From: Calvin R Wylie < CWYLIE179@prodigy.net > X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.04 [en] (Win95; U)
I don't see the emphasis on passion in churches as a problem. No I don't think one can have a healthy church on passion alone, but I think it may simply be a backlash to the apathetic 70s and 80s. It good to see passion making inroads again. Less programs and more passion seems to me to be a symptom of good health. There will always be those who will mistakenly follow charismatic leaders without substance, but that doesn't not detract from the need for passion. Can a engine produce power without the explosive properties of a fuel? Without some sense of passion how can a marriage survive the drudgery of day to day living? Can worship of a God who cleared the temple and wept over Jerusalem be passionless? --C. Wylie
From: "John Leach" < jrldes@tir.com >
I think we need more Passion. More Passion for God (all of Him). More Passion for souls ( everyone's). More Passion for the Truth (all of it). And more Passion for the Love and the Righteousness of God (in us). Call me new-fashioned if you will, but I think this type of Passion has been missing. Except in the formally 'down and out' New Converts, we see too little of this type of Passion. Dutiful, and Faithful service are essential. However I would pray that they be motivated by a Passion for God, and a Passion for all mankind. I would pray that they not be motivated by a passion for being right. For I can be right without being righteous. I can be correct without being corrected. And I can be grounded in sound doctrine without being grounded in Truth and Love. I believe one Passionate, and Faithful gentleman called it "Perfect Love." I can only pray that some day I can be as Passionate, and Faithful as he! -- J.Leach
From: Jonathan White < holy3x7@newaygo.mi.us >
I think you're right on target...
Which means "burned-out" pastors are outta' here...
and that intellectual pastors better start working on resumes...
and that Sunday School classrooms better be at least 50% confession booth...
and that existentialism with its faith in faith is in the saddle in the church as well as the secular culture...
and that Spiritual Adventures better be long on adventure and short on spiritual...
and that historic, prepositional truth Christianity in pretty much dead in America...
and that Simon the Sorcerer is more in demand than the apostles who taught about "what they had heard, seen, and touched." Of course, Jesus had passion, too, didn't He?
--Jon
From: cfromill@webtv.net (C. Holloway)
A new mysticism is replacing pragmatism in the lives of many people...especially the young . To them, we "older generation" have brought too many of our own perspectives, too much of our cultural biases, and, a negative surplus of our own language, to the 21st Century. . {They} feel as though they can bridge the gap between the 21st Century and the First Century, between the infinite and the finite, between God and man........and do so without creating a level of abstraction that would render it meaningless. They do not have time to back up and see the big picture! This group believes that they have found God's special formula in communicating with His people...........namely, personal and supernatural! In short.....Saint Vitas dance is the only cure for Rigor Mortis!.
From: "Andy Trowbridge" < amjk@hoosierlink.net >
Let me ask this question, why is it we can't have both. Jesus had both, God has both, I think as preachers we need to incorporate both matter-of-fact and passion into our services. I am sorry but the truth is still the truth. We can try to escape it any way we want, however; God is going to nail you every time when you sin. He does not allow for Passion without truth. There were many in Jesus' times that tried this. Ask Saul(Paul) what happened when he had passion, but lacked truth. He thought what he was doing was for God (at least I think so). My problem is that I preach the truth, against sin, yet I come back every week to a church filled with only twenty to thirty people. I am not going to be detoured just because the people are afraid of the truth. I believe God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow despite what some people think.
I think that having passion includes having a passion for what is true of God. That should be what sets us aflame not some hollow passion because I am the churches pastor. Jesus submitted to God despite what was going on around Him I think that we should follow this model and submit ourselves to God despite what the world says. We are God's servants not servants of the world. I am done preaching now.
From: "Andy Whitman" < awhitman@lucent.com >
I offer a different perspective, a commentary on your column from another Christian mailing list. Please know that, although I disagree with some of your points, I greatly appreciate your writing, and value your views. Thanks for doing what you do, and for providing a forum to discuss your ideas. --Andrew Whitman Lucent Technologies
<Since I share some of the same fears and biases as the author, and since I've moaned countless times about these tendencies in the Church in the past, I think it's only fair to note that stereotypes are still stereotypes, and that although they contain kernels of truth, they miss the big picture by loading one part of the whole with too much import. I'm good, if that's the word, at doing that too. People don't go to church to "feel." There are far more powerful and effective means of stimulation if that's what people are after. I don't think they go to church to be "entertained" either. Most people don't find a sermon during which they are convicted of sin to be all that jolly of a time, even if it *is* preceded by a killer electric guitar solo. I'm currently attending a church that fits the criteria mentioned in the article. There are big projection screens instead of a pulpit, a worship band, and "passionate" worship with people raising their hands and scrunching up their faces and doing whatever they do to indicate that they're involved with the proceedings. But I don't think they're there because they "feel" more there. I think they're there because they're encountering Jesus, and because their lives are being transformed. Could they encounter Jesus in other churches, maybe even in those matter-of-fact-faith churches that the author values? Theoretically, yes. But in reality, no. Many of the people I've encountered haven't needed matter-of-fact answers. They've needed to be saved. Every church I've attended but one has engaged in musical chairs -- people moving from one congregation to another. But in one, the "feeling" church, the vast majority of the people come in off the streets, with no Christian background. They're coming to Christ. There's a simple test for this, really: look at the fruits. Sure, there are people who continue in sin. But there are an amazing number of people who are being made whole through repentance and faith in Christ, people who come undiluted from the world, with no Christian filtering in between, people who've experienced drug and alcohol addictions and abortions and adultery and failed marriages and serial sexual relationships and who are, slowly, often very painfully, coming to die to their sin and die to themselves and live for Christ. In that kind of environment people can feel or not feel, scrunch up their faces, over-emote, get all weepy, or sit in total silence. It doesn't matter. I think the fruit speaks for itself.
Cynicism is a wonderful thing, isn't it? God knows, I understand it. But reality surprises even me sometimes. It is possible to find, in Westerville, Ohio, a church where the focus isn't on being happy and upbeat and joyful, where much of the music, even when played with guitar and bass and drums as accompaniment, is quiet and subdued, nay, even reverent, where preachers don't gyrate and gesticulate and shout and pound, where people don't walk out feeling entertained unless feeling like you just had a 2-ton Conviction Bomb go off inside your heart is considered entertaining. Quite honestly, I saw far more performance in my last experience at the staid stained-glass-and-pew Presbyterian Church than I do in the mega church. And I'm sure the Columbus Vineyard isn't unique.
Sometimes you need to eat some crow. It's my time now. It's easy to find fault with the real or imagined excesses of the Baby Boomer Church. They're there. But there's much more there too. My deep, all encompassing feelings for the author might change a bit if he could come to realize that.
Andy
From: Jonathan Ward < jonward@ratedg.com >
I became so passionate about passionless people while I was reading your article that I just had to respond!!!! (notice the profligate use of the first person singular) As anyone who knows me well will attest, I believe that there must be balance in your life. We were created that way. Every person was created with intellect, spirit, flesh, and (dare I say)passion/desire. To offer Christ without emotion is to offer only part of Christ (He after all did become angry, sorrowful, grateful, etc.). The Christian life affects every aspect of the person who believes: Their mind is renewed, their spirit is redeemed, their flesh becomes God's temple, and their desires become the desires of God. To overemphasize one aspect over another is sadly human, I admit; and the Church seems to oscillate between them throughout history. Oh well, the goal remains the same: To be wholly His. We are not saved by feelings, but feelings should come with salvation. --Jonathan Ward
From: Diana Switter < dswitter@wilmington.net >
Yes we are in a culture that believes in feeling over fact. This is why Bill Clinton survives, he makes people believe that he cares and they feel he is a good leader. In churches we fight with people who want what they feel good about and resent any challenge based on biblical or theological grounds. As a preacher, what should we do? Should we pander to the feelings and ignore truth to make people? Should we ignore the feelings and beat people with TRUTH? The best preachers I know find ways of communicating biblical truth along with passion and influence both thinking and feeling. If we can only choose one, fact has to be it if we are to be Christian. Other Religions can sacrifice fact to get followers but our faith is based upon what God has done and has promised to do. Whatever you feel won't change God. --Jeff Switter
< jeff.dance@healthsouth.net >
Another provocative article. I think we focus on trees and not the whole forest. As Wesley stressed balance (known as the Quadrilateral), conversely, the passionate "arm waivers" look at the dutiful church-goers as smug and the dutiful ones look at the passionate ones as flighty sensationalists. A second work of grace should and will lead us to a more passionate experience in the Spirit. That same grace will also instill in us a passionate sense of duty and reverence that makes our worship experience intensely true and worthwhile. Balance, balance, balance, balance. We need balance as Holiness Christians! --Jeff Dance , Birmingham, AL
From: daviddrury@juno.com
The disservice we may have done ourselves is not a transition into "passion-driven-faith," but convincing ourselves that great religious faith in the past was purer because it had less on the passion scale and more on what you call the "emotion-less matter-of-fact religion." To be truthful, has emotion-less matter-of-fact religion ever worked?
-The holiness camp meetings of yore compare with the Toronto Laugh-ins as six of one and half-a-dozen of another.
-The Great Awakenings were anything but passion-less.
-Even the "thought-of-as-stoic" Puritans got worked up in most of their meetings.
History may indeed support the passion side over the matter-of-fact paradigm. Could it be that the issue is not one of displaying passion, but whether or not it is manufactured? The movements I cited here and others people can think of in history were just that: movements. Movements of God are *of God*, not of men and women. I hardly think bringing people into a packaged service intended to inspire in them a "feeling" of tenderness can be called a movement of God. It's just programming in the name of God. If you remove the movement of the spirit in the soul to inspire passion then you no longer have a "Movement," you just have a cult. Is this what we are becoming? --Dave Drury
From: "Billy Sunday" < Sunday_preacher@hotmail.com > To: Tuesday@indwes.edu
Now you really must be joking! To the contrary Keith -- It is "matter of fact religion" that does sell! The churches that believe in heart-felt religion are the ones that dwindling down in numbers. Today the gospel is presented as a "matter of fact". To join a church today, all one has to do is take a class on "Christianity 101", and they are members of the church. You touched on this in a previous column -- the days of experiential salvation are nearly gone. I submit so are the days of heart-felt salvation. It is just head-knowledge now-a-days.
From: Castlehb@aol.com
Emotionalism is no lasting substitute for a true relationship with Christ built upon the Bible. Too often, what is taken for passion is only superficial emotion. It makes you feel good for the moment, but provides nothing to build upon. I enjoy some emotion with my religion, too, but above all give me a Bible-based faith that will carry me through the tough times. PS...You finally stirred me into responding. Guess you found my emotional level. Ha. -Howard Castle
From: JoeWayWat@aol.com
Passion itself is not a bad thing. To be a passionate person is not a bad thing. To be a passionate person who is passionate about religion is not a bad thing. But whenever one allows himself to focus too much upon a pleasing, "erotic" passion, that promises to reward you with a wonderful feeling of euphoria, thus crowding out other essential elements needed for sound doctrine if not character, then sound doctrine and character suffer, which eventually effects one's integrity. God forbid that we should have a passionless religion! But equally, God forbid that we should surrender sound character, and integrity in order to enjoy a religious high! --J. W. Watkins Vancouver, WA
From: "chris warren" < simon_16@hotmail.com > To: Tuesday@indwes.edu
I completely agree with your "second work of grace article." everything you said in the article is the truth, but it is not the ideal. we should have passion for God, but the passion being presented in churches (the scrunching of the faces during praise choruses, yelling, crying, etc.) is not the passion we should have. those moments of passion are important, but what happens to a Christian in the day-to-day. its like trying to capture the passion from your wedding night on a moment-by-moment basis. if the only thing you experience with your wife is your wedding night, then the relationship will not grow. it just becomes a one-night stand. in my honest opinion, these over-emotional services generate in some, not all, one-night stands with God. you go to church, get really emotional, then, you go home and forget about it, or try to generate the same thing at home with no results, get frustrated, go back to church, have the "passion," feel satisfied for a little while and then repeat the process. the solution is in something you told me at lunch regarding having balance in the Christian life. we need to serve more and evangelize more, then, we will start to grow in our relationship with God. -- chris warren
From: chirv@webtv.net (thinker)
When man ceases to worship the true God, he does not cease worshipping. He just changes the object of his worship. He faces a dilemma: on the one hand he desires God, for he was created in God's image, but on the other hand, he resents God's intrusion into his life. He wants a God who is predictable, a God he can understand and control. He wants a God whom he can see, touch and feel. He wants a God who is obligated towards Him because of the rituals he (man) performs. The clay pot would like to give instructions to the potter.
From: "Dawson, Doug" < Doug.Dawson@Williams.com >
"Nobody can keep them away if they don't want to come!" -- Whitey Herzog
From: "BigSmile :-)" bigsmile@sprynet.com
Another excellent column. I share your message in this writing. Maybe, if it's possible, do you think leaders could perhaps emphasize a balance between passion and "matter-of-fact" Christianity? Wow, what a thought! Balance - it would make for a more stable walk. Keep up the good work. --Greg Blackburn; Youth & Children's Pastor; Jeffersonville Church of God (Cleveland, TN) bigsmile@sprynet.com