Too Hot to Handle: Does Your Building Matter?

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

Tom: I’m prowling the Internet, as is my wont, and encountering discussion on the subject of whether a church building can impede one’s efforts to grow a local church. Take for example this meditation, from Abby Stocker at Christianity Today:

“Our worship spaces matter. The music, preaching, and community obviously influence our church experience, but building styles also communicate something to the congregation about what is proper in worship. A central stage outfitted with a drumset probably means the music will be emotional and modern. Feel free to wave your hands, dance, however the Spirit leads you. Kneelers will probably be dedicated to congregational, possibly liturgical, prayer. Space for a mosh pit signifies ... you’re probably not at, say, a small intimate gathering based primarily on discussion of a text.”

So here we are, left to consider how the apostle Paul might have felt about a mosh pit. Immanuel Can, please help me out here.

(Re)Making Music

I’ve heard it said that the quickest way to split a congregation is to change the hymnbook or repaint the walls.

Well, I have no feel for interior decorating, so that second one’s not going to be a problem for me. But like most people, I have more definite tastes when it comes to music. Some of the songs that my local church sings, I love; others, I confess, make me cringe.

A Little Consistency, Please!

Book III of Psalms begins with Psalm 73. The superscriptions over the next 11 psalms tell us a man named Asaph wrote them. Asaph was a Levite singer and musician commissioned during David’s reign. Among other things, he was a harpist and a cymbal player. He and his fellow Levites sang and played David’s psalms as well as their own.

Most psalmists were prophets. Orthodoxy accepts that without question. Asaph too was a prophet, as his psalms establish beyond any reasonable argument to any reader using consistent interpretive principles.

I Thought That Looked Familiar

I’ve been following a fair bit of online discussion about ‘spiritual abuse’ and leaving churches, a trek through the interwebs that took me to The Wartburg Watch 2024. The website looked eerily familiar and the writing tone and subject matter rang a distant bell, so I did a little research. Sure enough, a decade ago I wrote a post about the biblical roles of the sexes prompted by something John Piper said that TWW reported.

Since early 2009, Wartburg has documented and debated cases of spiritual abuse, theological fads, controlling pastors and other church issues, as their mission page declares.

Anonymous Asks (391)

“Is the ‘Name It Claim It’ philosophy biblical?”

I had to look up this phrase since I’m entirely unfamiliar with the concept. A Google Ngram search shows it began appearing in English literature just prior to 1980 and took off in popularity post-2000, peaking after 2020. Having established that, I looked for a book by that name in hope of finding a popular proponent of the teaching. The one that crops up most frequently is a 2008 publication by Dag Heward-Mills entitled Name It! Claim It!! Take It!!! (with all those crazy exclamation marks), available since 2024 as a free PDF online in what I think is its entirety.

Prosperity Gospel by Another Name

The book certainly falls within the Ngram timeframe, but late enough to suggest the phrase probably did not originate with Heward-Mills. TV evangelists like Kenneth Copeland have popularized the concept to the point that it may not be possible to figure out exactly where it came from. For our purposes, it hardly matters one way or another; the basic teaching has been around for centuries.

Sparrows, Oxen and Infinite Bandwidth

An infinite God can concern himself with matters great and comparatively insignificant. There are no time constraints when you dwell in eternity and no detail, no matter how microscopic, is ever overlooked. The Lord Jesus taught that the Father sees the falling of a sparrow and numbers the hairs on the human head. That’s the kind of God we have. He misses nothing, big or small.

Infinite bandwidth will do that, with no degradation of appropriate priorities.

No King in Israel (44)

English translations of the Bible call the tribe made up of the children of Benjamin either Benjamites or Benjaminites. Literally, the Hebrew is “of Benjamin”. The numerous English versions extant split about 60/40 in usage, with the older versions like the KJV mostly leaning toward the truncated form of the name. At this point, neither is really right or wrong.

I’ll go with the shorter version here because it’s … shorter. Having read Judges 19 as many as thirty times in the process of preparing this series, I’m inclined to dwell on the evil men of Gibeah as fleetingly as possible.

Too Hot to Handle: Virtual Fellowship

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

A few days ago, I watched a popular YouTube video one of our readers passed on. It was intended as a spoof of lazy, millennial, hipster Christians who have figured out how to avoid the inevitable complications and commitments of church life by going to “virtual church”. By themselves. From bed. Provided they can work up the energy.

Tom: It’s actually quite entertaining, and if you can watch it without cracking up, you have more self-control than I do. In fact, to really get the picture, you should probably watch it first, if you’re that sort of reader.

Don’t Forget What You Never Knew

“Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe. And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day — just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.”

Ummm …

What do you mean, “remind”?

Death Stopped with Moses and Other Strange Interpretations

Romans 5 is a fine example of the importance of following a writer’s thought flow when interpreting the Bible.

Say you do your morning reading like most people, a chapter at a time. So you drag yourself out of bed, sleep in your eyes, coffee cooling on the table beside your comfy reading chair, and open the scripture where you finished yesterday, at the end of chapter 4. You read on.

Do you even remember chapter 4? Not too likely. Maybe only in the vaguest way. That was a whole 24 hours ago. Chapters 1-3? You’ve got to be kidding. They were last week.

Christ Formed in You

“… my little children, for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you!”

Context is key to discovering the intended meaning of almost every word and phrase in the Bible. Following a writer’s thought flow and keeping in mind where we are in his overall argument invariably gives us a better sense of what he is trying to say then simply looking up the definitions of the Greek or Hebrew words he used.

Sometimes, however, the immediate context of a statement doesn’t help you much at all.

Anonymous Asks (390)

“Are religious icons idols?”

For readers with limited exposure to “high church” traditions, an icon is an artistic depiction of Bible persons or events in paint, mosaic or wood. Icons are common among the Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholics and some Lutherans. The Lord Jesus, Mary, ‘saints’ and angels are the most frequent subjects.

Depending whom you ask, what makes an icon ‘iconic’ is that, rather than simply being decorative, it serves as an object of devotion.

The Commentariat Speaks (36)

We’ve done a few posts over the last couple of years about how the systematic theology we adopt (or uncritically absorb) affects not only the way we read a verse here or there, but also the way we read whole books of the Bible and what we take away from them. One little difference of interpretation here and there may have huge ripple effects downstream. For that reason alone, I always advise new Christians not to sign on to any existing system without a measure of reserve and constant reassessment of whether that way of viewing the Bible aligns with what you are discovering as you read and study it daily.

We can trust the Word absolutely. What people extrapolate from it is a different story.

No King in Israel (43)

Years ago, my aunt appeared at her mother’s door only a few days into her honeymoon, wailing about her “impossible” new husband. My grandmother was a worthy old gal with a very traditional, even biblical view of the importance of keeping one’s word once given. She briskly turned her daughter around in the yard and pointed her right back where she had come from with the trenchant observation, “You married him.”

Hrm. I loved my aunt. She was quite a woman. But I’ve always enjoyed that story.