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Sunday, March 29, 2020

Slamming the door in the face of the unchurched

With tens of millions of Americans under house arrest, this would be an ideal time for unchurched Americans who are bored out of their wits to check out a church. Unfortunately, most of them will find locked church doors. One of the great, unrepeatable lost opportunities in Christian history to reach out to the unsaved. 

Livestream services are fine as a complement to public worship, but livestream services cater to church members, not the unchurched. 

27 comments:

  1. You are exactly right! Pastors and Priest have always been on the front line of wars, pestilence, pandemics and persecutions. The western church as become complacent and soft. If you look at the the eastern orthodox in eastern europe, they are out in the streets and visiting other churches to encourage their flock and seek the lost.

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  2. I'm sure the unchurched would be willing to risk catching the virus to go to a church service.

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    1. I can't tell if this is serious or sarcastic.

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    2. Meyu has a thoroughly godless, secular view of the church. All he sees is risk.

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    3. Here's an idea that would never occur to someone with meyu's worldly outlook: some seekers go to a church service because God prompted them to go. It's not just a natural impulse or curiosity.

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    4. So I take it you would have no problem getting together with a group of strangers and friends and not worry about getting the virus? You must be in your 20's if you think like that.

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    5. "So I take it you would have no problem getting together with a group of strangers and friends and not worry about getting the virus? You must be in your 20's if you think like that."

      Well, at the time Grace community church (GCC) acceded to California canceling gatherings of more than 250 people, they still met with a bit less than 250 people, didn't they? So if it was fine for GCC to get together with a group of 250 people, or even like 100 people, then what's wrong with Steve getting together with a presumably much smaller group of friends and strangers?

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    6. Its still very risky to do that. Why take the risk if you don't have to?

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    7. Well, I guess that'd take us back to Steve's point above.

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    8. i) Due to human mortality, men and women routinely assume calculated gratuitous risks. Playing many sports carries the risk of permanent injury, sometimes physical or mental incapacitation, or even death. Because they know that death is inevitable, they gamble the future on the present.

      ii) Having kids is risky. Your kid might die of cancer. Or your teenager might become a hopeless drug addict, die from an overdose or commit suicide? Or your child might be damned. Why take that risk if you don't have to?

      iii) Childbearing used to be very hazardous for mothers. Many died in childbirth. Should wives before the advent of modern medical science refuse sex with their husband after child #3?

      iv) As I explained in my post on Jas 5:14-15, it was hazardous to elders to anoint the sick.

      iv) This is in part about freedom. Freedom to attend church or freedom to boycott church. The problem is when we create a society that revolves around hypochondriacs like meyu.

      v) Why attend church at all unless you think public worship confers some supernatural blessings that are otherwise unavailable? So the risk assessment has to balance the risk factors against the compensatory blessings of public worship. If you think nothing happens when Christians fellowship together that could offset the risk, what's the point of ever going to church?

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    9. Some risks we must take but its foolish to an unnecessary risk with this virus given how deadly it is. We know from history that even with all the health risks we have lived with all our lives no one that I know of would stop going to church because they could caught a cold virus. No one has stopped going to church because they might get cancer. Yet for this virus it is prudent not to go because this virus is very deadly and its foolishness to risk unnecessarily getting infected. You should know better.

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    10. I just gave you examples of risks we don't have to take, but do so anyway for the compensatory benefits. Sometimes we lose the bet. So your comment is intellectually dishonest. You are consumed by ungodly fear.

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    11. You lack discernment on this issue. You know full well that if large numbers of people get together there is a greater risk of getting the virus. Stop being foolish.

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    12. Are the elders in Jas 5:14-15 foolish because they didn't practice social distancing? They exposed themselves to the sick through direct physical contact. They could infect the sick (in their already weakened condition) with their own diseases. And they could infect their families when they went back home after doing visitation ministry with the sick. I hope you never tell anyone you're a Christian because you're a pathetic witness to the Christian faith. In practice, your outlook is dominated by naturalism.

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    13. The elders could take precautions like doctors do to limit their exposure. I wonder what churches are doing to handle these situations.
      BTW- insulting me shows your arguments fail. No need to get personal with those who disagree with you.

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    14. Do you think this pastor should be applauded as a hero?
      "Florida megachurch pastor arrested for holding crowded services Sunday"
      https://www.foxnews.com/us/florida-pastor-arrest-church-service-coronavirus-tampa

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    15. You're a tape-recorder with a single prerecorded message. When I dismantle your objection, your response is not to engage my arguments but to push the rewind button and replay your tape-recorded message. Unless you have a new objection or begin to honestly engage my counterarguments, further comments from you will be deleted. I'm not going to waste my time debating a tape-recorder.

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    16. 1C elders weren't wearing medical masks and latex gloves when they visited and anointed the sick (Jas 5:14-15).

      You've gotten quite personal yourself. But thanks for illustrating your self-serving double standard.

      Trotting out a notorious charlatan and publicity hound is a diversionary tactic . Easy target.

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  3. So God would have prompted an unbeliever to go to a church that was closed. How does your Calvinism interpret that?

    Just saying, my church (Anglo-Catholic) added services.

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    1. Um, why would this be unique to Calvinism?

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    2. Fosi,

      No, it was counterfactual. God prompting seekers to go to churches if they were open.

      Mind you, God does predestine some people to have an off-putting religious experience. So both scenarios are consistent with Calvinism. I'm not someone you're likely to trip up on the logic of Calvinism. But you might get lucky!

      I'd add that some churches have remained open.

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    3. I guess I didn't pick up on it being a counterfactual, given the premise of the post is that the doors to churches are closed to the unchurched/unsaved. Though, I see that wasn't the premise of meyu's comment, now that I consider it.

      As for why ours added services, it was for the purpose of allowing the congregation to spread out our attendance so we didn't all have to pack in. If that snags some unbelievers, so much the better. We're also communing in one kind for the time being, given the number of at-risk people we've got among us.

      Hawk: It's only unique to Calvinism insofar as Calvinists generally feel the need to justify and explain everything that God does. In that sense, not entirely unique since you can find other groups who do the same thing to one degree or another. However, this is a Calvinist blog, so that would obviously be my target for such a barb.

      I've been reading steve for 15 years or so and for most of that time I was Reformed or Reformed-curious but I've always liked to put in $0.02 when something didn't seem to add up.

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    4. Ah, so it's not "unique" to Calvinism after all! ;)

      Slightly off-topic, but what persuaded you to move from Reformed to Anglo-Catholicism?

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    5. I appreciate the creative measures of Fosi's church. We need more of that.

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    6. Hawk: It's a long story but the nutshell version is that it wasn't by choice. Both my wife and I were content where we were and had a community of serious believers, until it was destroyed by forces outside of our control. There was a lot of grief and bitterness involved. We tried a number of churches, IFB, regular SBC, episcopal, penticostal, generic evangelical community church. None fit.

      Some of the families that we had been closest to moved to an Anglican (actually Anglo-Catholic) church in town and my wife and I tried it, twice, and hated it. We both prayed (unbeknownst to the other) that if that was the church that the Lord has for us than He would have to change our hearts because we weren't going back.

      We had no other options in our area that fit and we spent a year commuting to a church an hour away, until that church, too, fell apart due to lack of a pastor.

      So we were stuck. My wife and I agreed that we would go to any church to which the Lord led us. We ended up going back to that same Anglo-Catholic church because it did have a few things that were important to us (they would commune us and our kids, they had a high view of scripture, theology in line with historical Christianity, firm opposition to female clergy, etc, etc) and found that our perception and hearts had been changed.

      We decided that we would focus on the things that we agreed with and not on the things that we didn't and our bishop and other clergy were fine with that. That gave us room to heal and to gain back some of the support structure that we had lost.

      There a lot of things to like in addition to the things I listed. Every family there homeschools, for instance. They are all focused on transmitting their culture and values to their children. Both the men and the women take prayer seriously. Then men who lead the church behave as pastors and not as executives. They take an active interest and role in the spiritual formation of us and our children. They have an eye on church history and the church calendar, which helps keep us focused on spiritual things throughout the year. The list goes on.

      There are things to dislike too, of course, but my opinion is that every tradition has things to dislike. I can always find things to disagree with but I'm at a place where I've decided not to focus there.

      Maybe that will change in the future. It's the Lord who changes hearts.

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    7. Thanks, Mr. Fosi. I appreciate it. It's sad when good Christian communities are "destroyed" and there's no other decent fallback in the area. So it sounds like you're doing the best with what's available. By the way, I've also attended and appreciated many Anglican churches, so I don't have anything against Anglican churches. I was just curious. Thanks again for replying!

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  4. My office hours are Tuesday - Friday from 1-6. I have a sign on the church door telling people the pastor is in.

    Likewise on Sunday our doors aren't locked, though most of our congregation is at home following the livestream. That's by their own choice.

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