Thoughts and Amusings

You up for a challenge?
Good!

(All random highlighting is mine :) )

I know quite a few who read this are in positions of leadership so I am here to challenge you as I have been by this article from Chris Marshall. If you are on a worship team or in youth leadership I want you to really think whether this is true for you. I know our Sunday night team has discussed aspects of this at length but I think we still have some way to go!

...clergy today give much less attention to catechetising young believers, teaching them how to access the Scriptures and stocking their minds with biblical stories, language and themes. If this is true of more liturgical traditions, such as Lutheranism, how much more true must it be of evangelical, pentecostal and other free church traditions which usually lack any formal apparatus for the catechesis or instruction of young believers? Indeed, I sometimes wonder whether, ironically, it is the relative strength of so-called “Bible believing” churches compared to the declining mainstream congregations that partially accounts for falling levels of biblical knowledge. At least in liturgical worship, the congregation every week hears the public reading of Scripture on the basis of the lectionary, a timehonoured practice stemming back to the earliest days of the church. In most looser evangelical church services, by contrast, the only time
Scripture is publicly read is to furnish the launching pad for some
sermonic excursion that focuses more on the experiential or therapeutic needs of the listeners than on the meaning of the text itself. The same is true of the worship
repertoire found in our most popular churches. Although the old “Scripture in Song” genre had distinct limitations, at least it served as a vehicle for inculcating our
minds with biblical imagery and language. By comparison, it is striking how lacking in biblical allusions many of the most popular worship songs are today, such as
those emanating from Hillsong. Many say little more than “Jesus is my girlfriend”, and a very cool girlfriend too, countless times over! When it is reckoned that what
people sing in church is today arguably their primary source of theological instruction, this is rather troubling.

But why should it be troubling?

Why should diminishing familiarity with Scripture be a cause of concern?
Does it really matter?
Yes it does!
It matters because what is being lost is an awareness of the Bible’s central
role in shaping Christian identity and forming Christian character

.

I highly recommend you read (or skim) this article avaliable from Stimulus :

http://www.stimulus.org.nz/index_files/STIM%2015_1%20Marshall.pdf

Disagree or Agree??? Got an opinion Dave, Natalie, Huggies, Nicola, Random England and US visitors?