"What Would You Rather Have; A Religion Or A Relationship?"

I received an email earlier this week that I wanted to address but couldn’t because of my work schedule being ramped up to get ready for a couple of weeks out of town. A friend of mine has written me that she has been visiting a very traditional congregation that uses the historic liturgy and sings the time tested hymnody sung by conservative congregations across denominational lines to supplement her Sunday morning worship at a congregation that has departed from, by all outward appearances, looking like a historic Lutheran church that your grandparents would recognize and be pleased with.

Let’s look at two of the more bizarre practices before I ask my questions:

The pastor has rewrote the ecumenical creeds for the congregation to
confess.

The people get to stand up at a point in the worship service and say
like the good folks at Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church: “The bible I hold is God's word from cover to cover. It makes me wise for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. It is useful for teaching, correcting, rebuking,and training me how to live. I need to read listen and learn from God's word every day. This is most certainly true.”

If I had to endure either of these situations this I’d be looking for a way to supplement my Sunday worship just like my friend has choosen to do. I’ve wrote several posts detailing why I can’t return a home church because the pastor not only rewrote the creeds to the point I wasn’t even sure he was talking about a confession of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit but he rewrote the Lord’s Prayer in such a way that even the Dali Lama could agreed with the text. Nope, ain’t gonna go back there…

So, since it’s become public knowledge that my friend is supplementing her Sunday morning worship with visits to a more traditional worship setting she has been under a good deal of pressure to stop visiting the more traditional congregation and “looking deeper into liturgy”. She writes:

“Pastor doesn’t' really approve of what we are doing and has already challenged us with questions like "what would you rather have; a religion or a relationship."”

What? Religion or a relationship? Is that what a liturgical, traditional congregation is, just a religion? Really?

Now, I promised some folks that since I’m a bit busy I’d give my readers the opportunity to address the question; “what would you rather have; a religion or a relationship?” I said I’d put this post up a few days ago but I wanted to get my friends permission to include actual quotes from her email.

So… for the discussion please address the dichotomy of religion versus relationships in the context of visiting or being a member of a traditional, liturgical congregation (and is that a false dichotomy?) and what does Scripture say concerning religion versus relationship when speaking of the faithful gathering to worship the crucified and risen Lord.

Discuss. What say you?

Holy Math?

The following little gem was in my mailbox as part of a weekly newsletter from a district in the haut south.

An Act of Faithfulness
This past week, I had an opportunity to speak with a young couple trying to decide if this was the time to buy a house. Filled with the anxiety that such a major step brings, I had the opportunity to remind them the ways in which God is blessing them and their response of faithfulness through their stewardship. This holy math that God calls us to be about certainly does not make earthly sense, yet time and again I have witnessed his surprises – just enough to pay the bills, an unexpected gift, the ability to say ‘no’ and wait, the opportunity to respond to a need of another…and all because of putting him first.

Ablaze! is much like this. We are being called to be stewards of all of the creation. To speak with those who have no relationship with the Savior, to join in a concerted prayer effort for the work of the Gospel in this place, and to be generous givers in the partnership of congregational transformation and Kingdom growth. We are being called to put God first, to be generous on every occasion, giving thanks for what God is already about and what he will do.

Xxxxx Xxxxxx, Mission & Ministry Exec,

Holy math? You aren’t kidding are you? Gosh, I missed the part of scripture that says our reward on this side of eternity is a big fat bank account. Maybe I need pull Eugene Patterson’s The Message down from it's spot next to the Book of Mormon and review his paraphrase to get these scales to fall from my eyes.

The only thing I changed was the name of the mission and “ministry” executive. But “X” really needs to be warned that the whole “holy math” concept has been trademarked and is the intellectual property of Joel Osteen. Osteen wrote the definitive book on God blessing us with prosperity, great wealth, success, or good fortune in his book Your Best Life Now. I am deeply concerned that “X” will soon be hearing from Lakewood Church lawyers who I’m sure are looking forward to having their best case now. So, a word to the wise, don't try to mess with Joel's mojo! With all the unpleasantness of lawsuits in our beloved synod, do we really need go this route?

For those of you who don’t know who Joel Osteen is…I don’t even know how that is possible, he is the pastor of one of the largest megachurchs in the country. His little country church seats 16000 people on a Sunday. For those of you who are bad with math, his church is 13 times bigger and therefore more dynamic than your paltry 1200 person congregation. Just so you know...