When I was a kid, going to church was an absolute no-brainer. I can hardly remember any Sunday that I missed. I actually don’t remember missing any particular Sunday until I was well into my teenage years, unless I was on a youth group field trip or desperately sick. If I spent the night with a friend, I went to church with them. Even when I was in college, I went every Sunday with few exceptions. Indeed, it was that weekly attendance that saved my faith as I was presented with alternative truth claims…from my religion professors no less!
When I was in seminary, I observed that weekly attendance by seminarians was not practiced by every student. I was shocked! If they didn’t have to be somewhere, many of them would choose to stay on campus. For myself – and later my wife when we were married – it was never a question of if we would worship on Sunday morning, but where. We took advantage of our free Sundays and worshipped at Lutheran, Catholic, Episcopal, and Orthodox churches, and I still remember many of those Sundays quite vividly.
So my credibility as a weekly worshipper is quite high. However, my credibility in encouraging others to worship weekly is now quite low, because I’m the pastor, and such encouragement is expected from me. Pastors talking about church attendance is almost as popular and as common as pastors talking about money. For good reason, pastors are often seen as men who do little else but harangue their poor members for more time and more money. In some cases, it is because the pastor’s own ego is at stake, and that eventually is rejected by those tired of hearing that message. So if I tell my church members to go to church, I’m just another pastor lecturing them on how to spend their time, with self-interest to boot.
Still, I observe that we have many members for whom weekly attendance just doesn’t happen. It is foreign to me because it is all I have ever known, so I really don’t know what to do with it. I would like to begin, though, by simply stating what I think we all know: the third of our Ten Commandments is to honor the Sabbath Day. While that day has moved from Saturday to Sunday (the day of resurrection and new creation), that commandment still holds because it is part of God’s moral law. God’s moral Law never changes because He never changes.
While that commandment does not necessarily include the worshipping of God (it there only speaks of the necessity of rest so as to “hallow” the day), we certainly understand that worship of God is included as part of our Sabbath rest. Indeed, as one matures as a Christian, I believe that worship is transformed from an energy-taker, to an energy-giver. Luther says this about this commandment: “We should fear and love God so that we do not despise preaching and His Word, but hold it sacred and gladly hear and learn it.”
Beyond the mere command, I believe it is God’s desire that we worship not because we are told to, but because we cannot see ourselves doing anything else, at least for a portion of our week. Like I desire my children to actually want to be obedient, I believe God wants the same for us. I have thought many times about how we might change our worship to make it more accessible or “enjoyable”. I’m certain that many who visit or even our members find it boring to do the same thing again and again. But I cannot escape the commandment or the feeling that my desire to make worship more attractive kind of misses the point entirely.
The truth is that when any of us are not present, for whatever reason, good or bad, it is a loss to the Body. I am encouraged when we have many brothers and sisters together, sharing our life together. And I am discouraged when there are not many of us present. So as any good pastor should, I encourage you to be present in worship on Sundays. Let us be an encouragement to each other.
I was joined by David Collingsworth of KPFT’s The Prison Show and Carey Appling to discuss the modern state of the American prison system and theonomy. Is our prison system the equivalent of slavery? Does it actually rehabilitate offenders or even try? Is there a legitimate Biblical alternative? How should Christians think about prison? Those are just a few of the questions we look at in this episode.
On Ash Wednesday, I have every intention of being outside, ready to dispense ashes to college students who want some. In the past, a handful have taken advantage of the convenience of this approach. That effort, such as it was, is quite mild compared to what some pastors do: go to train stations or bus stops, or, as one Lutheran Church in Clear Lake did, hold up signs for commuters to get “drive through” ashes in the church parking lot. According to one news account, there was a line of cars full of people waiting to get ashes. The church also handed out a prayer card of some kind and offered a prayer for the occupants of the car.
against the Church, and certainly not without some merit. But what do these three events really tell us about Christianity, and are they as bad as many make them out to be? Mr. Flanagan offers a lot of insight on each of these tales of heresy, war, and the battle between science and faith.
Texas Legislator Tony Tinderholt has proposed legislation (House Bill 948) that would abolish all abortion in Texas. This episode looks at the details of that bill and the possible fallout. We also take a step back and look at some common myths about abortion that justified it becoming legal in the first place. Then we take a look at Joel Osteen and refuse to let him off the hook for being a mere “motivational speaker”. He says he’s a pastor who loves the Word of God. Judge him as such.
n the Land of Joel, Joel Osteen’s will quickly come up. It will probably come up even if you are just having a casual conversation about religion. Love him or hate him, his is the face of Christianity in Houston, the person about whom everyone has an opinion. I have spoken with ardent supporters and members/attenders of Lakewood who defend him and I have spoken with opponents of Osteen who see him as a false teacher betraying the God he claims to serve.
This solo episode looks at a handful of issues. We begin with an article by Herman Mehta who accuses a Christian author of calling all atheists immoral. Are they? Or do they have no standard by which they can ground the morality they want to affirm? By the way, I should have said, but didn’t on the show, that a denial of God is in itself an immoral act, but at the time I’ll confess I was thinking of civic life, not the spiritual life. From a spiritual perspective, atheism is always immoral and atheists are always immoral so long as they deny God. But they can be civically moral by secular legal standards. We also look at if religion is keeping abortion legal by ghettoizing the cause. To wrap it up, we look at the top 12 Bible stories and run a playoff to see which one reigns supreme. Don’t worry…I think they’re all great!