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This church has what they call a “Contemporary” service. I’m not enthusiastic with so-called praise and worship music. We went through three songs – I think. The songs are pretty simple and we sing each one about three times.
The pastor made an interesting comment. He said that Christians helping victims of an earthquake that happened in Turkey a few years ago so impressed the local Muslims that they now are asking for Bibles to learn more about this Christianity.
To my knowledge, the Christian faith is unique in its command to help those less fortunate than us. The Muslims certainly don’t have that in their Koran. Unlike the Christian, the Muslim never has any guarantee of making it into heaven. You can be good your whole life and Allah might still decide to send you to Hell. As they say, it’s all in the will of Allah.
The Hindus are actually precluded from helping people. In the Hindu faith, they believe that if you were bad in this life, you come back and suffer in the next life as a way of making penance. If someone is suffering, to a Hindu it means the are doing penance for wrongs in a previous life. If you help that person, you prevent them from finishing out their suffering and thus prevent them from advancing in the next life.
In the service this morning, someone read this passage from Romans 10:14
How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!"
R C Sproul uses this passage in his piece on predestination. Then he makes the point that only 10% of people calling themselves evangelical actually tithe to finance sending out the word of God to the whole world.
I think all church services have a small section where they ask members to meet and greet with each other. It is my recommendation that they do this at the END of the service. When it is done sometime DURING the service, it really disrupts the service and then the pastor has to gavel the congregation back to order. If it were done at the end, then it wouldn’t matter.
I have observed that his church as a lot shorter prayers than the church we used to attend. They would go on and on and on and on. I didn’t dare shut my eyes or I’d go to sleep.
I observe this pastor is a pretty good speaker. He uses notes, but not overly so. Since he uses notes, that gives me some assurance that he has prepared his sermon ahead of time and is not just winging it. He does have a small mannerism I’ve noticed. He adjusts his materials on the lectern from time to time. Since his adjustments are very tiny, I conclude it is just a mannerism and he not really accomplishing anything by it.
The pastor had a logical inconsistency in his sermon. He said we are saved by grace alone and not by works. Then he went on to say, that Jesus has done 99.9% of the work in saving people and we do 0.1% of the work.
Whoa. If we do even 0.1% of the work, doesn’t that make his theology a works theology and not one of grace?
Yet, when I read Romans 10:9 it says…
That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved. As the Scripture says, "Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame."
Wouldn’t that make Paul’s theology a works based one?
Posted by Ted at January 11, 2004 4:59 PM