Thoughts and Amusings

My thanks to digger randle for this link (digger was the youth minister off 1 vs 100 who one $98 000 the other night - well it was a few months ago now as we are ages behind here in kiwiland) Anyway, I visited his blog and found this fascinating article from a couple of months ago form The Age in Australia regarding an ex Hillsong Member.

A couple of quotes to whet your appetite -

For five years, Tanya Levin was a Hillsong insider - infatuated with the evangelical church and its leader. Then she left and wrote a book. Now she's trouble, writes David Marr.....

.....So Tanya Levin is a problem. She asks questions. She wants explanations. She challenges the vision of Hillsong's leadership. In short, she's trouble. ....

.....Two years into writing People in Glass Houses, her insider's account of Hillsong, she was shown the door. "There is no debate within Hillsong," she says. "That's fundamentalism. It's not open to free thought and question, not at all....."

".....My impressions in September of 1985 were of a bunch of nice people," Levin writes. They waved their hands and spoke in tongues. Houston preached. "Even today," she confesses, "when I hear Brian Houston's voice I feel better....."

....For Levin, the core lie of Hillsong is the claim that God will repay everything you give. And the longer you have to wait, the greater the return. "How do you actually stand in front of people and say if you give me your money God will give it back to you and actually sleep at night when you're taking old people's money. It's obviously the more desperate people who want to make an investment decision like that. Very vulnerable people...."

....Levin doesn't fit that picture. She doesn't hate. Something in her seems to yearn for those exhilarating years fighting the good fight against the devil in all his disguises right down to the voodoo beat of rock'n'roll. "We were told you can't have it because it's incantation and you're going to raise all these demons." How different things are now. Levin begins to sing some Hillsong Christian trance music: "Doof, doof, doof. Christ is the future. Doof doof doof..."

I highly reccomend you go over and read the article It is a very very good read pop on over .

This months Christianity today also has a good article from a slightly different perspective

Hillsong Kiev,

I am the first to admit that I find many of Hillsong's lyrics to be incredibly shallow, but that is not what this post is about. I was moved to tears as I thought about how beautiful it is that a song that has meaning to me on this side of the globe has as much meaning to thousands of people in Kiev, despite the fact that it is sung in a different language.

I actually got down on the floor and worshipped ( the words are pretty easy to pick up :)) I can't explain everything I learnt, but I wonder whether your heart is open enough to watch/listen to this clip and let God speak to you.

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?