Religion Discussion Thread

tifosi77
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Postby tifosi77 » Mon Jan 24, 2022 5:05 pm

I know grunty always used to get very upset when I compared Christianity to scientology or Mormons or anything else, but that's what it is to me. I see no difference between the bible and harry potter. They're books about magical things and a savior that dies and is risen from the dead to save the world against evil. If that's insulting, I'm sorry, but that's truly how I feel about it.
This is exactly how I feel about it, as well. Which is why I really don't partake in this thread.

shafnutz05
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Postby shafnutz05 » Mon Jan 24, 2022 5:41 pm

I have talked about this before, but I belong to what could best be described as a "center-right" Presbyterian church, at least in terms of the spectrum of Presbyterian churches in the US. On one side, you have the PCUSA, the biggest denomination and one that has gotten pretty darn liberal over the years (not just politically but theologically too), and then the other extreme would be the more conservative/orthodox Presbyterian churches.

I am what could best be described as an "old Earth creationist". I believe in all of the essential Christian articles of faith, but I do not believe that the Earth is 6,000 years old, dinosaurs roamed the earth with men, etc. Carbon dating is accurate. Etc.

I love science. And I'm not talking about the annoying people that are constantly sharing stuff from "I **** LOVE SCIENCE!", but I genuinely enjoy reading about discoveries, theories, etc. Especially when it comes to astrophysics and things of that nature. The more that I learn about the universe, how perfectly the laws of the universe seem to behave, and how Earth, against all odds, has survived and flourished in our little corner of the unforgiving universe, the stronger my faith gets.

I've chatted with my pastor about this, and I think "Old Earth Creationism" is a lot more common than you might think.

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Postby shafnutz05 » Mon Jan 24, 2022 5:41 pm

Not apropos of this conversation, but I was ordained as a deacon yesterday. That was pretty cool.
Deacon nutz has a certain ring to it.

Congrats :thumb:
Thanks--I've mentioned how much our deacons do for the surrounding community, so really excited to take a more active role in that.

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Postby dodint » Mon Jan 24, 2022 10:31 pm

Very cool of you to get involved, shaf. :thumb:

robbiestoupe
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Postby robbiestoupe » Tue Jan 25, 2022 8:31 am

Not apropos of this conversation, but I was ordained as a deacon yesterday. That was pretty cool.
Deacon nutz has a certain ring to it.

Congrats :thumb:
Thanks--I've mentioned how much our deacons do for the surrounding community, so really excited to take a more active role in that.
It's weird. There's something to the human dilemma where helping others isn't something that comes natural. In fact, we fight it to save ourselves. But if we do push through and help others, it refreshes the soul like nothing else. Signing up for something that gets you to do it more often, even if you don't feel like it, is a good choice.

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Postby shafnutz05 » Tue Jan 25, 2022 11:34 am

Yep, that's exactly where I am at. It's been harder to get actively involved during the pandemic too, so I figure our church has so many charity drives, school fundraisers, etc. that would be a great way to make sure I am staying engaged and being giving of myself to others.

Outside of giving blood every few months, those opportunities have been few and far between lately.

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Postby shafnutz05 » Sun May 08, 2022 9:40 pm

For a non-serious topic, our church hired a new organist who started this week (we haven't had a regular one for several years). He must be in his mid 20s... He is absolutely spectacular. Found out he's a master organist, and he's moderately autistic, which is really cool and not 100% surprising given how good he is.

Church isn't church without an organ to me #crustypresbyterianthings @Freddy Rumsen

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Postby count2infinity » Mon May 09, 2022 8:12 am

Growing up, our church had an organ up in the balcony and very limited seating near by. I always begged my mom and/or dad to sit up there because I loved just watching the organ player play.

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Postby shafnutz05 » Wed Feb 15, 2023 5:44 pm

This is pretty cool... Seems like it was spontaneous and driven by the students. @Freddy Rumsen I'm sure you've heard news of this.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna70686
A Christian service at a college chapel in Kentucky has ballooned into a nonstop prayer and worship session that some are calling a "revival" — and people are traveling thousands of miles to take part in it after seeing viral videos on TikTok.

The growing event started as a routine chapel service at Asbury University, a small Christian college in Wilmore, Kentucky, according to university employees. At the tail-end of the meeting, a couple dozen lingering students assembled informally in a gathering that’s been going now for seven days straight, 24 hours a day.
Students and staff from 22 schools have visited so far, alongside groups from Hawaii to Massachusetts, university faculty said. Travelers from Singapore and Canada are expected to arrive soon, they added.

Although social media has served as a lightning rod for the event, Asbury faculty said they were cautious not to market or brand what was happening.

“The university made an intentional decision not to publicize this because we wanted to place an abundance of respect towards the experience of our students,” said Brown.

robbiestoupe
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Postby robbiestoupe » Thu Feb 16, 2023 11:03 am

This is pretty cool... Seems like it was spontaneous and driven by the students. @Freddy Rumsen I'm sure you've heard news of this.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna70686
A Christian service at a college chapel in Kentucky has ballooned into a nonstop prayer and worship session that some are calling a "revival" — and people are traveling thousands of miles to take part in it after seeing viral videos on TikTok.

The growing event started as a routine chapel service at Asbury University, a small Christian college in Wilmore, Kentucky, according to university employees. At the tail-end of the meeting, a couple dozen lingering students assembled informally in a gathering that’s been going now for seven days straight, 24 hours a day.
Students and staff from 22 schools have visited so far, alongside groups from Hawaii to Massachusetts, university faculty said. Travelers from Singapore and Canada are expected to arrive soon, they added.

Although social media has served as a lightning rod for the event, Asbury faculty said they were cautious not to market or brand what was happening.

“The university made an intentional decision not to publicize this because we wanted to place an abundance of respect towards the experience of our students,” said Brown.
My wife was telling me about this. My friends have nephews and nieces that like in Kentucky and one of them attends this church. Pretty cool stuff.

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Postby Morkle » Wed Feb 22, 2023 3:57 pm

So I somehow got voted in on my church council - and I'm having very strong feelings about all of it. I've been on the board a few months now, and I've come to realize that the church I belong to, is incredibly toxic and is really affecting me in a way that I thought wouldn't ever bother me.

I've always been a one foot out the door guy, meaning I don't know if I believe, I'd like to, but it just doesn't make sense to me, but I give it my best shot to live like how I'd want Jesus/God me to live. BUT being on the Church board, trying to voice my opinion on what is right, and what I think is right in the eyes of God - I'm finding that my ideals don't align with more than half of the board.

Firstly, there's a contingent that doesn't like our preacher and want him out - after he was unanimously approved like a year ago. I don't know, I'm conflicted and I'm more upset with people who call themselves "Christian" more than ever. Meaning, if I looked at these people and asked the question "would Jesus be ok with the way things are done here?" I'd probably say he'd be upset/disappointed. Haven't had much of an inter-personal conflict like this before, but I needed to get it out there - because my wife is going through the motions as it's the church she's been at her whole life.

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Postby RonnieFranchise » Wed Feb 22, 2023 4:05 pm

So I somehow got voted in on my church council - and I'm having very strong feelings about all of it. I've been on the board a few months now, and I've come to realize that the church I belong to, is incredibly toxic and is really affecting me in a way that I thought wouldn't ever bother me.

I've always been a one foot out the door guy, meaning I don't know if I believe, I'd like to, but it just doesn't make sense to me, but I give it my best shot to live like how I'd want Jesus/God me to live. BUT being on the Church board, trying to voice my opinion on what is right, and what I think is right in the eyes of God - I'm finding that my ideals don't align with more than half of the board.

Firstly, there's a contingent that doesn't like our preacher and want him out - after he was unanimously approved like a year ago. I don't know, I'm conflicted and I'm more upset with people who call themselves "Christian" more than ever. Meaning, if I looked at these people and asked the question "would Jesus be ok with the way things are done here?" I'd probably say he'd be upset/disappointed. Haven't had much of an inter-personal conflict like this before, but I needed to get it out there - because my wife is going through the motions as it's the church she's been at her whole life.
Been there and done that. When we first moved here we joined a church with about 100 people who went regularly and I was elected to council shortly after. The minutia people argued about and how they treated each other (this was 15 years ago and I don't really recall specifics) drove us to leave. Primarily they claimed to want families with kids in the church but they didn't really want the disruptions in church that happen with young kids. :shrug: It was unfortunate because when we had our youngest, she was at Childrens' for the first two weeks of her life and our pastor was there to see us every. single. day. We loved him but the rest of it we couldn't put up with anymore. We then joined a mega church which had a lot of things for the kids to do but, you can google it, ended up with the pastor running off with $30k of congregation money and many associated files.

Now we just don't go and are perfectly happy that way. Every now and then we talk about looking for a church that has a decent but not huge congregation, but seems like the mainline protestant churches are tiny and dying off, and the ones people actually attend are Catholic or Evangelical megachurches (magachurches?) We don't fit either of those.

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Postby robbiestoupe » Wed Feb 22, 2023 4:10 pm

I've never been on a church board before, but my first thought is this isn't the position for you. Those people should be made up of dedicated members. If you're on the fence, you're mind isn't in the right place. Not that what you are feeling is wrong, just something that needs sorted out first.

After that, I think you need to ask yourself what you want out of this church/a church in general. If you're just there to check a box and say you went, perhaps some soul searching is warranted. Could be you want a relationship with God, but the church isn't nurturing that. That's a sign you're at the wrong church.

A church is supposed to be a group of believers that share a common faith and work together to encourage and help others. Anything on top of that is fluff and not really what the church is intended for.

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Postby shafnutz05 » Wed Feb 22, 2023 5:42 pm

I became a deacon at our Presbyterian church last year, that was really eye opening in terms of how stressful it can be to keep a church running strongly. The finances aren't great this year and we are a pretty healthy church by modern standards.

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Postby Morkle » Thu Feb 23, 2023 9:14 am

I've never been on a church board before, but my first thought is this isn't the position for you. Those people should be made up of dedicated members. If you're on the fence, you're mind isn't in the right place. Not that what you are feeling is wrong, just something that needs sorted out first.
I agree 100%. I was adamant that I wasn't sure what my total beliefs were when I was asked by the pastor. The problem with our church, is we get like 30-40 on a GOOD Sunday, and my wife and I are the youngest routine visitors by 10-15 years, easy. The problem our church has we're losing money, we've lost congregation members, and there's nobody that wants to do the roles that the Church has, so they get to slim pickins, and that's me lol.

Now, what I can say, is that I'm giving it my full effort and attention. I decided to do it, so I'm coming at it as best as I can, and doing the things that I've been taught and preached over the years. The disconnect for me - is that the board is made up of members with agendas, like not liking the pastor - so instead of the conversation about the health of the church and making it whole, I find that it's more of a political battle that is unnecessary and harmful to the congregation.
After that, I think you need to ask yourself what you want out of this church/a church in general. If you're just there to check a box and say you went, perhaps some soul searching is warranted. Could be you want a relationship with God, but the church isn't nurturing that. That's a sign you're at the wrong church.
I am 100% not re-upping and or ever doing an elected position again within the church/a church. I know that's not me, and I just don't want to be apart of it - they've ruined it for me, for the rest of my life. My wife and I have talked about it - because they offer nothing for our son, and I often have to stay home to watch him, because if we take our 4 year old for a service, neither of us gets anything out of it.
A church is supposed to be a group of believers that share a common faith and work together to encourage and help others. Anything on top of that is fluff and not really what the church is intended for.
Regardless of my positional belief, this church ain't that and the congregation is poisoned by a select few, imo.

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Postby CBear3 » Thu Feb 23, 2023 9:42 am

Sounds like the pastor is a wise man, actually. You're purpose on the board is to combat the elder numpties who want to sit on tradition and then can't figure out why the Church is dying because young people wont attend.

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Postby robbiestoupe » Thu Feb 23, 2023 10:18 am

CBear is probably right, they wanted somebody with fresh ideas and not a bunch of blue-hairs. IDK, sounds like it's not the place for you, Mork. You've done what you can, and offered what you have.

I really do think there is a large disconnect between the older generation and newer generation of believers. Tradition has been replaced by realism?, practicality?, progressiveness?...whatever it is, people aren't on the same page. Churches that have held on to the traditionalist beliefs are starting to dwindle away as their members pass on. I can see where some younger (re: 50-60 year olds) members will hold on to their parents' traditions, but again that has to be a dwindling number.

The church I belonged to and had a very strong connection to, we decided to leave because of the lack of programs they had for kids. Many of my best friends go there, and we are still very good friends with them. We love the pastors, love everybody there, but it was tough when the kids program looked like a single room schoolhouse from 1753 - like 10 kids from the age of 3 up to 12. And after 12, absolutely nothing there. Yeah, all my friends' kids and my kids are roughly the same age group, so they would grow up together and maybe they would have started some kind of youth group, but it would have been run by us, the parents. It was really tough to leave, but we did what we had to based on what we thought best for us. Not to mention we moved from a 10 minute drive to a 35 minute drive - not impossible, but just inconvenient.

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Postby CBear3 » Thu Feb 23, 2023 10:46 am

That's where we're at robbie. We love our Church, we love the people, but after the pandemic and so many people switched to virtual and then just stopped going weekly attendance has suffered. With less people attending, there are less people to volunteer & Sunday school looks exactly like you said.
We're working on setting up a once a month Youth Group that travels from house to house with the parents hosting for middle school/high school ages. But it kind of feels like we 're starting a slow death, and that's with a pretty forward looking ministry team (which might be placing too little emphasis on Church as a building in this case).
It makes it all that much worse though because they actually have a very robust weekday daycare with over 200 kids in it, but they aren't translating those families into church goers.

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Postby Morkle » Thu Feb 23, 2023 10:51 am

Yes and agree to all of it above. Our church really suffered during COVID, and continues to suffer due to lack of attendance no donations, etc. Whether the pastor is smart or not, I've made multiple cases on why I won't attend, and why I can't attend because of my son's needs - and the church simply has nothing to offer.

The younger generation has gone contemporary. The days of hellfire and brimstone are long gone, and I simply have no time or tolerance for it. This church, is seemingly willing to die - as long as those people that are older than me can ride it out long enough and then not worry about it when they're gone. Very much the boomer mentality when it comes to support.

But I guess that's where I sit at the crossroads, because I tend to think all churches are this political, and nobody wants to retrospectively look at themselves in the mirror to see how bad they're being.

I know, that if there's a god - and he questions me at the gates. I'm going to say that while I may not have known if he existed or not, I'm going to live my life in the way I thought he'd want me to live, and be OK with suffering if that's what's meant to be because shame on me for second guessing, but then I think - if god is real, he'd have to be OK with that understanding given the world he's living in and helped create today. I don't know, just very personal conflict happens on a daily basis because of this council stuff.

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Postby CBear3 » Thu Feb 23, 2023 11:01 am

Conflict is good, both internally and externally. But the external conflict has to be with people you actually have a relationship with. It seems like the other board members aren't invested enough in you and your opinions to stop the sniping and politicking. I don't think anybody would blame you for getting out; although St Peter might be asking you why you didn't fight harder, but he denied Christ three times so I'm not sure what leg he has to stand on :)
Internally, one of the things that our pastor constantly reiterates is that if you leave service feeling like a sweet little angel and totally comfortable he's not doing his job. You're supposed to be uncomfortable, you're supposed to be driven to be better and to question your views. That's good conflict that can solidify your beliefs and actions.

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Postby robbiestoupe » Thu Feb 23, 2023 11:21 am

Totally get that Morkle, I'm the same way regarding political churches. Honestly, the bigger the church size, the more skeptical I am of that church. The church I mentioned above that we left, it was 30 adults at best. And half of them came from one family, lol. But the community it created was beyond anything I've ever experienced. It took good pastors and people willing to expand their hearts and minds, but the things I learned there were life altering. The pastors were humbled by a division in the church. They went from being rather famous in certain circles to basically pastors of a home church. But they took their wisdom and imparted it in the body and it did wonders.

To me that is what a "church" really is. It has nothing to do with a building (sounds like CBear's church is starting to think similarly). It's about people. The way I see it is God created us as relational beings. I mean, the whole purpose of the Bible and the story of Jesus was to repair the broken relationship between God and his creation.

I also think it's healthy to question your beliefs. I went through something similar many years ago. Not that I ever denied God's existence, more that I denied what I thought his intentions were. It came out of similar thoughts: why would the world be so ugly like it is now if he truly cared? Why let all these bad things happen? A lot of it had to do with personal experiences so to me why would I worship him? He was going to have to show himself to me in other ways for me to change my mind.

Call it luck or fate or divine intervention but he eventually did and it was the pastors I mentioned above that helped flesh that out. It wasn't even a counseling ordeal or anything like that, they just helped give me the tools and understanding to find it out on my own. I also had to be willing to search for those answers and had to go to a really deep and dark place to get there, but to me it was really worth it all.

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Postby shafnutz05 » Thu Feb 23, 2023 12:00 pm

I think you can have a modern church but still hold fast to the tenets of the Christian faith. For example--eternal life through faith in Christ alone. That shouldn't be controversial or considered "old-fashioned"--if anything, I think churches like that do believers badly.

I've said before that I am relieved that politics is virtually verboten at our church. Outside of praying for *all* of our political leaders, president, VP, governor, etc., or praying about current events and rallying the congregation to do what we can to help (the war in Ukraine, the earthquake in Turkey, etc.), it's non-existent. And I live in a very red area.

I struggle with my faith at times, and I don't know many Christians that don't. Oddly enough, my love of the sciences, astronomy, etc. actually boosts my faith, since I know just how many cards are stacked against life, much less advanced life, developing anywhere. Everything about Earth seems to be perfect--even something as simple as our Moon being 400x smaller than the Sun, but the Sun being 400x further away, making them both appear the same size. I get that much of the universe seems to have developed through chance, random collisions, etc. But our solar system just seems too perfectly designed to be an accident. Just my two cents.

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Postby CBear3 » Thu Feb 23, 2023 12:09 pm

My pastor and I can get into rabbit holes about quantum mechanics and the interconnectivity of things and how that can relate to the Holy Spirit in biblical terms.

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Postby robbiestoupe » Thu Feb 23, 2023 12:41 pm

My pastor and I can get into rabbit holes about quantum mechanics and the interconnectivity of things and how that can relate to the Holy Spirit in biblical terms.
A group of us used to meet at Starbucks on Monday nights and talk about stuff like this. Some really fun discussions were had.

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Postby redwill » Thu Feb 23, 2023 2:58 pm

Woof. Haven't been in this thread for a while. It's gotten quite Christian. Oy.

Sort of like American history: religion took a huge hit from the Enlightenment (thank God Jefferson had time to wedge the Constitution in there) then roared back with the multiple Great Awakenings.

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