From a reader....
GCI Update: Points to Ponder,
in the style of Jeff Foxworthy
-- Putting the fun in dysfunction…
and the turd in liturgical (even tho there is no “d”) --
You might not be a real church….
1. …..if your “congregation” functions like a small group with high levels of interaction and sharing of the leadership/facilitation role, as opposed to a well-planned and executed worship service. If you’ve got people speaking in tongues and blurting out random “prophecies,” then you may need to reel in the chaos and re-order your worship services.
2. …..if your primary worship service is on Saturday. Lord knows that strong, vibrant and growing churches do NOT meet on Saturdays! If you’re still trying to glorify God by meeting on Saturdays, then you need to get a freaking clue.
3. …..if your church meets at an awkward time of day. Meeting at 2:30 PM or some other weird time will require a course correction since God does NOT honor worship services set at awkward times!
4. …..if your church gathers in a hall that is difficult to locate and out of the flow of normal activity. Meeting in a small, dark room at the back end of “Billy Bob’s Tavern” is probably not the best venue for attracting potential church-goers in your community.
5. ….if you are renting space in a church building owned by another denomination, but there is no prominent sign displayed with your church’s name. Any congregation that meets in a “Church of Religious Science” building, for example, should expect to attract tons of people if you just put up a freaking identifying sign.
6. ….if you have a rotating speaking schedule with multiple preachers. What this means is that you are likely in “maintenance mode,” lacking cohesive leadership and vision for your church. The lead pastor should preach a minimum of three times per month, and it is even better if they preach five out of six weeks and genuflect as often as possible.
7. …..if your lead pastor also fills the role of chief deacon, then the members need to step up. No lead pastor should ever be caught doing deaconly things like setting up chairs, greeting people as they walk in the door, handing out bulletins and other such nonsense. Tell the lazy-ass lay members to pick up the slack!
8. …..if you have worship leaders who are not musically gifted. Anyone who cannot carry a tune in a bucket, is tone deaf or does not play a musical instrument well, should not participate in your music ministry. Having NO singers or musical instruments is better than having bad ones! You can always put on a CD, after all.
9. …..if your weekly worship service is structured in accordance with GCI’s past tradition. It’s time for a “come to Jesus” meeting if your worship service still has a sermonette and announcement followed by a sermon…especially if you’re still meeting on Saturdays. Go ahead and have those difficult conversations, by telling your leadership team they suck. Just say NO to Saturday-worship and old HWA traditions once and for all! You’ll be glad you did!
21 comments:
If as a single man, you went to the Feast of Tabernacles lookng to pick up chicks, you need to broaden your horizons by growing into the New Covenant and learning about a grace-based marriage and family relationship!
BB
"You might be a trainwreck..."
"Your church is a trainwreck if it still has GRUMPIES in it after this many years."
if you are continually finding innovative ways to make fun of those what claim to be preaching the gospel and warning of the coming demise of your nation, you might be a end time scoffer...
if you fiddle while donald drumpf burns down the house, you might have the same invisible force influencing you as nero even though he died like a hog at a kill house nearly 2000 years ago...
It’s “you might be AN end time scoffer,” dufus!
If you feel the compulsion to continually denigrate the President, you might want to examine what hole in your own life you're trying to fill. I did not see anything in this post that referred to him until your out of context comment.
And what's wrong or weird about meeting at 2.30 PM. Since I retired, I often sleep in till 2.30 PM and even later. So there!
I recall being told by a lecturer from Georgia Tech that they used to ask each graduate in engineering one final question as they mounted the podium to receive their diploma. The question was "Is -X a positive or negative number?"
I think Williams should set aside the admonition about worship structure and have the local pastor ask each member one question: "Does God have a body?"
If a suitable number of people cannot give the correct answer to this question, nobody in the congregation as a whole is ready to worship anything. Maybe they still believe in the Armstrongist Demiurge. It's not just Saturday or the song service. Maybe they have the wrong god.
What is the "right god," NEO? El's son Yahweh (Jehova), his brother Baal or some other made up entity? Poor old Zeus and Jupiter don't get no respect anymore, along with Thor and a host of other fictions.
Allen wrote:
Poor old Zeus and Jupiter don't get no respect anymore
Ah, but you seem to be forgetting about the many who understand that the name of this "Jesus" character actually means "Hail Zeus!" (Ie Zeus).
The "right god" is understood at the end of a long an complex process that is led by the Holy Spirit. This, I know, is not going to register with you.
So let's simplify it and put it this way: The "right" god is context relevant. In this case, the context is Christianity. That god has been understood and described by Christian theologians and captured in creedal statements over the last two millennia. (And, yes, there has been dissent. But the Christian Movement as a whole has settled on one god.)
That god is not the god of HWA. HWA's god has a body of human form, is racially White, lives in spacetime somewhere in the "sides of the north", did not create the universe ex nihilo, could not create man without testing and experimentation, hence, was not omniscient nor omnipotent.
Armstrongists will tell you directly and without reservation that they do not worship the god of the Christian Movement and that the Christian god is a pagan god.
Just a tad off subject: But get this.
A few months ago a bullied person confronted his bully. He was a student. The bully was the superintendent. When confronted, watch the reaction.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pmuw1E0D6CM
The superintendent could have been a minister of the COG. the reaction and the dismissal was the same. Bullies seem to be the ones moved to positions of power in so many cases.
why attack the pres?
if you read the book "libtard savant: the strange paradox of the high IQ "liberal" it is clear why people are going hysterical attacking the current president.
Got a good chuckle out of that convoluted reasoning, NEO. You guys just can't get it through your heads that you've been had by a bunch of power driven Jews, Romans and god haunted con artists.
Allen,
I have read your statements for years and have not commented on any of your beliefs out of respect for what you have come to understand for yourself. But I will tell you that I have personally witnessed, and know individuals that have also personally witnessed absolutely impossible events happen that can only be attributed to intervention from another realm. From someone having assistance during a medical emergency, to absolute interventions, to the absolutely impossible happening - the realities, for me are undeniable, and for the others I know experienced it too. You can spend all the time that you want trying to explain it away or explain it naturally. But I would be a genuine FOOL to dismiss all the impossibilities that became possible in my lifetime as anything BUT spiritual. God has proven Himself as totally and completely undeniable and real. If you want to call it "the Matrix", or "Mental Illness", or "Deception", or "Being Had", you're entitled to your opinion.
But one thing is for certain. I have not been had. What I have experienced is real, and I am only at where I am - in fact - I state with every ounce of truth and conviction that I am only ALIVE, right now, ONLY because of God's Divine Hand in my life - the very Jesus you deny. That's your choice to believe what you want to. You can feel free to think of me as a deceived liar or whatever. BUT. Don't tell me I can't get something through my head. I am proud and honored to stand up for God because I have seen His hand. I will not try to convince you otherwise, because I know it won't work. I just wanted to clarify your statement that "we can't get it through our heads".
You're right. We can't, and we won't. Because for me as far as I'm concerned, it's not true at ALL.
Dexter:
You declaration hangs in the air like a helium filled balloon - no moorings in reason - just a floater on the wind.
Here's another helium balloon: "You can't get it through your head that you are totally wrong about Christianity. You're just angry that Armstrongism ate your lunch."
Don't fret. Armstrongism ate everyone's lunch.
What I’ve found, 8:04, from living on both sides of the fence, is that our personal miracles, while encouraging to ourselves, rarely serve to convince others. In fact, when we do share, sometimes people think of us as being manipulative or “arrogant” and “special”.
Some miraculous things happened for me while I was an atheist or agnostic, and while I was indulging in activities most Christians would consider sinful. I thought that this setting would really “spook” Christians, leaving them speechless and without explanation. To be honest, when I shared, some of them looked visibly puzzled. But, others just smiled and said that God had known that I’d eventually come back to Him, and had therefore treated me well as one of His prodigals.
Over the years, there have been a handful of the staunchest non-believers on these blogs and forums who acknowledged that some life-saving things for which there were no explanation, things that flew against all probability, had happened for them. Obviously, interpretation and result would differ, depending upon whether a believer or a non-believer experienced them, but then personal experiences are always exactly that - personal, and highly subject to interpretation.
I believe we’ve all got to walk a couple miles in the shoes of others in order to understand what has caused the most adamantly-held opinions. We may never completely relate, and we don’t ever have to pattern our thinking after theirs, but just to gain in understanding. There is much common ground we all share as humans, and too often it’s all too easy to get political, and to repress or negate it as we determine how to act or react.
BB
Judaism has morphed sine the days of YHVH and Baal. You guys get your idea of Judaism from the OT. No no no. You need to get it from the Babylonian Talmud. Religions change.
NEO
I disagree. If you watch the tele evangelists, it becomes obvious that they are very similar to Herbs church. Yes, the Armstrongites claim that conventional Christians worship a pagan God, but that's just marketing. Scratch the surface of the cosmetic differences, and you find a very similar map of reality. I have been surprised many times to hear expressions and even gestures by the tele Evangelists that are identical to those used in Herbs church. If you look at what both groups say and don't say, ie hide, they are unusually similar.
Perhaps this is only discernable if one reads the occasional self help book. These books are broader in the topics they cover and their map of reality is noticeably different. These churches don't attack these books for no reason.
if barack obama had behave the way donald drumpf behaved, i would call bs on him, too, just as i called bs on clinton when he behaved in the vile way he did, cuz i dont merely look the other way when a leader does evil, any more than John the baptist or Jesus, my example and my Lord, did...
and donald drumpf denegrates himself, and Daniel 11:23 calls him vile...
c f ben yochanan
i meant Daniel 11:21...
c f ben yochanan
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