I would like to make a few of my own comments about the video which Pat posted recently, “Sunday’s Coming” Movie Trailer from North Point Media.

I’ve been seeing some comments in entries on other blogs regarding this video, and I find them rather telling.

…how sad. Packaged and served just like fast food. That’s what religion is today. And that’s how people like it.

Really? We do? People prefer feel-good-isms and content-less entertainment thinly veiled behind the disguise of church? In our sinful states, yes, we do.

As fallen people, we always desire the new shiny bobble. A part of us never outgrows that infantile desire to grab at the shiny new thing we’ve never seen before, drop the boring old one we’ve been playing with up until now, and put the brand new one in our mouths and ogle its wonderful glitzy qualities. This will never change this side of heaven.

I can say for certain that right now, through technological advances, we are now able to produce shininess that has never been seen by former generations. I mean, put on the sunglasses, spread on your SPF 1000 sunblock and hold on to your seats levels of shininess. And still we get bored. Why? Because that it is an idol that does not save.

Yet unfortunately, too often this is how we view the choices:

would i want to go to a church like that?
no.

But if the only other option was my grandma’s church…well…

and I remember that the model in the video was born out of a time when that was the case.

Let me digress for a moment. I had written something completely different for this entry, but after last Sunday I have decided to mostly start over.

I visited Faith Lutheran Church in Capistrano Beach, California last Sunday and was reminded of the changes they’ve been going through. (Please bear with them, the website is currently going through a complete overhaul.) Faith is a church which has both a traditional liturgical service as well as a hybrid service which is a blend of a contemporary worship sound and feel, but which retains the text of the traditional liturgy and the same Law/Gospel sermon which is preached in the traditional service.

(Go here to listen to the sermon I heard while I was there on May 16.)
(You can find the text here for the hymn which Pastor Hodel mentions in his sermon.)

Faith has been growing by leaps and bounds. That traditional service is packed out. I mean, it’s standing room only every single week, even after a recent refurbishment and expansion of the sanctuary. But why?

The reason they’re so packed is that Faith is being inundated with ex-evangelicals, ex-contemporary worship service goers and others who are looking for a worship service with substance. When talking to these people, I’ve learned that it isn’t a decision they’ve made lightly. They are extremely passionate about what they’ve done. They uniformly feel like they’ve been rescued from some kind of hopeless nightmare. I won’t recount the details of the stories I’m hearing, but trust me when I say some are pretty dark.

And that’s what Christ-less and Gospel-less teaching will do to you!

Something else that I find very interesting is that these folks who are leaving their contemporary worship service-based churches to arrive at the traditional liturgy at Faith did not first attend the hybrid service which Faith offers. They’re coming directly from one to the other without the layover. And they’re loving it! They’re so passionate about the traditional liturgy, in fact, that if any ‘contemporary-sounding’ elements accidentally slip in there, as can happen sometimes, they’re very upset. I heard words spoken almost at a yell about some contemporary-sounding elements accidentally making it into one of the traditional services I attended there months ago.

Talk about refreshing! And these people are no dummies. They are quickly getting up to speed theologically, or are already knowledgeable about Scripture, but finally getting solid Christ-centered teaching. They can recount many details of the kinds of Christless teaching they’ve been receiving at their former church and what effect it has had on them, often with tears in their eyes. They feel like they’ve been delivered. The sermons and the teaching are big parts of the reason why, but clearly they also love the traditional liturgy. They love the confession and absolution at the beginning. They love the chanted Psalms. They love the hymns. They love the Lord’s Prayer and the creeds spoken amongst one another. They love the communion, eating the body and drinking the blood of our Lord Christ while hearing that these elements are given for their sins. They’ve come from the ‘new’ to deeply appreciate something which is hundreds of years old.

We at NRP are trying to tie in with Faith more and more as they work like crazy to get the unadulterated message of Christ’s death and resurrection for the sins of the world out to the masses. (In our catalog you will see more and more recordings produced by South Orange County Outreach, or SOCO, affiliated with Faith Lutheran Church.) People are starving for it. I know this to be true because they’re telling me face to face how they have been quietly and privately languishing in their current contemporary church, not knowing (because they’re not hearing) the message of the Gospel. A very common phrase on the lips of these newcomers when they arrive is something resembling, “What is this strange new teaching?”

I wanted to tell this story because, clearly, not all want a contemporary service. Some are beginning to reject it. They no longer want something subjective and based on their feelings. They want something objective which comes from outside of them. They want to hear about Jesus Christ, the God-man, coming down from heaven to rescue them from eternal damnation. This is serious stuff, and these converts mean business.

Let me wrap this up with a little bit of a response I recently wrote to a commenter on the recent post in which we shared the video. He mentioned that we should have more respect for what he considers a “modern liturgy”, referring to the contemporary worship service, and signed off with this line – “What we really need to do in the body of Christ is recognise, appreciate and celebrate diversity, not mock it.”

We all need to be where these ex-evangelicals have come to. That is, they’ve been languishing and they know what matters: Christ crucified and resurrected. That is all that matters. If the preachers and teachers out there, of any denomination in any church, are not preaching and teaching Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins week in and week out, not only is it useless crap, but it is false teaching and dangerous. What value is this to anyone? Removing Christ from the preaching and teaching in the church is not ‘diverse’, it’s just us once again offering false gods in replacement.

To the churches which have a contemporary worship service and do preach every week the true depth of our sin and the sacrifice Christ made in His death and resurrection in order to rescue us, I say, “Good on you!”. We can argue the differences between the contemporary service and traditional liturgy separately once we have covered the only point that really matters – keeping Christ at the center of it.

What we need is simply Christ crucified for our sins, every week – don’t accept anything less. Your faith and salvation are on the line.

But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough.

…And what I do I will continue to do, in order to undermine the claim of those who would like to claim that in their boasted mission they work on the same terms as we do. For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness.
(2 Cor 11:3-4, 12-15)

The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners
(1 Tim 1:15)

At work today I saw a lady wearing a lanyard for her keys and some sort of ID badge, and printed on it were the words “I love Jesus” but instead of the word ‘love’ there was a heart.  I have seen bumper stickers like that too.

To be honest, it made me a little uncomfortable.  Not that I doubt her love or devotion to Jesus, but often have questioned my own.

I trust Jesus, but to say ‘I love Him’ …  well I do, but it’s a constantly changing thing.  More often than not I can identify with Peter, who when asked by Jesus if he loved Him replied, basically, “I like you a lot.”

Maybe that is one reason that I have been uncomfortable with many contemporary worship songs that have the congregation professing an ardent, almost romantic love for the Savior. I have never been one to have what the culture calls a ‘man crush’ on anyone.

There are men that I can say I love; my dad, my grandfather, and some friends and mentors. (One friend calls this non-homosexual male philia.) I can say there are times when I feel like that towards Jesus.

It also seems like a private thing to me. I gladly and publicly confess to being a Christian or a follower of Christ, but my love, devotion and personal feelings are just that; personal. (So here I am writing about it. Yeah, I know.)

The church at large might benefit by looking into this subject especially in regard to why more men don’t attend worship, instead of adopting wholesale feminine categories of intimacy and love in our worship services.

Anyway, these are one man’s thoughts on the matter, FWIW.

We saw this and it is self-explanatory.  We’re just sayin’…

“Sunday’s Coming” Movie Trailer from North Point Media on Vimeo.

But that isn’t the best news… the best news is that Mockingbird NYC has made all their 2010 Conference audio available for FREE!

You absolutely have to go download it all. Now. Free material of this caliber simply doesn’t come along very often. And make sure to drop a line to the good folks at Mockingbird while you’re at it.

And let me take this moment to extend my personal thanks to them myself. Great work, guys.

UPDATE: Even though Mockingbird NYC has made this audio available for free, we would ask you to please consider following their request and make a donation to help cover the costs they incurred to put on this event. I think this is one is worth it.

Recently, we pinged Faith’s Vimeo channel where they are continuing to make available some very interesting material. Since our last post, they have continued to add more, and we wanted to make sure you’re visiting their Vimeo channel relatively frequently.

This is some great free material, why would you miss it! We will likely be adding a link on the right side of our site which promotes their channel and makes it as easy as possible for our browsers to take another look.

Their new current series is entitled, “Why Should I Believe in God?”

Please enjoy!

Fearsome Tycoon over at Cruising Down the Coast of the High Barbaree,  lays out faith and works from the viewpoint of the Formula of Concord.   Its about as clear as it gets.

He writes:

In consideration of the coming Mockingbird Conference this week in which Dr. Rosenbladt is participating (I understand they still have spots available – don’t miss it!), I thought it would be a proper time to link to some of his great new videos.

This is a series of high-quality videos, produced and made available by Faith Lutheran Church in Capistrano Beach, California, in which Dr. Rosenbladt covers The Two Natures in Christ by Martin Chemnitz.

These classes are brand new and not yet complete, so we are linking to the ones which to date have been recorded. Dr. Rosenbladt is currently continuing to teach this series each week at Faith.

You can also go directly to Faith Lutheran Church’s Vimeo page where you can keep up with the next videos in the series as they become available.

Please enjoy!

(We are linking to Vimeo site below because we’ve found that having a bunch of embedded players here can drag down browsers. Just come back and click on the next one in the series if you can’t find it on the Vimeo site.)

Dr. Rod Rosenbladt on “The Two Natures in Christ” Week # 1

Dr. Rod Rosenbladt on “The Two Natures in Christ” Week # 2

Dr. Rod Rosenbladt on “The Two Natures in Christ” Week # 3

Dr. Rod Rosenbladt on “The Two Natures in Christ” Week # 4
(Featuring Dr. Dale Brant, introduced by Dr. Rosenbladt)

In case you hadn’t seen it yet, Dr. Rosenbladt will be making an appearance in New York City for the Mockingbird Conference. If you’re at all able, we highly recommend you attend and listen to him and all the other great content they are serving up.

Personally, it pains me greatly that I will not be able to attend. There are some folks whom I would love to meet and thank over there for the great work they’re doing at Mockingbird NYC. May they be given great grace and may many people find the Gospel of Jesus Christ through their work.

Right now, some of the guys at Mockingbird are highlighting some of Dr. Rosenbladt’s work in preparation for the conference next week. Stop over and have a read. If you don’t know about them, this is a great time to bookmark their blog. Check in regularly. They’re prolific writers and it’s always good.

Thanks again, guys.

A couple interesting posts over  Vox Day’s blog.

The first one deals with National Public Radio’s policy concerning terminology used in reference to those opposed or in favor of abortion.  What also caught my attention was a link included in the post to an essay on infanticide in the ancient world. It’s an eye opener.

The second post is a riff on an AP story about the rising occurrence of ritual human sacrifice in Uganda.

Vox concludes:

“As Chesterton, history, and demographics have all pointed out, when Christianity fails in a society, it is not going to be replaced by a lack of religion, but by a different religion. The more intelligent members of the irreligientsia would do well to ponder whether continuing to work towards that replacement is a wise policy or not.

It is also worth keeping in mind that Christians who are accustomed to fighting this sort of raw and undisguised evil are not likely to be as tolerant of open violations of Biblical morality as the average Western Christian. ”

I think these posts are  brilliant answers to the oft repeated charge in some quarters that Christianity has only brought harm, oppression, and ignorance.  Those who hold this position are themselves ignorant of history and of what waits to fill the void left should our opponents have their way.