Local brew pub is host to nontraditional church

I did an experiment one time and started asking people in the congregation about particular things. I started with salvation and got some surprises. I was shocked at how little they knew beyond the typical invitation.

I do not see it as creating space and letting them come to you that Jesus did. Jesus went to them. He served them. The first church I pastored was a replant and I did away with almost every church thing they were doing. Some did not like it. I started to ask them waht they could tell me about their neighbors because I was new in the community. I found out they knew little more than I did. So I told them to start inviting their neighbors to barbeque with them and invire them ot their homes. As a result many new ministries started and I never heard anything about the things I dropped. They were so busy with "Christian things thta they were not meeting people and getting to know them and serve them. It went from a church focused on programs to a chruch of discipling people.

I believe if we took away most programs from churches we would see what is really left. We would see what the people are really doing.

The answer is quite simple. The reason is that they have not been sharing their faith.

 

Ironically too many of our churches act like hospitals where the patients only have tennis elbow injuries...while the desperately sick and dying languish in the parking lot beyond their doors.

 

I would say that is more like a clinic of choice that anyone could get taken care of who has minor pains.

Too many do not think pf discipleship the way Jesus taught because they are led by what others think and misled into thinking that discipleship is another Bible study. If education solved every church problem we would have the most dynamic obedient churches in the world. It anyone would think past the fact that the average person in the days of when the NT was written c9uld not read. It was only about 2% on the average. Education would have never solved Judas's problem.

 

The problem with this is that the Gospel is in words - and the Bible is in words. I realize our actions need to match what we say, but the Gospel does need to be preached in words - God gave us language and God uses language.

Rom. 10.14-17

 

I too noted Tucker graduated from BTSR. Virginia Baptist churches and BTSR are notoriously liberal, for the most part. I had just moved here to VA in '91 as a new believer and read about the BTSR opening. The prayer was to the "Creator" so that no one would be offended by addressing God as a masculine figure.

I was so concerned, that I ended up meeting with the pastor of a Baptist church my mother was going to and that I was attending at the time, about this. He saw no problem with it and even told me it was fine if pastors wanted to call God "mother."

 

From what I've read, and from what you posted here, this church is following the "emerging" church pattern.

The beer drinking issue to me is not the main issue - rather, it's the whole outlook and attitude and philosophy of this church regarding what they consider to be the gospel. This is the kind of thing you find when you read stuff by the emergents.