Today was a day off for our group so we arranged to drive about fifty miles one way to visit the traditional Christendom church Evelyn's brother is the pastor of. We had a good time.
The church is an independent group. They even have the word 'independent' in the church's name. But it's like the typical CGGC congregation: shrinking, old-most people there were older than we are, staid, quiet, very consumerist.
Dave did nearly everything. The people consumed contentedly. Dave has a sweet singing voice and perfect pitch. They turn his mike up and the singing is mostly listening to him with the rest of us singing quietly along.
Dave's a very good preacher for an older crowd. Evelyn told him he's not seeker sensitive. There was a lot of depth and truth in what he said. Lots of Scripture. And, he spoke for nearly 50 minutes. He preached a lot of righteousness as fruit of genuine faith, very much like my harangues on this blog.
It was weird being in a gathering in which I had to just shut up and be fed, even if the content was good.
Nice time with family. Certainly, we'll do it again, if we get the chance. But, I'll take our interactive, Word-modeled gatherings every day.
As much as I enjoyed the family gathering yesterday, the more valuable time for me was the hour long drive to the facility in which Evelyn and I reflected on the challenge of living out and proclaiming the gospel in an age of increasingly open and proud hedonism and narcissism.
ReplyDeleteWe concluded that there is hope in the fact that our world is more and more like the world Jesus and the first disciples lived in.
During the time we spent with Dave and his wife after the"service," as we were chatting, Dave described the importance of the sermon for a pastor and the emotion he pours into the preparation and presentation of his sermons. Later, we were chatting about their grandfather who was an elder in the Old Order River Brethren Church, Dave said that grandpa was untrained in preaching and didn't ever prepare a real sermon and that his words to the gatherings were, therefore, shallow and inferior.
ReplyDeleteNeither of us had the nerve to tell him that those shallow and inferior messages are standard faire for us now and they serve us very well.
Neither did we ask him to show us a prepared sermon in the New Testament.