Confused

I often stayed confused, so the title of this entry is not a shock to my friends.

One of the people groups that confuse me the most (second to University of Texas fans...why? I am a Texas A&M Grad.) are some Christians. As a pastor I find that everyone has an opinion of how church is supposed to be done and with great passion they tell me. If how I worship does not match theirs, they quickly begin to tell me how ungodly I am. Really now, come on.

I found that there are mainly two "camps", and I do not fall into either. In fact, both "camps" will write me emails telling me how I missed it.

Let me introduce them to you:
1. The "old ways" group - This is a group of people that think that most anything modern is a weakening of the gospel. They think that because the gospel is offensive to some people that we ought expect it to be offensive to all. The idea of creating environments that people enjoy while you present the gospel is terrible. If the church is boring, dull, and people come out frowning then that to them is church. I tell these people all the time that it is possible to disagree with a message and yet enjoy the way the message was communicated. Methods and content are different, yet to the "old ways" people there is no difference.

Most of the time these people do not even know that the old hymns that are loved were written to the music of the pub songs of that day. That is right, some of the great hymns of today were written by men who wanted to relate a message to people and so they took the music of the bar songs and rewrote the words. It would be like today taking a song by The Fray and putting new words to the music and singing it in church. What is the "old way" today was the contemporary of yesterday.

I guess they forget 1 Corinthians 9: 17-23.

2. The "seeker-driven" group - Notice I said seeker-DRIVEN. This group is the one that says that connecting with people is so important that we occasionally sacrifice truth in the process. These people are those that do not want to offend anyone for any reason and so their church is weak. I find that even people who are not followers of Christ are not interested in these churches because they tend not stand for anything.

Then there are churches like Piedmont. We are not seen as acceptable by either group. We believe that God is the author of life and truth and we do not walk away from that. We also see it as our job to communicate that timeless message in a timely way because that is what Christ did. Not every one agrees with our message, but we make people think about it and people enjoy coming. I think that if they enjoy it they might come back even if they do not agree with our message initially. We believe that we need to reflect creativity in our church because the God we serve is the most creative being...just take a look at creation out your window. Plus I do not like to go to something boring, who does?

I do not think that the way we do church is the only way to do it, but for me and for many who have given up on church but not on God, it is a refreshing new way to reconnect with the God who loved us enough to die.

P.S. This is my blog and freedom of speech here is not anyone's right but mine. I do like discussions, but if you are looking for a fight, email me instead of blogging here.