselves with “teachers who say what their itching ears want to hear.” Today’s post is an attempt to counter that tendency among us as we discuss Free-Will and Determinism. To do this, we turn to an extremely interesting email exchange between Father John Whiteford (an Eastern Orthodox priest) and some proponents of Calvinism.
This isn’t your typical argument! Father Whiteford brings another line of argumentation to his view that is almost entirely absent from the typical back and forth between Calvinists and Arminians: What did the early church fathers teach about this?
I recognize that there are three groups of people who will read a post like this: 1) Strong Calvinists who will want to defend their view. 2)Strong Arminians who will want to find ammo for their view and 3) those who don’t have their minds made up but may lean to one understanding of things. My hope, is that all three groups of people will be challenged and encouraged. It’s a long discussion so I will be breaking it up into three posts. Read Part 1 Here, and part two here. The third and final post …… Read the rest of this entry
A Strong Argument Against Calvinisim? Part 2 You Decide….
Over here at Not For Itching Ears we like to discuss issues that challenge our view of Christianity and the Church. It is healthy to consider what one believes about the Christian faith and how we express that faith in our corporate church life. If all we ever do is listen to ourselves, we can inadvertently become the kind of people Paul warned Timothy about: People who surround themselves with “teachers who say what their itching ears want to hear.” Today’s post is an attempt to counter that tendency among us as we discuss Free-Will and Determinism. To do this, we turn to an extremely interesting email exchange between Father John Whiteford (an Eastern Orthodox priest) and some proponents of Calvinism.
This isn’t your typical argument! Father Whiteford brings another line of argumentation to his view that is almost entirely absent from the typical back and forth between Calvinists and Arminians: What did the early church fathers teach about this?
I recognize that there are three groups of people who will read a post like this: 1) Strong Calvinists who will want to defend their view. 2)Strong Arminians who will want to find ammo for their view and 3) those who don’t have their minds made up but may lean to one understanding of things. My hope, is that all three groups of people will be challenged and encouraged. It’s a long discussion so I will be breaking it up into three posts. Read Part 1 Here; here’s part 2: Read the rest of this entry
A Strong Argument Against Calvinisim? Part 1 You Decide….
Over here at Not For Itching Ears we like to discuss issues that challenge our view of Christianity and the Church. It is healthy to consider what one believes about the Christian faith and how we express that faith in our corporate church life. If all we ever do is listen to ourselves, we can inadvertently become the kind of people Paul warned Timothy about: People who surround themselves with “teachers who say what their itching ears want to hear.” Today’s post is an attempt to counter that tendency among us as we discuss Free-Will and Determinism. To do this, we turn to an extremely interesting email exchange between Father John Whiteford (an Eastern Orthodox priest) and some proponents of Calvinism.
This isn’t your typical argument! Father Whiteford brings another line of argumentation to his view that is almost entirely absent from the typical back and forth between Calvinists and Arminians: What did the early church fathers teach about this?
I recognize that there are three groups of people who will read a post like this: 1) Strong Calvinists who will want to defend their view. 2)Strong Arminians who will want to find ammo for their view and 3) those who don’t have their minds made up but may lean to one understanding of things. My hope, is that all three groups of people will be challenged and encouraged. It’s a long discussion so I will be breaking it up into three posts. Now, let the Discussion begin… Read the rest of this entry
What is The Most Important Part of Corporate Worship for YOU personally
Let’s face it, every church-goer has an opinion about this topic: What they like the most about attending a corporate church service. Over here at NotForItchingEars.com we are VERY interested in what you think. It is part of our ongoing study of worship and Christianity. We need your help here, so please take 45 seconds or less and answer the poll.
Now, about the poll: We understand that we are asking you to make a choice that Read the rest of this entry
What Does God Want From the Human Race?
What Does God Want From the Human Race?
Does He want us to believe the right things or act the right way? Is His primary concern that we believe the right doctrine or that we behave the right way? Does He want us to hold to and defend until death the “correct” teaching about Him? Or is God more concerned with how we choose to live our lives?
Does it please God more when we give ourselves to study every facet of his character, diving into the deep end of the pool to contemplate God in all his glorious ways or when we devote our lives to living according to those ways? Put another way, do you think that God was more pleased with John Calvin Read the rest of this entry
This is THE ONE Bible Every Christian Should Own…!
“SELL YOUR BED AND BUY BOOKS!”
That’s what my Homiletic’s professor declared to the whole class. Another student had asked what we should do if we wanted to be good pastors. “Get books, big books, thick books, good books, lots of books and read them. Sell your bed if you have to, but get books and read!” Much to the chagrin of my young bride, I bought that one hook, line and sinker. His admonition helped to forever alter the course of my money. My freshmen year in college I bought over $700 worth of Biblical reference works (back in the mid 80’s!) that I was not required to have for class! I didn’t sell the bed (though I would have definitely traded it for Kittel), but I did eat a lot of popcorn for breakfast. So began my love affair with books.
It would be my Greek teacher who would have the most profound impact on me. It happened when he uttered this statment on the first day of class:
“Your challenge is not that the people in your congregation WON’T believe what you teach. Your challenge is that many people in the congregation will Read the rest of this entry
What is The Most Important Part of Corporate Worship for YOU personally
Let’s face it, every church-goer has an opinion about this topic: What they like the most about attending a corporate church service. Over here at NotForItchingEars.com we are VERY interested in what you think. It is part of our ongoing study of worship and Christianity. We need your help here, so please take 45 seconds or less and answer the poll.
Now, about the poll: We understand that we are asking you to make a choice that Read the rest of this entry
Worship: Is it a Life Well-Lived or a Chorus Well-Sung?
We love to discuss those things we are passionate about, don’t we? Be it our favorite football team (THE Washington Redskins), politics, sports, movies, cultural issues. Heck we even argue about beer! Remember the Miller Lite commercials? For years, Miller Lite drinkers, including the likes of Rodney Dangerfield and John Madden, bickered back and forth on our TV sets. The argument? What made Miller Lite such a great beer. Some said the drink tasted great. Others said it was less filling. Though they were very entertaining commercials, it makes one wonder: Don’t we have anything better to discuss than beer?
Of course we do! Over here at Not For Itching Ears, we’ve been spending a lot of time talking about a topic that is higher up the food chain: Worshipping God. If you read these posts (millions of people do each hour) Read the rest of this entry
“Evangelical Christianity Can BEST be described as…………” Take our Poll and tell the World
How would you best describe Evangelical Christianity? We have assembled some of the most common descriptions of EC in our poll. Taking the poll is easy. You can choose more than one answer, so feel free to combine answers. You can not add your own description to the poll, but you can leave comments. We intend to Read the rest of this entry
Has The Church Become the Newest Contestant on “American Idolatry”
“If it feels good, do it!”
This catch phrase, introduced in the 1960’s, has become a well established creed in American culture. It now appears that the American church has adopted a similar slogan: “If it makes people feel good, we should use it.” And are we ever! Today church leaders of every persuasion are trying all kinds of new methods in order to fill the pews. If something we do succeeds in drawing more people into services then it “works” and is therefore good, right, and stamped with the very approval of God Himself. Because as we all know, God wants people in pews. Or so the story goes. But are these new methods approved by God himself?
One of the things we should be clear about… Read the rest of this entry
Forget About Singing, God Wants Us to Worship Him HIS Way – Part II
What does God consider worship and how can we offer it to Him? I think that is the best place to start a series on worship. Earlier we talked about this in “Forget About Singing, God Wants Us to Worship Him HIS Way – Part 1”. God is the one who is worshipped, so he gets to define how that looks. He does this for us in the Bible. A biblical definition of worship is where God tells us what worship means to Him. One of the places He does that is in Read the rest of this entry
Forget About Singing, God Wants Us to Worship Him HIS way
What is worship and how do we as christians go about doing it? Is it the 30-45 minutes we spend singing at church with others each week? Is it the 20-35 minutes we spend listening to a sermon at that same gathering? Is it the money we contribute to our congregations to keep the doors open? Is worship the time we give to volunteer in the parking ministry or Children’s church?
Let me state as clearly as I can, so that there is no misunderstanding: I think that all the things I just mentioned can unequivocally be considered acts by which people worship God. I just don’t think that doing them necessarily equals worship. I am not advocating that we stop singing, even though the title of this post might lead to that conclusion.
My friends, I have been giving this a lot of thought lately. In part, because I have become so disillusioned with the contemporary church model that claims to be all about worship. I’ve been to 30+ different congregations, all focused on “worship”. It seems that all we are doing is singing songs and calling that worship. Worship appears to have become an event that we grade or a product we consume. Does anyone else find that troubling?
People are always defining worship. Most start off their definition with Read the rest of this entry
We’ve Come to Worship, but Will We Worship God or Ourselves?
Dan Lucarini’s, in his book Why I Left the Christian Contemporary Music Movement, has some thought-provoking and counter-cultural takes on contemporary worship. One that gets right to the heart of the issue is this one:
“When we try to feel an experience of affirmation from worship, we are not worshiping God. We are worshiping our own egos.” (pp. 56-57)
In other words, when we come to “worship”, if our goal is to get some type of positive experience out of it for ourselves, we are not really coming for Him. In essence, we are “worshipping” our own egos. If our motivation in coming to worship is for what we will get out of it, then we are worshiping. We are just worshipping ourselves, and not the Savior.
Whoa there fella, that is a huge statement. Practically everyone I have ever served on a worship team with or led, Read the rest of this entry
Worship Leading Gone Wild: What Can Happen When Worship Becomes A Song…..
Sometimes the truth contained in satire can pierce like a sword. The scene this video portrays about worship leading gone bad is one of those times. After I stopped laughing, I began to ache. This is how things truly are in some circles. In many churches that I have visited over the past 3 years, it seems that simply getting people to sing is the goal. It doesn’t matter what we actually sing about, Read the rest of this entry
Does Worship Really Need To Be Exciting?
Over here at Not For Itching Ears, we don’t often repost what others have written. Today is an exception. Andrew, over at The Reformed Reader, wrote an excellent article called “Does Worship Really Need To Be Exciting?” I wanted our readers to get the opportunity to consider that very question. I have included an excerpt of Andrew’s post along with a link back to the entire post. And now, our featured presentation:
“I’ve been reading through Kevin Roose’s book The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University. If you have an interest in learning about evangelicalism and fundamentalism, this book, written by a Brown University student who enrolled at Liberty University for a semester, is a great volume to read. Informed by George Marsden’s more historical Fundamentalism and American Culture, this is a fun and witty memoir of someone who decided to “act the part” of a Christian fundamentalist for a semester.
I was especially struck by Roose’s contrast between the simple, Quaker worship meetings of his youth and the contemporary worship at a local megachurch. He writes:
You can see why I didn’t go to [Quaker worship] meeting[s] much. As a kid groomed on cartoons and video games and Little League, an hour of motionless silence was excruciating. At Thomas Road, on the other hand, there’s almost too much stimulation. The stage lights, the one hundred-decibel praise songs, the bright purple choir robes, the tempestuous bellowing of Dr. Falwell – it’s an hour-long assault on the senses. And all you have to do is sit back in your plush, reclining seat, latte and cranberry scone in hand, and take it all in. It’s Church Lite – entertaining but unsubstantial, the religious equivalent of a Jerry Bruckheimer movie. And once the novelty wears off, once the music becomes familiar and the motions of praise become pro forma and mechanized, you start to realize that all the technological glitz and material extravagance doesn’t necessarily add up to a spiritual experience. [emphasis added]
Today, from my perch in the Thomas Road choir loft, my mind wandered back to the little brown house with stone steps. I think I’d appreciate the minimalist Quaker worship more now than I did as a kid. It didn’t have Jumbotron screens or a five thousand-watt sound system or a cafe in….” To read the rest of this great post, follow the link below.
http://reformedreader.wordpress.com/2011/08/27/does-worship-really-need-to-be-exciting/
This Worship Service is About……..YOU baby!
Regular readers of this blog should be familiar with my view of today’s “worship” “service.” In a nutshell, I think many good-hearted and well-meaning leaders have taken the church down the wrong road. I have written on it extensively in articles like: Whatever Happened to the Message of Christianity?, Rethinking Contemporary Worship: Can We “Bring Him More Than a Song?”, George Barna: The Seeker-Sensitive Church Model: Dumbing Down Disciples , or Does God Give Us Freedom To Worship Him Anyway WE Want to? and many other posts. Today’s post is more of a satirical and humours look at the issue of the songs we are singing in church. What makes satire funny is that there is often a little truth in it. That’s why I find this re-wording of the famous Carly Simon song “You’re So Vain” so funny. There is a Read the rest of this entry
How Contemporary Christian Music and the Seeker-Sensitive Movements Failed a Generation
“It’s 1994, and Michael Stipe recently lost his religion. It’s before Bieber and bling, before ordering a latte required six qualifying adjectives. In coffeehouses across the country, bored teens slouch on thrift-store couches nodding along to the Cranberries’ “Zombie.” Weezer breaks into the alt-rock scene with the Blue Album; Green Day tops the charts with the first punk rock song to whine about a lousy therapist. In April, hordes of fans gather in Seattle Park to mourn the death of Kurt Cobain. A few months later, 350,000 people make the pilgrimage to Read the rest of this entry
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