Day: January 13, 2015

13Jan

Underground church

Since this blog is attached to a website called “the underground church”, it is only fitting to reference an article related to this idea.

Recently–well, in 2011–an article was circulated indicating an idea that soon “real” Christians will begin withdrawing into secrecy. From an article in Christianity Today: “Christian churches in America will soon be forced to go underground if they want to stay true to their beliefs and to God, a conservative broadcast commentator warned.”

He decries the existing public churches as having abandoned their true mission: “Their pastors ‘preach’ feel good ‘sermonettes’ about the environment and things like ‘social justice.’ In my opinion, that is not the mission of a church that purports to follow Christ. In fact, Christ, Himself, spelled out the mission of the church in what we refer to as The Great Commission.” … “That commission from Christ is the sole reason why the church exists today, Longstreet stressed.”

Is this paranoid, or prophetic?

Read it all: http://www.christianpost.com/news/real-christian-churches-in-us-forced-to-go-underground-soon-64235/

 

13Jan

Another Traditionalist Church plans to swing left

From the Living Church comes this sad news:  “The Rt. Rev. James Jelinek, interim rector of St. Paul’s Parish, K Street [in Washington, DC], since August 2013, has written about the parish entering a phase of discernment about women’s ordination to the priesthood and same-sex marriage.”

Up until this time, “…in order to keep our focus on what unites us — the centrality of the Eucharist and our mission as the Body of Christ — we have tended to avoid addressing some critical issues, including the role of women clergy at St. Paul’s and the blessing of same-sex unions/marriages. During the current transition, we have begun to explore these questions.”

I think it is probably foregone how the discernments will conclude, and there is probably no stopping the progressive steamroller here as has been the case in other churches that have fallen.  Still, we should pray for this church and hope that they can keep that centrality of focus on Eucharist and mission to which they had been holding up to this point.

Read it all here: http://www.livingchurch.org/changes-st-paul’s-k-st