Two Rivers Drops "Baptist" from name!!

[Tim Bonney]

[Gene Scarborough]

Timothy---

I have not problems with your analysis!

When people of faith trust people who say the right words without analysis of what they are doing with the money given in trust, we get private jets chartered to take NAMB leadership wherever they want to go. Attend a special conference in Miami in the dead of winter / a mission station visit in the Bahamas / overseas trips to "visit mission station."---sounds a little like our currrent politicians and Corporate heads enjoying a good time off the sweat of others!!!

[linda]

Just for the record--it was at the behest of the under 35 age folks in our family that we set out to find "ritualistic, formal" worship format.

More the younger part of the baby boomers still clinging to rock concert church.

What we found was a moderately "high" church UMC church locally, that preaches the gospel with fire and excitement.

Formal membership coming soon.

Would love to remain in the SBC, but we need more than just good friends, a rockin' time, and some deep emotional responses carefully orchestrated.

This ultra conservative gal found herself about smacked up side the head at the good preaching the local Methodist lady is doing, and the wonderful chancel choir.

Your mileage may vary.

[Tim Bonney]

That's interesting Linda that you found both a conservative congregation one with traditional worship views. United Methodists have quite a latitude in worship styles and theology so I'm glad you found what works for you.

What I see from younger adults is that they are all over the board on worship styles. We have a hard rock contemporary service for youth that is well attended. The service that is geared more to boomers is a praise style contemporary service (that's what I preach in). And we have two traditional services. What I find is that we have younger adults in all three styles of services. So there is no magical style of service that will fit everyone's need. And you can't always guess based on age.

[Sandy]

[Tim Bonney]

Sandy,

Thanks. But I don't need a lecture in church polity. I'm familiar with congregational polity. I know all the arguments in favor of it. I used to argue passionately for the autonomy of the local church. I've seen the pluses and minuses of local autonomy. And I've seen how the Bible is selectively read to support the idea of independent churches who don't have to answer to anyone but God. But historically I don't believe is washes. And I don't believe that is at all how we see the church working in the New Testament with the Apostles showing clear authority over churches and the Apostles expected the churches to answer to them. You can choose to believe that authority ended with the Apostles. But any proof of that is extra-biblical and involved the choices the church made in its history after the canon was completed.

No, a specific heirarchy wasn't finalized in the Bible. But it sure doesn't look like the direction it was going was in the direction of local autonomy. And in fact that wasn't the direction it went clearly. I'm sure you will disagree with me. That's ok by me and what I would expect on a forum for a congregationalist group of denominations. But clearly a lot of Christians see it the same way I do since many Christians are in denominations with either an episcopal system or a presbyterial system instead of a congregational system.

[Gene Scarborough]

Timothy / Sandy---

When anyone says the church answers to God it is so nebulous. God is in so many places and in so many ways! Even with the Early Church and the Apostles "God" turned out to be the one depicted by Peter and Paul first. They certainly did not get along! Only the ones who were most outspoken got the headlines. We seldom hear about the quiet ones like Andrew. They were there, but just did not stand out!

I am convinced every aspect of serving God has its ups and downs and there is a place for every kind of service and expression.

As humans, we tire of the same things over and over. As a Pastor it was easier to do about the same thing each week---even to the pastoral prayer. I never wrote mine out and depended on my sense of congregational need as to how I worded each one.

Personally, I think any repeated act of worship gets stilted and tired. I prefer people wearing suits and ties and nice dresses to honor God on Sunday, but it has become a day of "dress down." I like Timothy's picture in his vestments. For me, they add a dignity to worship. The symbolism attached to the liturgical colors is significant---as long as the congregation KNOWS what's up! Far too often we do stuff without explaination. Even a contemporary group playing is just entertainment without a larger purpose.

The crux of worship is to honor God and not provide another venue of entertainment. We are now in competition with rock concerts / NACAR / professional sports / you name it. I think the wise worship leader finds a way to engage people in sensing God's presence in all we do. We gather to get our batteries charged for service to the hurting and lost outside us. If we ever think we have exclusive ownership of worship or pew space, we have failed the Christ we honor--in my opinion, of course.

[Ed Pettibone]

[Tim Bonney]

Gene, just so you know, I don't wear clericals often. My church has three services. When I preach the contemporary service (which is most weeks) I wear dockers and a sports shirt. When I preach the early traditional in Lent I wear a suit and tie. And and in the 11a traditional I wear a robe and stole. I only wear the clerical collar on rare occasion since this is a pretty informal UMC church. The last time I wore it was in an ecumenical meeting where it is more commonly worn.

So that being said, I like traditional dress for traditional services. But I don't believe there is a way of dressing that is more pleasing to God than another.

Oh, and even more mind bending, I play electric guitar some weeks in our praise band.

[Gene Scarborough]

Cool dude Preacher, Timothy---I like it!!!!

My pastor at New Bern First is the same kind of guy and you would love him. Instead of playing in the praise band, he loves to surf with his daughter.

I think what you said about "dressing for God" is an interesting phrase. In years past I think we tended to put on a show where poorer people could not buy the suits to attend nor ladies the dress. Without question, all are welcome at God's throne!

As we look at the history of the Early Church and Paul's letters to them, we realize troubles and distortion crept in pretty fast. I am convinced Satan works hardest on Believers who take their church going seriously. As the "Screwtape Letters" so clearly depicts, he uses deceipt and "little sins" to destroy us.

Sin, as I understand it, basically means "separation." By making a list "thou shalt nots" we do not eliminate separation from God's Will for us nor our quirks with one another making us fuss and fight.

[Tim Bonney]

What I notice now is that most businesses no longer require men to wear a coat and tie to work. So most younger men don't own a suit or only own one to wear on special occasions. So an expectation of wearing a coat and tie every Sunday is a turn off for younger men. And, frankly, the coat and tie always was a business dress standard. It has always struck me as odd that what many non-liturgical churches chose for their standard of "being dressed up for God" was a business atire standard of the culture that someone else set.

[Gene Scarborough]

Another good point Timothy!!!

Down South I am interested in what goes on racially too. If one goes to the KFC about 1-2 p.m. when black churches let out, you will observe some of the best dressed churchgoers on the planet. Where whites are dressing down for church, our brothers and sisters of color are "to the nines" in Sunday best.

Men have the nicest shoes and suits to be had. Women who are church leaders often are dressed in white. I particularly love the Egyptian styles of many of their dresses. The have all been to the beauty parlor for a "do" as they call it! I have often said to my wife that anyone wanting to know about "high fashion" just needs to eat as black folks come from their church services!

Is it possible that one of the church dress code things is to get away from weekday dress codes and present a better self to God in worship?

Black people seldom dress in finery during the week, but Sunday is something else! I have attended a funeral of my Custodian's mother and made the mistake of wearing my sportcoat. The ministers were dressed with all dignity and there I was in lighter garb. They insisted I come and sit at the front and say a few words from the pulpit. I learned a lesson I will never again forget about honoring the dead with great dignity and not a stupid sportcoat!

[Ed Pettibone]

[johnfariss]

Sandy,

I pretty much agree with Timothy's comment. What mentions there are about churches and church polity in the Bible are brief and nebulous at best. For instance, "deacons," "overseers," and "elders" are mentioned, so we know the early church had people known by these titles; and while the qualifications of pastors\bishops and deacons are given, very litle is told about their duties except in a vague, general sort f way. The same can be said about polity. As a consequence, the early church (i.e., from the AD 2 or 300's onward), which existed in an empire with an emperor who ruled absolute through administrative officers oif various kinds and vassal kings, read the Bible and saw a hierachal church government. In the 15th and 16th centuries, the reformers lived in an era in which the cutting edge philosophy was about democracy, so they saw church government reflective of one sort of democracy or another--some leaning more towards a representative form (Presbyterians), others more toward pure democracy (the Baptists, whose greatest successes were in frontier areas where there was minimum class distinctions), and still others who leaned toward a hybrid system in which democracy functioned within "traditional" systems of hierarchy (i.e., Lutherans and Episcopals, and through them to the Methodists). This suggests a couple of things to me: one, if God had been realy concerned about us having a model for all churches to follow, He would have spelled it out for us in detail in the Word; and two, I think it is just possible that church polity in the New Testament era followed the culture in which the church was located, such that Roman churches followed a hierachal system, Greek churches a democratic model, Jewish-Christian churches a temple/priestly model, etc., and that is why we find hints about polity all of which are very hard to reconcile in a single church.

John

[Tim Bonney]

[Tim Bonney]

Ed I know that dress has varied from one part of the country to another and from job to job. My experience is that many churches in the East and North East are a bit more formal than churches in the midwest and the west is even less formal than the midwest.

There are currently regional differences in clergy dress to. I saw more ABC pastors robing in Indiana than I did in Iowa. I understand from a friend that in a strong Catholic area like St. Louis you see more Methodist preachers in a clerical collar than you do in the Kansas City area.

As long as you aren't talking about modesty issues, I think dress is about culture and not about gospel. And we shouldn't let it be a barrier to people attending and being welcome in the church.

[johnfariss]

Timothy,

I didn't say anything about churches being "autonomous" in the NT era, or at least I didn't mean to. I expect that was a reaction against governmental intrusion among the earliest Baptists, i.e., that the reigning monarch of England was the head of the Church of England, and having been persecuted by the civil government for "church offenses," they wanted to distance themselves from it.

As far as Greek churches being democratic. . . I think what I wanted to communicate was that in the Reformation, the reformers read their preferred type of government into the churches of the NT era, and since democracy was associated with the Greeks, they read democracy (of one sort or another) into the Greek churches. I realize I was not as clear with this as I should have been, and my appologies. As to how the churches of the NT era were actually governed. . . let's just say that is another subject altogether.

John

[Tim Bonney]

John that is a good clarification and I am sorry I misunderstood what you were saying. And I basically agree with what you are saying. It seems to me that autonomous churches does arise from a particular cultural period. Yet during the same time frame other church leaders chose other kinds of forms of government. And as it goes there are big differences between the way the Roman Catholic church may run an episcopal system and the way the Anglican/Episcopal and United Methodists run an episcopal system.

[johnfariss]

Ain't people great? Varied? Different? In all the ways "they" (i.e., "we") see the same things, the same evidence, and yet both interpret and apply it differently!? I suspect more of what people do is a reaction against something else than we are willing to admit, even to ourselves, we have becoime so adept at justifying ourselves. And for the rest, like I often say, it is mostly about three things: presuppositions, presuppositions, and presuppositions!

John

[Tim Bonney]

[Sandy]

I think God did spell out the model he wanted for his church in the New Testament, and I would call those references "simple" rather than "nebulous." They only had the Old Testament, in some cases oral tradition, in others copies of a few epistles, and later on, perhaps, the gospels, during that apostolic period, but they put together the body of Christ with that. It was comprehensive enough to be identified, called "Ecclesia," and identified by location. It was only as the church headed toward apostacy following Constantine that it adopted the heirarchial structure and was influenced by paganism, and following that, the church organization and heirarchial structure it developed became the model for most of the main branches of Protestantism, with faint but discernable resemblances to the Papacy.

The much-criticized Anabaptists, and some of their forerunners, got it right with their ideas of a free church with a regenerate membership. The church, from the fourth century on, including many of its Protestant branches, became a bureaucracy, descriptions of which bring to mind Paul's words in 2 Timothy 3:5, "...having the appearance of godliness but denying its power."

Personally, I think far too large a portion of the church's resources go to supporting a needless, inefficient bureaucracy in many denominational structures. There's not much visibility of people in the pews of what goes on in a denominational office, so there's less accountability there, and when you have networks of friends and supporters involved supervising each other, as most denominational offices do, there's even less. A good friend of mine who graduated from college with me went to work at a state Baptist convention. He told me it was a great job, not much work or effort, basically doing "consulting" with churches, conducting some training conferences, nice travel, stayed in high dollar hotels, got mileage, and had a nice retirement package. He got the job because his Dad worked in an executive level job in the state convention and knew people. It had been planned since he was in high school. That is denominational bureaucracy. Could the churches have been as successful at their work without his consulting services? Absolutely.

[Tim Bonney]

Sandy what you are describing is a Baptist/congregationalist style of governance and the pitfalls you see in it. One the things I'm learning outside of the Baptist family is that there isn't in an episcopal system "denomination vs churches" in the same way.

First of all in episcopal and presbyterial run systems there there is just "the Church." It isn't the United Methodist Churches or the Presbyterian Churches USA. It is the United Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Church, USA. Local churches are not separate entities from the larger church they are the representatives of the larger church in the local setting.

I'm not saying there isn't any "us versus them" mentality in connectional churches. But there appears to be less of it. Each part of the church (local, regional, and national) contributes to the ministry of the Church in different ways. The idea that people in the local church are the only one's doing ministry is just a foreign concept in a connectional church.

In Baptist denominations the local church is basic unit of the church. In Methodist denominations the Conference made up of pastors and delegates is the basic unit of the church. In Presbyterial systems the Presbytery is the basic unit of the church.

In congregational systems the denominational leadership can be looked at as an add on. In other systems each level of the denomination is piece of the entire church.

In my new Church one of the ways this is seen is in where clergy hold their church membership. I am not a member of a local UMC church. And no UMC pastor is. UMC pastors have their membership in the Conference. When a lay person joins an individual UMC church they also join the "United Methodist Church" and not just one local church within the connection.

It is just a different animal altogether.

[Big Daddy Weaver]

If I do recall, Methodism experienced great growth and vitality in its early years with a more democratized polity.

Methodists didn't adopt an episcopal system until later. Of course, the episcopal system is how the leaders secured power and institutionalized a new, growing popular Christian movement.

[Tim Bonney]

[Gene Scarborough]

What is most interesting on this grand discussion over church form is the way we are bringing out the best observations I have ever seen on a blog!!! I think all who are participating are adding to the discussion.

One most interesting thing I observed in the 70's when the Charismatic stuff was in full flower--you know, speaking in tongues.

At the time Baptists were acting as if it was "of the devil." In usual fashion the Catholics allowed for the Catholic Charismatic Movement! Where free churches tend to go after and destroy their opposition, the "Universal" church widens their tent to include them. We did a series of sermons on the subject at Hartsville, SC, where I was Associate Pastor. One cannot deny the presence of "speaking in unknown tongues" in the Bible. You can use Paul's guidance to the church at Galatia and his I Cor. 13 statement: "If I speak in unknown tongues and have no love, I am nothing" as the basis of a rational approach to tongues.

I suspect with Catholics it has to do more with inviting continued giving for monetary results, but it is most interesting!

Now, take this and apply it to the old SBC with Autonomy in place---and you have a rationale for our getting along with such a wide divergence from snake handling holy rollers to the more reserved big FBC's with split chancel / robed clergy / plenty of liturgy.

Is it possible God prefers love and respect for one another over lock-step conformity in worshiping and ministering in his name???