Tuesday, June 22, 2010

What does this sound like. . .

So, in 1563, the Puritan faction within the Church of England made the following 5 demands.

1 – Less Saints Days
2 – Elimination of Vestments for the Clergy
3 – Elimination of kneeling at the altar to receive the Lord’s Supper
4 – Elimination of “emergency baptism” of sick newborns.
5 – Elimination of organs from the Church.

So - does this sound like anything to you? Or, let me put it in these terms. . . In order to resonate with American Culture (as an aside, heavily influenced by Puritanism), there's a few things we should do, like:
1 - Get rid of that confusing Church Year and just preach on what is important to the people right now,
2 - Be more casual and approachable in how we handle church,
3 - Be more casual in our sense of worship - we don't want to weird people out with God's presence,
5 - Get rid of that culturally-unintelligible organ music.

Now, sadly, this comparison is superficial and surface at best, because unlike the Puritans, who had strongly held religious conviction that their 5 things were unscriptural, when we hear these things today, they are simply to fit in and be more popular.

We have people longing to chillax with the Puritans - Lord have mercy upon us!

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