Worship or Paganism

Our church, not long ago,  gave in to secular ideology by instituting what it calls "blended worship." The intent was, I think, to somehow use catchy, rythym-based choruses with words and images digitally presented on two large screens in the mistaken belief the "young people" will somehow become more involved in "church stuff." They haven't, and there is a consequence in using worldly ideology in an attempt to promote God. (There is no other way to describe what we are doing).

I have always believed Worship should be about God not about what "young people," or old people, for that matter, wanted. We have had a couple of people leave us to go elsewhere over this issue. They wanted a different style of music. Music style should never be a reason for contention and if music were properly used it wouldn't be. If we sang scripture as instructed in the Bible there would be no room for argument, people would define their loyalties when they quit.

Scripture read at length, taught in depth, sung in congregation and prayed at length is not popular so we don't do that in our Church. We pay lip-service to those things, but that's about all. We are, I suppose, a typical American congregation. Few of us read books, let alone the Bible, and our attention spans are getting shorter by the day. We have become so immersed in the idea that digital technology is a gift from God, we sometimes forget to turn off our cell phones for the Sunday morning "Worship" service.

Worship should be about "renewing our minds" but there are so few people who actually think anymore I'm not sure they are aware that concept is a command of God. (Rom. 12:2) We are so far gone now that one of the "choruses" we sing has images that are idolatrous, if not blasphemous. It is a repetitious ditty which show some of the national flags of the world. One of those flags is the Iranian.

The Iranian flag has script on it and symbolism. Here is a description of the flag:

(The flag is made up of) three equal horizontal bands of green (top), white, and red; the national emblem (a stylized representation of the word Allah in the shape of a tulip, a symbol of martyrdom) in red is centered in the white band; ALLAH AKBAR (God is Great) in white Arabic script is repeated 11 times along the bottom edge of the green band and 11 times along the top edge of the red band.

So, by dumbing ourselves down to be historically, intellectually, spiritually, vacuous we have inadvertently changed our "worship" into an idolatrous perveyor of foreign gods. The only word in English to describe this is: Pagan.

Here is what one article at the Banner of Truth has to say about this:

Pagan worship is non-cognitive, but we are called to worship God with our minds, and that which we are supposed to have fill our minds is scripture. The language of Christian worship is scripture. We are either reading it or expanding upon it through exposition, singing it, or praying it. We do this because faith comes by hearing the word of God; it is the Gospel that is the power of God unto salvation.

The article ends with this:

"People are coming to church and just hearing a bunch of talk and singing a bunch of songs," says the preacher. But faith comes by hearing the word of God, and if it's not being preached, sung, read, and prayed, and if the content of our services are decreasingly Biblical, it is an ominous thing that is happening - a tragedy unfolding before us of monumental proportions.

God help us! (Hosea 7:2)

Christianity 21

It's called Christianity 21. Apparently it is a gathering of people searching for something. I don't quite know what to make of it. The Web Site says, in part:

Christianity21 is more than just a set of presentations. The entire experience is designed to create value for the participants.

I did note that all of the participants are female, even Seth, (not that there's anything wrong with that) which I find strange, since it is not billed as a "female only" gathering. Many of the participants appear to have "gender identity" issues as is exemplified by this presenter:

Her name is Nadia. She's an ordained "Pastor" in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. Her church is House for All Saints and Sinners, Denver, Colorado. I only know of her by what I read on the web. I haven't been to her church, nor heard her speak. The fact that I do know, however, is this, which I obtained from her church's web site:

House for All Sinners and Saints' is a group of folks figuring out how to be a liturgical, Christo-centric, social justice oriented, queer inclusive, incarnational, contemplative, irreverent, ancient - future church with a progressive but deeply rooted theological imagination.

I've posted - a lot - recently about language and some of the reasons to be clear when communicating. This "church" makes it very clear why this is so important. The only place I found, in any of the church's or the Conference's material where an attempt was made to include God in their program is the phrase, "Christo-centric." But, that is not a religious, biblical, scriptural, or in any way god related phrase. It is about being human centered. It is sociological, progressive, (read liberal) feel good, jargon.

Moreover, the entire Christianity 21 set-up, appears to be no more than a redefined pagan celebration of all that is currently popular in American "pop" religion. The language they use, i.e., contemplative, social- justice, queer inclusive, irreverent, etc., says they are about designing a pragmatic "what works" religion.

"Theological imagination," I think, is the key to what so many, in our culture, like these people, find confusing. The Bible is objectively real, not imaginary. Theology is supposed to be about how men/women put into proper perspective the facts about God that He has given us in His Word. It is not supposed to be about imagining what we think about what He said.

God warned us about this kind of thing in His Word. He said:

(2 Peter 3:3) Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts,

I think God pretty well summed up who and what these people are about via that verse. They don't like the Christ of the Bible, so they are intent on inventing an imaginary savior.

In olden times this religion was called Pagamism. The Israelites built a Golden Calf to honor their pagan god, Christinity 21 appears to be using other means to honor theirs.