we walked into the church with blues music rocking the sanctuary from a band onstage. the church seemed fairly empty and it was time for service to begin, but the music kept on playing. finally they transitioned to worship songs. people kept filing into church during the worship time until there was a good-sized scattering of people in the sanctuary. worship was lively. finally the pastor got up to speak about the Word. ...but we were never asked to open the Word. there were movie clips shown from "braveheart" and "everybody loves raymond." plenty of stories and jokes. encouragement to "text" our answer to "who is your favorite warrior princess?" to the pastor as he began to speak. a sermon outline provided with the church program had some NLT verses written out to help support the pastor's points. all of this i could grit my teeth and deal with, but when the pastor began disparaging proverbs 31, my jaw almost dropped to the floor and i thought i would have to walk out!
"you are a princess. you are beautiful and worthy. your heart is what's most important. i know you're all thinking that starting a series on women, i'm going to have you all go to proverbs 31. listen, i'm sure the proverbs 31 woman is ok and all, but when i read proverbs 31, i think, 'that sounds like one tired lady!' i mean it says her lights never go out at night, which means, guys, if you are married to a proverbs 31 woman, you aren't getting any..."
i could barely focus on anything else he said for the whole 20-minute sermon, because of the offensiveness with which he treated the Word of God in that statement. first of all, to do a series on being a godly woman yet refusing to look at all the counsel of scripture on that subject is very unwise. it seemed as though he thought of himself too "hip" and "original" to be bothered looking at the "traditional" texts on the subject. instead he chose piecemeal verses from the NLT Bible regarding guarding the heart, fleeing the devil, etc. it was all rather vague, if you can imagine. "guard your heart!" "flee the devil!" "guys, make sure you help her guard her heart! make sure you value your woman! she can be so fierce if she has to be! God made women with that fierce, protective instinct. value that!" then he showed his "everybody loves raymond" clip, where the wife was getting all feisty to some friends, and used it to show that women have a good protective instinct! what?! everybody loves raymond is a terrible show for family life. do we HAVE to see that in church? goodness, whatever protectiveness and fierceness God made in women and mothers is NOT exemplified in a good way by deborah from "elr," certainly! this pastor has apparently NO idea the JOY and FREEDOM that come with confronting the scripture head-on, for exactly what it is, and exactly what is says. this is why i appreciate ministries such as "above rubies" so much: they encourage always the high road, not lying that it will be easy, but exhorting and uplifting you to do the thing scripture calls for, reminding you of the rewards and God's great honor upon you.
secondly, what kind of pastor jokes about sex when talking about the scripture?
needless to say, we won't be going back there.
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another thing that really bothered me was when he was talking about his wife watching braveheart and saying "why can't my life be that exciting/passionate/romantic" too? it's more like everybody loves raymond! and his response to her was, "she died young. you've just lived too long."
ReplyDeletewow. if they were really to delve into scripture instead of movies, and take it at its word and try to live it out, really, being counter-culture as they did so,, their lives WOULD be totally passionate and adventure-filled. GOd himself IS the adventure...