A Recent Debate, A Sad Parable

Sometimes, Dutch homosexual Catholic priests know exactly what they're talking about:

"I have the impression that many of the debates within the Church around issues such as papacy, the ordination of women, the marriage of priests, homosexuality, birth control, abortion, and euthanasia take place primarily on a moral level. On that level, different parties battle about right or wrong. But that battle is often removed from the experience of God's first love which lies at the base of all human relationships. Words like right-wing, reactionary, conservative, liberal, and left-wing are used to describe people's opinions, and many discussions then seem more like political battles for power than spiritual searches for the truth.
Christian leaders cannot simply be persons who have well-informed opinions about the burning issues of our time. Their leadership must be rooted in the permanent, intimate relationship with the incarnate Word, Jesus, and they need to find there the source for their words, advice, and guidance."

I read this in the wake of a recent debate between uberBaptist Al Mohler (above, rightwing) and some members of the BioLogos Foundation. You can find a summary of goings on here and here.

Sadly, this debate is a parable for the kind of discussions that Nouwen criticises. It reflects a battle for knowledge/power rather than a "spiritual search for the truth" rooted "in the experience of God's first love". I am guilty of such a posture myself. I want to have the best, most defendable moral and intellectual knowledge, and so easily forget Paul's warning:

...if I...understand...all knowledge...but have not love, I am nothing.

Baptism of Fire

Over the weekend I made one of my frequent visits to my long lost brother in Dublin. Three times in as many years is considered frequent, right? OK well let's not bicker and argue over who hasn't visited who. The point is, I was there last weekend and that's all that matters.

More to the point, Dave invited me to come along to what can now be considered his home church - Grosvenor Road Baptist Church. I may be wrong about this, but I'm going to go ahead and say that this would be my first time to step inside the walls of a full-on, leave-your-gifts-of-the-Holy-Spirit-outside-the-door, Baptist Church. However, as nervous as I was about facing into a Sunday morning without being able to utilise my mad prophetic skillz, I decided to accept the invitation. I've been to quite a few different churches over the summer, so I wanted to keep up that trend.

Aesthetically speaking, Grosvenor (to cut a long title short) is a very pretty church. You really feel like you've stepped into a House of God once you're inside. It has got a lot of classic, old school church type things, chief of which being a massive pipe organ. But then you also have a drum kit on stage [?]. And what's more, there are no pews, but you sit your good self down on actual cushioned chairs - a necessary component to any sanctified place of worship in my opinion.

However, I'm no New Testament scholar, but I'm inclined to think that how pretty a church looks or what kind of seating it provides are not the criteria by which a church is considered healthy or not. So what of the actual service?

There were some announcements first of all, which I think works much better than a 15 minute interruption between worship music and teaching (yes, I'm looking at you Galway Christian Fellowship). As for the worship music itself, it was a little, I don't know, Songs of Praise-ish for my tastes. But obviously you're never going to suit everyone so there's not much you can do about that. Just like with other similar styled churches, I found it hard to really connect with the songs, but that's just my own personal opinion.

To be honest I didn't actually know many of the songs, which doesn't really help. We did sing that song that goes 'Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise. The city of our God....', which I know all too well from my Sunday mornings at GCF. I think the biggest difference between our respective versions was the actions, which I guess the people at Grosvenor Road just don't know.

For example, when the songs goes 'And Lord we want to life your name on high...', everyone in the congregation is supposed to close their eyes and slowly raise their hands to an elevated position, thus symbolically lifting the Lord's name on high. The next action is optional, and really only for truly sanctified people to take part in, but when the song goes 'We bow down on our knees...' that's exactly what you do. It works best if you're in the front row or by the edge, where you have sufficient space to perform said action. Again, you do it slowly and with eyes closed (if possible). And if you're really in the zone, you move into the raising of arms action while maintaining your kneeling position on the floor. I think you have to be 30 years a Christian before engaging in that level of symbolism though, so for now it's best to just stick with the basics.

As I said, Grosvenor Church have obviously never been taught these actions, which is a shame, because if I know Grosvenor Road Baptist Church like I think I do, they'd really enjoy that kind of thing.

Moving along, there were times of short prayer (lead very well by a guy whose name escapes me), a Bible reading (in fact two very long Bible readings. I'm talking 50 verses in total) and then we had the sermon.

The sermon itself was not given by the much-hyped John Samuel, which was a little disappointing. However, Sean Martin did a very fine job in his place. He was speaking on Isaiah chapter 1, which is no easy chapter to speak about.

His layout was clear and concise, which made it easy to follow and easy to remember. He used the analogy of a divine courtroom, and had each key word start with 'r' - Rebellious, Repent, Retribution, Reconciliation. That kind of thing helps me remember the content of a sermon to no end, so I'm always appreciative when someone puts in the time to do it (where possible).

Over all, he stuck rigidly to the Scriptures. And while the content was relatively basic, it's vitally important that we as Christians don't forget who we were and what we came from - enemies of God and children of wrath; 'rebels' as Sean Martin said. We can't even come close to appreciating the cross without a healthy understanding of these things.

There was one awkward/funny moment when he talked about the show Pimp My Ride in relation to how God completely transforms us. I actually thought the old women in front of us were going to collapse on the ground after hearing the word 'pimp' uttered in their beloved, sacred church. Thankfully they didn't, but some faint gasps were to be heard I'm sure. Needless to say, this wasn't the cleverest of analogies to use in, well, any church that isn't Emergent (so God is going to 'pimp' me, eh?) but it didn't detract from the over all content one bit.

After the sermon we broke bread and sang 'Before the Throne Of God Above', which was very fitting and quite moving given what we had just heard prior to it.

In summary, while there were certain things that didn't suit my particular tastes, there were a lot of positives to be taken from Grosvenor Road Baptist Church, and I'm not just saying that because I know people who go there. Again this was only a once off Sunday, so you can't read too much into it. But if the teaching of the Word is as powerful every Sunday as it was yesterday (and If I'm to believe my brother then it certainly is), Grosvenor Road Baptist Church is serving the community very well indeed.

All they need to do is learn a few of those actions I mentioned earlier and they'll be sorted.

A Fish Out of Water

On the very first Sunday of our O-team stint in Ringsend, we decided to go to church. We were pretty holy like that. After much deliberating -- which included John ruling out St Stevens due to the boisterous front rows and me ruling out ORCE because, you know, we're just not cool enough -- Willard Presbyterian it was.

I'm not 100% certain, but I think this may have been my first time in a Presbyterian church. Anyway, whether it was or not is irrelevant, just like Willard Pres. Ooh, burn! OK that may be an over the top criticism, but its partially true no doubt. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing though. 'Relevant' churches can be dangerous thing, what with watered down gospel messages and nifty electronic gadgets either perverting or distracting people from the truth. So being perceived as irrelevant can actually mean that you're not compromising just to hold mass appeal, which is a very good thing. But that said, all you have to do is look at the average age of the congregation to see that it's not exactly the most appealing church for anyone, say, under the age of 65.

Don't get me wrong now. The content wasn't bad or unsound. We sang some hymns, there was some solid praying, the sermon was...er...nice? I guess I just found the whole thing lacking in spiritual life. Even the use of a harmonica during worship couldn't inject that extra something, and that's saying a lot. Of course God was there no doubt, inhabiting the praises of His people. I just found it hard to connect with Him during my time there, because of my unfamiliarity with the way things were done, and my discomfort in such a rigid setting.

Of course while this kind of service is clearly not my cup of tea, there are obviously people out there who enjoy it and benefit from it, which is great. They may be mostly old people, but they're people nonetheless. In fact even some of our O-team members thought it was grand (you know who you are!). I guess I just didn't see it on that particular Sunday.

As for the sermon, it was a little shallow for my liking. As Ryan and I commented, that kind of preaching couldn't take more than half an hour to prepare. Of course this was only one sermon, so I'm not going to drag Rev. John Plate through the mud. Apart from being a 'nice man', there was something likable about him, while his prayers were clearly those of a man who knows God. But for me, his sermon was void of real incite, and more importantly, rich biblical exposition.

That's not to say it wasn't Bible based. He took Ecclesiastes 5 and connected it with Hebrews 10, which obviously worked well. I guess I just felt there was more to be said than what was said. He did say the word 'encounter' a few times though, which I think made a few people on our team think fondly of the message. Well, maybe not, but that's my theory and I'm sticking with it. And yes, I did fall asleep during one of several prayer times, but in my defence I was very tired.

So over all, Willard Presbyterian is a horrible excuse for a church and bad things will happen to he who goes there. OK that's not true at all. Willard Pres serves a purpose within the Body of Christ. I had problems with it -- mostly just personal preference issues (as I will have with every church I attend) -- but that's the nature of Church. To paraphrase Phillip Yancy, the very failings of the church prove its doctrine.

The comforting thing for me was to know and experience that my home church, Galway Christian Fellowship, is not alone in it's struggle. We visited 3 churches in total in the Dublin area and each of them were not without their difficulties. But that's OK. Not that we just settle for less, but that we strive towards something better, acknowledging our failings and our utter dependance on Christ, the Head of all these imperfect churches, who is in the business of making them perfect and making them one.