News-Record.com

(tongue firmly planted in cheek)
You suppose they could be more relevant by telling us how to vote?

Well, that would be closer to relevant than these guys who do "holy hip hop."

I think most churches lose relevance when they focus on current events and issues rather than God. Every mainstream protestant church agrees Jesus Christ is the head of all churches and God does not change.

I remember a teacher, Dick Woodward, said that one day as a young man he realized he really beleived there is a God. Therefore, he reasoned if God is, nothing else can be remotely as important.

The notion that churches need to change in order to become relevant is as ancient as it is wrong. The bible warns about people who begin to worship creation, rather than the Creator.

Is God relevant? Do we beleive in a God who must change with the times? Do we beleive in a God who created science or a God created by science?

Mr. Atkinson, IMO it is not God who needs to change but people who profess to be God's messengers. Too many of them are like the Waynesville minister who thought he could claim to be doing God's will while voicing his personal opinion in God's name.

Every where you look these days congregations are splitting and dividing because people can't agree with what is being foisted on them by preachers who use the pulpit for their own agendas. Rather than God's message, these faux ministers are playing politics from the pulpit.

I am not saying all ministers/preachers are guilty of this kind of behavior but it has become the rule rather than the exception.

Personally I think the political ministers are being encouraged to move in this direction by groups like the Moral Majority (which is neither) and other extremists. The idea is to invade religion and control it.

This is not God's message. It is the message of man. And until "men/women of the cloth" resume God's work we can all expect fewer folks in church pews. If people wanted political opinions they can get them here in their pj's.

Yvonne, thanks for the reply. I agree wholehearedly that people should change. This Chandler fella, for instance, seem to be a case in point. However, it is a givin that all of us will fail as children of God.

When a leader in the faith falls, we should not be surprised. I am sorely dissapointed that Mr. Chandler is simply leaving with some of his old members of E Waynesville Baptist Church. I beleive he should have submitted to his elders and -if possible- the So Bapt Convention for discpline.

The topic of this blog is about the church's relevance. It he topic seems to imply that the church's focus needs to be more on current events and culture, rather the nature of God.

"Relevant" to what? In the case of the World Council of Churches it's usually "relevant to the latest fad of liberalism. But what's relevant today is outmoded tomorrow. If God's truth must change as circumstances dictate, then circumstance is really God. That is the teaching of evolutionary humanism, not Christianity. If God can neither lie, change His mind, nor be mistaken, once He speaks, that settles the matter forever. It is for us to adapt to what He says, not the reverse.