This is a long story, which has been building over the last six months or so. I've become increasingly disillusioned with how things are being done, and what things are being promoted and ignored.
I attend church service to be taught from the Bible. My church has purported this to be their primary focus, and I consider it the senior pastor's duty to do so. If he says that as a congregation we are going to study through the Bible, chapter by chapter, book by book, I would expect that to be done. Our senior pastor has been increasingly taking time off to do other things. I wouldn't have a problem with that, if an assistant pastor were to fulfill this duty while he is away.
However, that's not how things are done. If the senior pastor is not around, one scenario will be to have a guest speaker from another church teach on anything they want (probably what they taught their own congregation earlier in the week). Another more prevalent scenario has been to invite political lobbyists to speak to the entire congregation, instead of having church service performed. Doing such is explicitly endorsing these lobbyists and their entire platform. I do not believe this is something the church should be doing, and particularly not in place of the duties of church service. Last month, three weeks out of four we had either a guest speaker from another church, or a political lobbyist talking about the fallacies of global warming (an entirely unannounced appearance, by the way). How is the congregation going to be led properly when breaks can be taken from consistent teaching and discipleship whenever it is convenient?
I'm also becoming disillusioned with contemporary worship music. For the most part, it is vapid and focused on emotionalism, the focus of which is entirely wrong. It's also becoming increasingly dumb, to be blunt. Old hymns are comprised of four, five, six verses which are rich with spiritual truth inspired by Scripture. Your average contemporary worship song is a simple chorus, repeated about fifty times. Please, tell me if you can watch this for 60 seconds without your brain hurting:
Friend of God
My church isn't quite that bad, but they do like to milk the emotion out of the music.
I'd already begun looking for another church before last night, when I found the last straw, really. I'm not sure how familiar you folks are with Dispensationalism, but it involves the idea that the current nation of Israel is still God's chosen people, and that God is going to reveal Himself to the Jews during a 7-year tribulation period, after the secret rapture of the Church. They are very hardcore Zionists. My senior pastor has repeatedly said that the only reason God hasn't rained down judgment upon America is due to its support of Israel.
I already have very strong disagreements with all of that, but then I came across a video on YouTube where he and a political lobbyist, who's a Messianic Jew, were talking about participating in a service at an Orthodox Jewish synagogue on Yom Kippur, and how it was one of the greatest experiences of their lives. Um, as a senior pastor of a Christian church, you don't do that. This would be like participating in a Wiccan ceremony on Samhain, or participating in an Islamic prayer service during the month of Ramadan.
I posted this video on Facebook, and the "church folk" who responded had absolutely no problem with it. I talked with my mother about it, and she became extremely upset at my questioning our pastor's actions, and suggested that I leave the church if I have a problem. When attendees (our church has no membership) have had theological or practical questions in the past, indeed the typical response has been "if you don't like it, leave". I have asked to speak with someone in an official position at the church regarding this matter, and I expect the same response.
I'll post the video here, if you'd like. I don't have a reputation to uphold.
