In the last two Sundays, I’ve worshipped in two historic American churches. The first, last Sunday, was Park Street Church in Boston. Its heritage being a key stop along the way for slaves fleeing their oppression in the earlier 19th century. The worship style was a traditional liturgy. It was a blessing to sing hymns that were rich in theological content and classical in style. The sermon was an excellent O.T. exposition which was illustrated with fascinating archeological facts seasoned with illustrations and humor.
Today we worshipped at the historic Falls Church in Falls Church, Virginia. The Falls Church is older than the USA. Among its historic parishioners is George Washington, who served as a vestryman. Falls Church is well known in some circles for its stand against the culture that has developed in the Episcopal church. Falls Church is now an Anglican congregation but lost their historic building in a court fight. The church now meets in a rented high school gym and has an amazing music ministry. You can’t really tell there is a leader, the music was contemporary in style and just flowed naturally in the service of worship. The music was worship of God without calling attention to itself. The sermon was well crafted: biblically sound, culturally relevant and punctuated with personal stories that supported the theme without distracting from the theme of the sermon. It was good to join the people in saying the Apostle’s Creed.
Two historic churches, biblical, gospel centered, diverse. The body of Christ is wonderful in its varied expressions.
Category Archives: culture
historic churches
Lent
In the Western Christian world, the celebration of Lent began yesterday (Wednesday – I’m posting from Korea and its already Thursday here). In the reading on culture I have been doing lately, I have been reminded how very small (as a proportion) Western style Christianity is compared to the global church.
A moment ago I saw a tweet (from CT) that warned against turning Lent into a self help program with God as your coach.
Whoa, this really bears thinking about. Indeed, in our desire to receive blessing from celebrating the church seasons… let’s be careful that they are not ritual or tradition (remember what Jesus said about the traditions of man) for their own sake… or a self help program. You can’t help yourself; if you could, why was there an incarnation, a crucifixion and a resurrection?
Exalt Jesus through Lent, don’t engage in some false humility from guilt.
Niebuhr on Christ & Culture
Here’s my thoughts (what I took away at the end)…
The church is a broad and deep body of people that transcends time and space, it has no geographical or time boundaries. It is like the broad and deep Pacific ocean is a body of water… mostly there are no individual drops. I am not describing some kind of monism. I am thinking of our oneness in and with Christ and one another (John 17?).
To take this drop thing too far, I would say this… There are no individual drops in the ocean excepts for those created by the surface water being battered by storms. What does this tell us about being in the deep with God and one another? The deeper we are the safer we are?
Niebuhr writes: “Our decisions must be made in the present moment-but in the presence of historical beings (this book is all about those beings) whose history has been made sacred by the historical, remembered actions of the one who inhabits eternity.”
From all this I think: We learn to look back to help up see now and hope for the future. But as usual, don’t look back with regret, nor now in fear, but forward with hope in God. (This, I would propose, is a healthy existential position that is based of a hopeful eschatology.)
two Vs
On NBC’s “Meet the Press” today, Putin was a big topic… from the program transcript, David Gregory:
David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker wrote a piece about Vladimir Putin, and he framed it this way, he writes, “Putin, obviously, is no democrat. Not remotely. He is not interested in the contemporary requirements of human rights. He is not interested in empowering a real legislature or ceding true independence to the courts.
“Democracy is not his interest. Stability and development—those are his themes, first and last. And Putin regards any and all attempts from the West, from human-rights organizations, and from the press to call him to account on nearly any issue as acts of anti-Russian self-righteousness and hypocrisy.”
When I heard this I thought about 2 others Vs, both Victors… one Ukrainian (Yanukovych), the other Hungarian (Orban)… go read the quote again and substitute one of their names for Putin and then you’ll see why these guys lean the way they do.
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