Blog 1 on: The Unnecessary Pastor...
TRUTHFULLY! This is the name of a book B. found in a google search tonight. Written by co-authors Marva Dawn and Eugene Peterson. Sounds like a book for the times. Here's an excerpt:
I grew up thinking that propaganda was only a problem in societies under the oppression of the communist USSR. Only under Ellul's tutelage (my note: during her thesis research) did I learn how unremittingly deceptions and fabrications proliferate in our North American culture. Furthermore, consider the ways in which the marketing gurus' propaganda is destroying churches by calling their leaders to false roles, that we think are necesary, and away from who we really are as a Church.
Propaganda in churches is, in many ways, similar to that of the communists, for it invites people to a perfidious dream that does not acknolwledge suffering, sinful humanity, the dangers of false success and the cost of dioscipleship. It is then, the working of the powers of deception. You might think that I am overstating the case, but when we are pulled away from the proper ambitions, attitudes and actions that Christ has modeled for his Church, then whose ways are we following?
I grew up thinking that propaganda was only a problem in societies under the oppression of the communist USSR. Only under Ellul's tutelage (my note: during her thesis research) did I learn how unremittingly deceptions and fabrications proliferate in our North American culture. Furthermore, consider the ways in which the marketing gurus' propaganda is destroying churches by calling their leaders to false roles, that we think are necesary, and away from who we really are as a Church.
Propaganda in churches is, in many ways, similar to that of the communists, for it invites people to a perfidious dream that does not acknolwledge suffering, sinful humanity, the dangers of false success and the cost of dioscipleship. It is then, the working of the powers of deception. You might think that I am overstating the case, but when we are pulled away from the proper ambitions, attitudes and actions that Christ has modeled for his Church, then whose ways are we following?
posted by Carol Soules at 10:31 PM
3 Comments:
No joke. It is insidious! I think the place to begin is the gospels. Somehow they've been lost....stuck off in some Dead Sea cave of something....
God's economy has been obliterated. Bigger is better and all the better still if you can frame your own success in terms that sound like you are serving others (all the while buttering your own toast on both sides, of ocurse).
A new western church mottocould be:
We do it all; no sacrifice needed.
I have a copy of this book if anyone wants to borrow it. I have found it quite helpful. Email me at threewitnesses@yahoo.com if you want it and I will happily loan it out as I have too many books!
Well, I ordered it already b/c I need it and I have to wrtie in a book to digest it (true confession).. But if anyone else borrows and reads it...let me know when you are done and we'll book a tea chat.
I also ordered the book Churchless Faith that Gooby sent a link for.
Something is shifting in me and, I sense it is a good shift... but.. I am trying to get a grip on what it is.....
I think it is more than indigestion :-)
....tho some of the things going on around me cause a lot of that kind of shifting too....
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