The principal of a Melbourne Bible university told a friend of mine that :- "The church is off the track, it runs after success instead of humility and relationship. Bible varsities advertize from a ' we are going to make a real man of God out of you ' approach. Nobody will listen to you unless you've got a prominent church. I encouraged pastors to attend a conference where the speaker was an older man with many years of experience but relatively unknown. They did not go; the conference was poorly attended though this meeting would be one of the best I've ever attended. Those with the prominent churches won't preach it and the people will not hear anybody else." How pitiful!
I suggest to you that our churches became high-jacked by 20th centuryisms and is essentially worried for itself. A self-centred kind of church.
I was involved in Charismatic churches for over 20 years and I was quite sold out to the modern way of doing things and the Church Expansion concepts. However I became disturbed during the past ten years as I have seen some of the inconsistencies in the way we interpreted our Bible. I could bear it no longer and made a decision to put something in writing to challenge and inspire others to think about what we are doing.
Somebody said to me "The unfortunate thing is, that I see non-Pentecostal churches trying to be like Penty churches - Why?" Why indeed? There is a good deal more pertaining to the Evangelical church in the Pentocostal church than many Evangelicals would be prepared to admit.
Over the years I was caught out too many times in a discussion with someone of a traditional perspective, with my usual adamant fashion, protecting a doctrine or concept to find when I got home to study it more closely, that there had been not absolute evidence of our viewpoint, and even a lot of proof for the opposing view points in many cases. It caused me to look in more detail at most facets of what we believe. In myself, I was also bewildered on occasion aware of desiring to hold onto things that were not Biblically very sound, yet they felt so right.
One of the beneficial things to eventuate out of this reassessing period for me, was a long bible timeline online with images that I collated.
I suggest to you that our churches became high-jacked by 20th centuryisms and is essentially worried for itself. A self-centred kind of church.
I was involved in Charismatic churches for over 20 years and I was quite sold out to the modern way of doing things and the Church Expansion concepts. However I became disturbed during the past ten years as I have seen some of the inconsistencies in the way we interpreted our Bible. I could bear it no longer and made a decision to put something in writing to challenge and inspire others to think about what we are doing.
Somebody said to me "The unfortunate thing is, that I see non-Pentecostal churches trying to be like Penty churches - Why?" Why indeed? There is a good deal more pertaining to the Evangelical church in the Pentocostal church than many Evangelicals would be prepared to admit.
Over the years I was caught out too many times in a discussion with someone of a traditional perspective, with my usual adamant fashion, protecting a doctrine or concept to find when I got home to study it more closely, that there had been not absolute evidence of our viewpoint, and even a lot of proof for the opposing view points in many cases. It caused me to look in more detail at most facets of what we believe. In myself, I was also bewildered on occasion aware of desiring to hold onto things that were not Biblically very sound, yet they felt so right.
One of the beneficial things to eventuate out of this reassessing period for me, was a long bible timeline online with images that I collated.
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For added info concerning a timeline of Jesus life check out Neil Baulch's Bible TimeLine Chart site and read up on the biblical study resource.
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