Alan used very concrete examples to illustrate his point. I think what you are communicating may be Alan’s heart, but he did an exceedingly poor job in communicating that through his examples if that really is his heart. So while I understand what you are saying, if that was meant to be the point then I think many people “missed it” because Alan didn’t say that. It would be easy to clarify if that was the case. Like I said, I have no problem with critique and I think it’s valuable for the church to self assess, but I don’t see this critique as valuable in any sense. So yeah let’s look critically at what we do and be rooted in scripture, but we should speak clearly and not appear to be ranting just to rant. That was the sense I got.

The vestal virgin portion made no sense historically, practically or analogically(I think I just made that word up).

Thanks for commenting

The problem is not predictable or engineered worship or worship bands or liturgy. The problem is that our main focus of our Christian life is our one hour a week attending a “worship service” The “expected corrective response” may be to to stop singing altogether (can we worship if we aren’t singing?) Vary how the church meets together (can we worship outside of a Sunday morning?). Spend the entire gathering praying, or confessing sin to one another or serving a meal to the poor. Each of those are acts of worship.

I think the vestal virgin comment was more about worship as performance and show than authentic encounter with God. Why do we need “all the beautiful people” up front? Who are we trying to impress? What is everyone watching up there? Why is there even an “up front?”

As we rethink who we are as the church in this generation we’ll have some off the wall comments and sometimes we probably won’t go far enough.

Just my thoughts.
Blessings
Michael

I agree with much of the neighborhood talk and the happy-clappy stuff, but geeze, if someone told me that I was leading a group of women on stage in some weird sex thing . . . come on. That hurts. Sure, there are misdirected worship teams and things that are done that I have trouble with but let’s have some sense here.

Enough of that. Let’s get busy living the stuff we sing.

His thoughts on when you encounter God you encounter yourself. Kyle I can see what you mean but I must say they have to be careful how they word it. When You encounter God you see yourself in His eyes. They way they worded it seemed as if we are God.

The sex thing was just a horny old man that was getting turned on by girls in tight black turtle necks. Talk about needing to get into the neighborhood… people in culture would be modest if they wore a t-shirt. Come on … dude… don’t blame the church for your lust. LOL

I am trippin’ this interview just makes me glad to be a stupid. because this is just to wonderful and smart to make seance.

Good thoughts on this interview Kyle the church in the building stuff was interesting and solid. Sorry for ranting but you know… thats what I do. I will probably appollogize latter.

Going from “I know what’s gonna happen next” to “it’s about a whole bunch of people that actually have no experience of God …”

That’s not a statement that should be made lightly.

Good blog post — cool site, too!