Today a childhood friend of mine and son of my former pastor, who is now a pastor himself shared an article to facebook entitled "Friends don't let friends read Beth Moore" in which the author took it as his charge to publicly rebuke Beth Moore and Joyce Meyer for their approach to the scripture.
Now many of you know that I was raised in the Lutheran Church Missouri synod, and have, after period of waywardness, returned to Christ as an Evangelical Christian. I see these type of posts frequently among my friends...evangelicals have the wrong hymns and liturgy, the wrong approach to children's ministry, you name it, we Evangelicals have got it wrong. As a long time Lutheran, I get it, making God about you, and church about entertainment, misses the mark. And let me say as a disclaimer of sorts that my childhood friend is to the best of my knowledge a sincere and well intentioned Christian man, and that protecting one's flock and family from false teaching is indeed no trifling charge. That being said, as I went about my housewifely duties today, I could not stop being disturbed by what this post and it's fellows represent.
As I mentioned, and as you well know if you have ever stumbled before upon this blog, I have been as far off the path as you can go, and were it not for the extension of grace shown to me by the Evangelical church, I would not be a Christian today, nor would my family. I have a fondness for the way Lutherans do things, but I also enjoy the worship style of my current church, and you know what, I think God does too, because he created us all as unique individuals with different gifts for expressing our gratitude in worship, and because he is the one who authored our creativity. The bible commands us to teach our children, not whether it should be in a Sunday school room or church service, it commands us to worship, not how it should sound, it commands us to love one another, it commands us to cling to the word. So what if the form it takes is different for different folks. Most of the stuff that begets interdenominational squabbling is petty, trivial stuff. If a church is biblical, and people are coming to and remaining in Christ as a result of it, then I celebrate and thank God for that church, no matter its name.
Christian friends, we have a real and common enemy, and when we get distracted from that by finger pointing within the church, that is a device of that enemy. God never said, I don't want my worship to have electric guitars, but he definitely did say that we are One body, and that we are to work in harmony within that body for the Glory of God.
Of course it's a different matter if a church or ministry is teaching against Gods word, that's downright wrong, but if my take on accepting Jesus' salvation looks a little more warm fuzzy than fire and brimstone, or if I put my kids in a separate class to learn, or if I dunk instead of sprinkle, or if I sing my praises with a little bit of bass, so what, we're still on the same side, and we have a lot of work to do, it's getting ugly out there. We need to stand together as Christ intended, and be a working, living body, and if we let trivial issues stand in the way of that, then we give power to the enemy. If we allow details and judgement to overshadow love, then we are being more unbiblical that those we are condemning, and that's a victory for the wrong team, so let's get it together, church.
Amen!
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