The Reformation Project: A Final Word -- the Benediction

In the upcoming final section of this project a number of theses (it will be less than 95) will be presented regarding reform of the church. Before that, however, this section will close with a word about the use of the benediction at or near the close of the service.

Most of the churches visited for this project did not use a benediction, and that is not surprising, though it was perhaps a bit of a shock that Fellowship Church Grapevine concluded its service with a video of the pastor performing rap music. Nonetheless, for much of American evangelicalism, the notion of a benediction has largely been lost. Thus, the word is either no longer used at all or it is used to mean nothing more than a closing prayer. The actual definition of the word, which has to do with the pronouncement of a blessing, has largely been lost. 

It should be noted that Scripture is full of pronouncements of blessings. Perhaps the best known, the Aaronic blessing, is found in the Old Testament. It was used at the close of the service I visited at Friendship-West Baptist Church.

"The LORD bless you and keep you;

the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;

the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace." [Numbers 6:24-26, ESV]

Most of the Pauline epistles conclude with a benediction.

Some years ago, when I was first learning about the significance of the various elements of worship, I heard a minister speak about the importance of the benediction, and he claimed that it was even more important than the sermon. While I am not sure I agree with that, one should not discount its value for the worship gathering. Michael Horton, in his book "A Better Way," describes it this way:

"... [T]he benediction could easily become (and too often does become) little more than a way of saying, 'The service is over, so good-bye.' But here, one last time, God addresses his people. Grace has the last word, as the people receive God's blessing through the minister with raised hands.... The covenant people leave [the church] bursting with thankful hearts because they leave with the assurance that God is on their side and that they stand under his blessing rather than his wrath."

Thus, the service ends not with law -- that is, a set of instructions for those now entering the mission field -- but rather with assurances of God's grace as his people go forth. A church that is reformed according to the word of God will appreciate the need for the minister's pronouncement of divine blessing.

"Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us[b] that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen." [Heb. 13:20, 21, ESV]

The Reformation Project: Why Megachurch Johnny Can't Preach, Part II

In my previous post, I noted the exceptionally bad preaching that I heard at most of the megachurches visited during this project. I even said that some of the sermons fell to the level of incompetence and gave two examples representative of that.

How could that be? How can it be that so many sincere Christians attending the largest churches in what is arguably the buckle of the Bible belt listen to ministers that perform their most basic task either poorly or even incompetently?

Without attempting to delve into the particular circumstances of those churches or pastors, I want to address more generically the reasons for a dearth of good preaching in American churches today, arguing that poor preaching largely results from a cultural conditioning that warps both the training of ministers and the expectations of those that choose them. There is a match that is made between the outlook and skill set of American ministers and those who show up on Sunday. However, that match is made somewhere other than heaven.

John R.W. Stott, in his classic work on preaching "Between Two Worlds," claimed that a preacher was a man who stood with one foot in the world of the Bible and the other in the world in which he resides, having the task of bringing the former world to bear upon the latter. In order to do that, a minister must have a solid grasp on the world of the Bible (he must also understand the world in which he resides, but that will not be the focus of this post). Many ministers do not have that, and I will defend the idea that their churches really don't expect them to.

Many young men thinking about ministry arrive at that place having spent most of their church lives in youth group, along the way developing a strong moral sense, perhaps a place of leadership among their religious peers at church, and a passion for serving Jesus. Both peers and older Christians are likely to praise their zeal, valuing religious enthusiasm in a young believer to such an extent that they don't want to discourage the young Christian by suggesting how much they have to learn. Thus, the sincere young Christian may not have a good grasp on the gaps in his Bible knowledge, and he also is likely unaware of the extent to which worldly mindsets have shaped his religious outlook. That is to say, he has grown up in a world that treats the customer as king and that thinks about life in therapeutic, not theological, terms.

This therapeutic and marketing orientation skews his approach to academic preparation for ministry. Of course, many church traditions will tell the young prospective minister that seminary or other academic training is entirely unnecessary, while in other instances he will complete his classwork under the illusion that it is irrelevant to his work as a minister. Churches will often reinforce that illusion, telling the sincere young man that studying dead languages or being able to explain the wrongness of various modern approaches to theology is not as important as connecting with people and helping them find Jesus.

Of course, seminaries are imperfect institutions that can be improved upon by something else. However, most of those criticizing academic training don't have in mind a replacement; they simply think that a sincere relationship with Jesus and good communication skills are enough, and this simply is not true. The result of this is ministers who lack preparation for ministry. They are steeped in the language of our therapeutic culture, and they have some level of understanding of how the church can market itself to broaden its appeal, but they are not able to think through the way the law functions in the lives of believers and unbelievers. They don't know how to express the role of church and Christian in their culture. They lack the ability, or perhaps the desire, to understand common areas and distinctions between morality and self-improvement from the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit. They don't know how to clearly distinguish between law and gospel.

And, they don't know how to relate the Bible as a single story from Genesis to Revelation while also distinguishing the interpretation of various genres of Scripture. This means that they lack the skill to model good Bible interpretation to their congregants.

Those that are tasked with teaching simply must have preparation that allows them to understand deeply. Many ministers lack this, and they sadly don't desire it. What we are talking about is mental work, but it doesn't require the minister to be an intellectual giant by any means. He only requires the preparation and the desire to think about ministry of the Word in this way.

Many don't. Their churches don't expect them to. And weakness in the church is the result.

Megachurch Johnny can't preach, and for the most part their churches don't care.

For those interested, the Table of Contents for the entire "Reformation Project" is here.

The Reformation Project: Why Megachurch Johnny Can't Preach

I really do not like criticizing preachers. The task of preaching is foundational to a pastor's calling; thus, Christians frequently refer to their pastors as "preachers." Some denominations highlight the importance of preaching in the terminology that they use for ordinands, emphasizing that they are being ordained, for example, to "the ministry of the word and sacrament." Besides this, it is the most visible aspect of a senior pastor's responsibilities. Some people so associate pastoral ministry with preaching that they jokingly -- one hopes -- will say that the pastor only works one day a week.

Joking aside, it is not possible to overstate the importance of preaching to Christian worship and to worshiping Christians. "Faith comes by hearing," Paul writes in Romans 10, "and hearing by the word of Christ." He has already asked how someone can hear without a preacher. Thus, preaching is a means of grace by which God creates faith in the hearts of his people. That is important.

Yet, preaching is a difficult task. Most pastors will address their congregations more than 40 times per year, and those in churches with a second weekly service might double that. Ministers frequently have additional teaching responsibilities. Speaking so frequently to the same group of people requires great effort. Congregants don't expect to hear the same sermon portions over and over, meaning that a sound minister must each time do sound exegesis of his text, illustrate it to make it more understandable and apply it to the lives of the people. A pastor who has been at his church for 10 years will have presented over 400 sermons heard by at least some of the same people.

All pastors must be capable at each of those areas of preaching -- exegesis, illustration, and application -- though each minister will find his particular gifts more oriented toward some of these than others. A minister who is a master of illustration may struggle to come up with meaningful applications. Another may be good at applying the text, but he struggles to lay the groundwork of what is to be applied. Some pastors -- even those with seminary training -- may struggle with their skills at biblical exposition. Yet, it is a grave error not to work on that area. One can't really be said to be preaching the Word of God if the person is not doing some basic study that allows him to ground his sermon in the text. As the Romans passage quoted earlier indicates, it is the preaching of the Word that God has pledged to use to create faith in His people. He may use other things, but he has not promised to do so.

So, it is a bit painful to have to say that many (not all) of the pastors I heard preach during this project were in a very fundamental way incompetent at their most basic task. They did not display a basic ability to preach the Word; nor did they have the ability to do the most rudimentary analysis of the biblical text.

It would not seem that their members are aware of the utter incompetence. Who would want to say that they go to a big church where the pastor lacks basic competence at preaching?

Because it may seem to readers that this judgment is harsh, perhaps it is necessary to clarify what is meant. I am not suggesting that these ministers were poor orators. All were charismatic personalities with the capacity to hold the attention of large audiences Nor do I mean that I had doctrinal disagreements with their sermons -- I frequently did, but their incompetence went well beyond the idea that there are different interpretations of a text in the Bible. Rather, they used the Bible in a way that was not credible to one holding to any doctrinal position.

While I could cite numerous examples, two will suffice to convey what I am driving at. The pastor of Fellowship Church Grapevine used the Bible as a sort of Bartlett's Book of Familiar Quotations, mining the biblical text for verses that had a word or phrase that he wanted to incorporate into his sermon, even if the context of the text showed that the text could not be appropriately used in that way. Thus, he used Acts 1:8, in which Jesus said that the disciples would receive power from the Holy Spirit for world wide witness, as analogous to a power cord he used with his blender and ultimately as a proof text for God's help for blended families. This is, of course, nonsense.

In the same way, the pastor at Covenant Church read a passage that concerned the diminutive size of David and talked about it as though it concerned the large size of Goliath. It was an impossible reading to justify.

There are other examples I could cite. To be fair, some of the ministers used the Bible responsibly. However the fact of the matter is that a significant percentage of the pastors of the largest churches in the metroplex are incompetent practitioners of their most basic responsibility. And, their listeners dont seem to know it.

How can that be? I will have more to come.

The Reformation Project: the Priority of Preaching?

A recent news article in Christianity Today reported on a recent Gallup Poll that found "sermons that teach about scripture" to be the top reason that Americans go to church. Over 80% identified it as a priority. The report has been linked by numerous religious blogs hopeful that it points toward a renewed emphasis on biblical preaching. Certainly, such an emphasis would be welcome in these quarters, so one might be forgiven for wishing it to be true.

I must admit I don't believe it.

I do have a bias, as the poll would contradict my premise in the study involved in this project that suggests that the trends found in the large churches I visited are reflective of the future direction of American Christianity. In the majority of those churches, biblical content was minimal, and in some of them the handling of the Bible by the ministers can only be described as incompetent (readers are welcome to refer back to prior posts which can be found in the Table of Contents, and I will defend what may seem to be this harsh assessment in a future summary post).

Of course, it may be that these churches are not representative, but the fact that roughly 150,000 people in the largest churches in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex attend churches that do not for the most part feature sermons that teach about Scripture must be accounted for. Anecdotal experience would suggest that this is not limited to these large churches.

Of course, I am left with the need to explain how the poll could be so wrong. I will offer two explanations.

First, the poll relies on self-reporting, and such polls are notoriously unreliable when an answer is considered to be the correct one. As a well-known example, Americans have over reported actual church attendance for decades -- most people think that attending church is a good thing, so a larger than true proportion have reported attending church regularly as a result. In a similar way, there is reason to think American church goers would think that sermons teaching scripture provide a right reason for going to church -- what Christian wants to admit that Bible based sermons have nothing to do with church attendance? Thus, they give the answer that they believe to be right, perhaps without reflecting on whether it is consistent with their choice of church.

Second, one might argue that biblical preaching is sufficiently rare so that many church goers do not really know what solid scriptural preaching is. A clear and passionate presentation of practical advice punctuated with Bible verses is often confused with scriptural preaching.

This week, I spoke with an old friend who told me that her family had recently left their church of many years. While several of the reasons seemed valid, she added that she doesn't like expository preaching. Telling her that expository preaching is what I've done my whole life started an interesting conversation. What became sadly clear was that this life long, intelligent Christian really did not know what expository preaching really is, though she was sure she doesn't like it (probably because she associated it with a particular pastor).

It is not my intent here to argue about the validity of other approaches to preaching besides an expository one. However, I do think that this is an indication that many people have little understanding of what clear scriptural preaching should look like.

A reformation of biblical Christianity in the United States would require a return to scriptural preaching. One might hope that a day would come when the Gallup Poll turns out to be accurate.

The Reformation Project: what about the Music?

In the previous three posts, I addressed the subject of worship while scarcely mentioning the issue of music. This may mystify many readers, as Christians often reduce discussion of worship to the matter of musical style. When people talk about "worship wars," they actually are talking about battles over music. In my own analysis of visits to the ten largest churches in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex, most of my discussion of what took place in the meetings other than the sermon centered around music, with relatively little attention given to other elements other than to notice their absence; however, this was not because I accept the assumption that music equals worship. It is difficult to spend much time describing things that aren't present, and many elements of historic Christian worship were minimized or absent.

Nonetheless, music is an important element of worship, and, additionally, many of these large churches would consider their music to be a major selling point to attendees. They may be correct. Tremendous amounts of time, money, and effort go into producing music with the highest production values that these churches can generate. If quality is sometimes lacking, energy, effort, and passion are not. Nonetheless, from the standpoint of proper Christian worship, these productions leave much to be desired.

Why is that? Is modern church music really adverse to correct Christian worship, or is this aging blogger merely showing his over wrought fixation on old ways of doing things?

Watching congregations divide, often along generational lines, over questions of church music has been sad to see, and one can be excused for feeling a sense of relief when recent writers have declared those skirmishes, with their sometimes devastating impacts on local churches, largely over. That said, it is possibly even more sad that such divisions have often taken place without important and substantial questions about the place of music in worship ever being asked. Churches have divided over style with very little controversy over substance. If many of the criticisms of "traditional worship" (meaning that which dominated the middle portion of the 20th century) had merit, and I believe that they did, then it is unfortunate that so much effort went into changing musical forms without really doing anything to understand the place of music in biblical worship. For all of the energy (which is sometimes confused with the work of the Holy Spirit) that goes into making modern church music, one might argue that the church is worse off than it was 50 years ago, not because styles and instrumentation are worse (that would be open to debate), but because congregations rarely addressed the substantive questions.

Thus, one might have wished that controversies over music had begun by addressing the most fundamental question of all: what is the purpose of music in worship? If that seems too basic, one might argue that churches still should have asked it, if for no reason other than to identify common ground prior to drawing swords. However, such a foundational question may prove not to be so basic after all, as rationales for the purpose of complex and dynamic music programs in churches are all over the map. Without agreement on purpose, it is no wonder that churches lapsed into conflagrations over personal taste and recent tradition, for without a common mission for worship music that is integrated with a robust appreciation for other elements of worship, one might not ever get to the questions of biblical basis, content, congregational involvement, and so forth. In fact, the vast majority of churches never did. While recent years have seen some music leaders adopt mission statements (everything seems to require a mission statement these days), this has largely come in the aftermath of churches establishing their musical direction, meaning that the influence was retrospective, not formative.

As a result, much of the music featured in the large, pacesetting churches I visited centered around performance by musicians using fairly sophisticated production lighting and sound before an audience that behaved no differently than middle aged audiences act at a pop concert -- some in the crowd watch and listen, some make some effort at singing along, some clap their hands and bounce and sway as their spirit moves them, and others stand with their hands in their pockets and perhaps even talk with those around them. Content is for the most part minimal and repetitive, with sentimentality trumping any clear biblical content. There were exceptions, but for the most part the congregation was not expected to sing. Though the words were printed on the screen, singing was difficult and at times nearly impossible due to the volume of the band (it is hard to sing when you can't hear your own voice), the use of unfamiliar music that often included unpredictable bridges known only to the band, and the use of music difficult to sing for undirected amateurs who had not practiced it.

Thus, if part of the point of church music is for congregants to praise with their mouths, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. most of the music in these churches failed in that regard.

The biblical model of worship music is the Psalms. While some groups of Christians go so far as to say that only canonical music should be used in worship, this writer would not take that stance. Nonetheless, a look at biblical music (meaning that found in the Bible) reveals sharp contrasts and deficiencies in the modern church. For one thing, the biblical songs are substantive and God centered, qualities often lacking in modern church music, which often is thin and vague on content and centered on human experience. In addition, the emotions of modern church music are very different from its biblical counterparts -- biblical lyric is much MORE emotional. Almost all contemporary church music captures one, and only one, category of emotion -- celebration, joy, victory. As Carl Trueman has said, there is hardly any music in modern churches that can be sung by miserable Christians. In contrast, the Psalms, to borrow Calvin's phrase, carry the anatomy of the parts of the soul. Though God centered in approach, the Psalms manage to convey the entire range of human emotional experience.

Over the last half century, young Christians in particular were dissatisfied with music that seemed outdated and irrelevant to their experiences. To a large extent, their complaints were valid. However, ignoring the biblical data, they set out to make music reflective of generational experiences and tastes. For that reason, church music, like the rest of modern worship, remains in drastic need of reform.

In the next post, I will turn to the subject of preaching.

This is part of a series entitled "The Reformation Project." The table of contents for the series is here.

The Reformation Project: Who Is the Lord of Worship?

Of course, we know what the answer is supposed to be to the question as to who is the Lord of worship, but it is fair to ask whether correct answers mask a disconcerting reality.

A recent blog post aggregated at The Aquila Report argued that many modern Christians, especially millenials, doubt the importance of church attendance. This is hardly a novel realization, and all kinds of spiritual and sociological reasons for dismissive attitudes toward church, even by professing Christians, may be given; however, one might suggest that the most obvious reason is a relatively simple one: people who have spent time around churches often begin to doubt the importance of church because their church leaders have told them that it is unimportant.

And ministers feared the people weren't listening. In fact, they have taken in the lesson all to well.

Nearly everyone who has spent much time around evangelical churches has heard it said that what happens inside the church is not important: it is what Christians do when they leave that counts. Many have listened to such words before walking through church exits under signs that tell them that they are "now entering the mission field." While that may express a truth, it also underscores the idea that what happens outside the church's walls is what matters; what happens in the building doesn't really count. In fact, ministers and other Christians frequently dismiss the value of the walls and doors, insisting that the church is the people, not a place. Michael Horton has said that Christians have so often been told that the church is not a place that they have been left homeless. Further devaluing the significance of the gathered church, modern worship avoids any sense of transcendence and emphasizes an appeal to individual taste, not seeming to realize that if it is about me and my tastes, I can find that just about anywhere. One doesn't really need a church for that.

Thus, in many churches the people who are there come together and hear someone pray that God will join them. This contrasts with a more biblical approach that would claim that Christians don't gather to call upon God to join us; rather, the church has gathered because it has been summoned by its risen Lord. The risen Lord has gathered the church to a place where he distributes his gifts (see Ephesians 4 for one description of this). Through the preached word, God creates faith in the hearts of his people. Through baptism and the Lord's Supper he signifies and seals his promises he has made to us, thus reassuring our faith. With our confession of sin he assures us of his promises of pardon in Christ. In Christian fellowship he unites and encourages his people in vital, organic unity.

The preceding paragraph turns on its head the approach that many take to these elements of worship. In the thinking of many, preaching, praying, the sacraments, and singing are things that we do for God (professing our faith, for example). However, if I have explained worship biblically, it would show that the church gathers for worship because that is where God offers his gifts to us, not the other way around. If that takes the right view of things, then it reorients church members to appreciate the value of what is happening, but it also needs to reorient pastors and church leaders with regard to the nature of their task.

Some years ago, while traveling on a weekend I visited a church that I was not familiar with. At the conclusion of the service, the minister explained that church leaders were starting a process for evaluating the ministries of the church. As a step in that process they wanted to ask those present to take a survey about the church's "core values."

When I received a copy of the survey, I was stunned at the way they were going about discovering their "core values." All of the questions revolved around the notion of discerning what non-Christians that they knew would look for in a church. Now, no one of course would want to deny that there is a point to finding out what unbelievers think about the church, but is that really the place that we would look to find our "core values?"

Unfortunately, that is not really an uncommon reality, as churches increasingly are market driven, letting the desires and tastes of those apart from Christ set the agenda for the church.

Who is the Lord of our worship? The out loud answer is Christ. God knows our hearts.

The Reformation Project: the Necessity of Correct Worshiping

In my previous post, I pointed out that in many of the churches I visited that many of the biblical elements of worship have disappeared or suffered from neglect. Is that important?

In Ezekiel 8, the prophet in a vision is brought into the inner court of the temple. There he records, "...at the entrance of the temple of the LORD, between the porch and the altar, were about twenty-five men, with their backs to the temple of the LORD, and their faces toward the east, worshiping the sun toward the east. Then he said to me, 'Have you seen this, O son of man? Is it too light a thing for the house of Judah to commit the abominations that they commit here....'"

The vision of people gathered at the temple in Jerusalem and worshiping a pagan deity is a vivid and disturbing one, and some would argue this couldn't happen among God's people in our day. However, this presents in clear terms the danger of worship that is disconnected from its biblical moorings. Can worship being conducted in a Christian church descend into mere idolatry? Anyone who thinks not should take heed lest he fall.

Worship will always be flavored with local cultural tastes, but it must be regulated by the Word of God. Unregulated worship carried on based on personal tastes and community desires poses a danger to the worship of the true God.

This post is a part of a year long project. The Table of Contents is here.

The Reformation Project: What is Worship?

Over the course of 20 posts going back to early November, I have written descriptions and analyses of my visits to the ten largest churches in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex. For ease of locating this material, I have also provided a Table of Contents.

Having completed that portion of this project, I now want to spend some time thinking about what this work may indicate about the current state of the church. Certainly, the churches visited were not identical, and there were some outliers in terms of the overall trends. Nonetheless, the churches showed some remarkable areas of similarity that can be examined with a view of what they mean in terms of how modern Christians understand the purpose of the church and the nature of the Christian life.

In this post, I want to begin posting some thoughts regarding worship.

Beginning with the "Jesus movement" of the 1960's, and with greater fervor over the last couple of decades, American Christians -- particularly those who lean toward evangelical faith -- have engaged in what has been termed "worship wars." That phrase is arguably misleading, and even problematic, in that the "war" has actually been over only one aspect of worship -- music -- and has rarely engaged other elements of worship. In fact, for many younger Christians the word "worship," at least in a corporate context, is more or less synonymous with the word "music."

Thus, in many modern American churches, many elements of worship have been de-emphasized or have disappeared entirely with very little notice. While tremendous amounts of attention are given to musical production, matters such as the reading of Scripture (except, perhaps, the text of the sermon) and prayer have the appearance of being afterthoughts or have disappeared altogether. The sacrament of the Lord's Supper has become less frequent. While baptism continues to be practiced as a means of entering the church, its significance for the church community as community has been significantly degraded. A generation (or more) of evangelical Protestants have no experience of a worship service involving a confession of sin and a pronouncement of assurance of pardon by the minister (some might even think that a Roman Catholic concept). Do the majority of Protestant churchgoers any longer know the meaning or purpose of a call to worship or a benediction? For many, there is no point in asking about the recitation of a creed, as they recoil at the mere mention of the word.

A review of the accounts of the churches I visited will point to the fact that in the rapidly growing sectors of American Christianity, these types of elements have either disappeared or appear to be minimally important. It is a bit of an exaggeration, but not much of one, to suggest that these churches, and those that emulate them, view what happens on Sunday morning as involving 30 minutes of music and 30 minutes of a talk from the pastor. Of course, there are announcements.

While these trends are accelerating, it would be a mistake to regard them as new, as they find their roots in American revivalism, especially in the Second Great Awakening of the early and mid 1800's and its aftermath. As revivalists, and the churches longing for the results they offered, emphasized the use of extraordinary measures designed to produce those results, they downplayed -- or even ridiculed -- elements of ordinary worship that didn't seem geared toward building momentum toward the moment of decision. Thus, the understanding and nature of the worship gathering began to be fundamentally altered 200 years ago.

In the modern church, that has also meant a widespread change of terminology and outlook. What once was called the "worship service," is now referred to in most of the churches I visited as a "worship experience." This is not a merely semantic change. While most Christians would still likely say that they come to church to meet with God, the "worship experience" terminology suggests that the focus of worship is no longer a dialogical encounter with a God who exists outside of themselves and is more oriented toward the inward experience of engaging in worship activity. That being the case, churches must reorient themselves to make sure that they provide this experience to their congregants (customers?).

This means that much of the content of worship has been eliminated while the emotional uplift of the music has been accentuated, but this creates a long term problem for the church. Lacking a sufficient basis for getting excited, one wonders how long the energy of worship can be maintained. Sports fans often complain about fans that do "the wave" instead of watching the game, but churches that create largely content-free experiences would seem like a stadium where people gather to do the wave even though there is no actual game being played.

The elements I briefly described above have been practiced for centuries in churches because they were deemed to be required by Scripture. The question of scriptural fidelity has rarely been considered as changes in worship have been made to address the wishes of attendees. In addition to not asking whether practises are called for in Scripture, advocates of revised worship practises have rarely questioned whether anything is being lost by the truncation of worship into little more than music. I will mention just a few:

1. Inclusion of these worship elements provides a structure for re-orienting those in attendance toward a God centered and cross centered faith and away from a self-centered faith and performance oriented ministry.
2. In many Protestant church traditions, the various elements of the worship service provide a trinitarian structure that is important for Christian teaching. The struggles that many Christians have with understanding the triune God of Christian teaching would be helped by a return to proper worship that included prayer and the use of creedal and confessional material expressing trinitarian faith.
3. Incorporation of elements of worship such as confession of sin and assurance of pardon makes them key to the ongoing understanding of the church and the ordinary meaning of worship, which is where they should be. If these elements are not part of worship, then it becomes the job of the pastor to make sure that they are covered in the sermon. That is too much to do in a sermon on a weekly basis, and, as will note later in the posts on preaching, it does not happen.
4. All of this being the case, one should easily see that in providing for these elements of worship, the Spirit of God is active in worship teaching us, convicting us, forgiving us, and encouraging us. The elements may not drive an emotional response in the way that marketers would have us run the service, but they are central to Christian understanding.
5. The elements of worship require active involvement of congregants. Where they have disappeared, they have often been replaced by performance from the stage (I used to think that the term "stage" was an insult, but now I find church leaders using it routinely). Engaged participation is more healthy as a worship practice.

When I visited these 10 churches, my intent was to worship with them even as I studied them, but I all to frequently left with the sad thought that the God presented in worship was hardly worth bothering with. In a future post, I will deal with music and preaching, but I am writing about other aspects of worship first because the reformation of worship understanding is a foundational issue in our day.

The Reformation Project: Table of Contents

Introduction

1. Announcing the Launch of the Reformation Project
2. Outlining and Defending my Research Approach

The State of the Church

1. Visiting Fellowship Church Grapevine
2. Analyzing my Visit to Fellowship Church Grapevine
3. Visiting Gateway Church
4. Analyzing my Visit to Gateway Church
5. Visiting The Potter's House
6. Analyzing my Visit to The Potter's House
7. Visiting Prestonwood Baptist Church
8. Analyzing my Visit to Prestonwood Baptist Church
9. Visiting Lake Pointe Church
10. Analyzing my Visit to Lake Pointe Church
11. Visiting Covenant Church
12. Analyzing my Visit to Covenant Church
13. Visiting The Village Church
14. Analyzing my Visit to The Village Church
15. Visiting Friendship-West Baptist Church
16. Analyzing my Visit to Friendship-West Baptist Church
17. Visiting Watermark Church
18. Analyzing my Visit to Watermark Church
19. Visiting St. John Baptist Church
20. Analyzing my Visit to St. John Baptist Church

Drawing Conclusions from the Visits

1. What is Worship
2. The Necessity of Correct Worshiping
3. Who is the Lord of Worship?
4. What about the Music?
5. The Priority of Preaching?
6. Why Megachurch Johnny Can't Preach
7. Why Megachurch Johnny Can't Preach, Part II
8. A Final Word -- the Benediction

The Reformation Project: Analyzing my Visit to St. John Baptist Church

In my previous post, I described my visit to St. John Baptist Church. In this one, I will provide some analysis of that visit. Because the prior post is foundational to this one, I would recommend that the reader look back at that one prior to proceeding here.

I did not know much about the church prior to the visit, though one past action by the church has gained some attention in the local religious community. Several years ago, Pastor Denny Davis opened his pulpit to Joel Gregory, the former co-pastor at First Baptist Dallas, thus beginning the rehabilitation of his ministry. 

St. John Church, with a reported average attendance of 8,800, is the 10th largest church in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, according to data compiled by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research. While some aspects of the church service were high tech (the use of video to make announcements), overall the service was more traditional in nature than any of the churches visited for this study. Black churchgoers from past generations would have recognized the liturgy, music, and sermonic style of the service.The advertisement of upcoming revival services represented a look back at an era that is now largely past.

Thus, the musical selections used for both congregational and special music were repetitive and emotional, though, as noted in my earlier description, the songs did contain Gospel content. While the presence of such is a positive, one should note that the music also contained some of the weak theology common in modern evangelical churches. Thus, the statement that the singer knows that God is real "because I can feel him in my soul" falls far short of biblical defenses of the faith, which rely on more objective considerations, such as the empty tomb. Nonetheless, the congregational music was more singable -- and more widely sung -- than what was experienced in other churches that were involved in this study.

The sermon had as its theme the cost of discipleship, and the pastor made a serious effort at expounding the text and applying it to his congregation. At one point, he even referenced a resource that he had relied on to help him in his understanding of the text. While he did a good job of handling the scripture, the sermon might have been improved by pulling in thoughts of Christ's dying and rising for us, as well as of the Spirit's work in calling the believer to serve Christ. While those thoughts were not in the text itself, bringing them in as a means of showing the motivation and power that God gives to the believer to fulfill what is required in the text would have been helpful.

This is the last post summarizing my visits to the ten largest churches in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. In future posts I will begin to draw some conclusions based on these findings.

The Reformation Project: Visiting St. John Baptist Church

GRAND PRAIRIE, Texas, March 2, 2014 -- Located in a working class neighborhood in Grand Prairie, the church has only small parking lots, and many of those arriving for the service are forced to park on small neighborhood streets.  The church holds multiple services in order to accommodate its crowds, and it was of interest to realize when arriving for the 9:00 a.m. service that the earlier service, which began at 7:00 a.m., was relatively full.

Entering the front of the building, one finds himself in a small, crowded lobby. As the 7:00 a.m. service was still ongoing, those arriving were asked to line up along the right side so that those in the earlier service would be able to file out. Other attendees waiting were friendly. A woman standing near me struck up a conversation, asking if it were my first time attending and telling me how much she liked coming to church here. Several ministers wore clerical collars. When, after entering the sanctuary, I asked one for help finding a restroom, he started to give directions, realized it was getting difficult to follow, and took the time to walk me in the required direction.

The sanctuary was by far the smallest of the churches attended for this study, and at first I wondered if the attendance figures reported by the Hartford Institute were inflated. However, the church has two campuses, multiple services, and children meeting elsewhere for separate services, making the claimed attendance possible. The pulpit area was also relatively small, with a band and choir squeezed in behind a traditional pulpit area that included a white marble podium. For some reason there were NFL football pennants attached around the pulpit.

The facility is aging, but well-kept. Banners, which appeared to be home (or church) made, hanging along the side walls contained titles for Christ such as Lamb of God, King of Kings, and Lion of Judah.

The choir entered around ten minutes after the stated starting time wearing white and navy choir robes. The service began with two energetic songs, led by a song leader and praise team and an instrumental band of guitarists, drummer, and keyboardist. The songs were repetitive, but contained gospel content. One entitled “I Just Want to Bless your Name” included a verse discussing being ransomed by the blood of Jesus. The song leader led in prayer.

After those songs, several announcements were delivered via video. The St. John Bible Institute has the purpose of providing more detailed Bible study for laymen. Other announcements concerned an upcoming mission trip, a class for those planning on getting married, an upcoming emphasis on fasting, discipleship groups, and a holy week revival featuring a speaker from out of town. A short video highlighting the church’s singles ministry talked about focusing less on who to marry than on why.

Another video featured the work of a scientist named George Caruthers, who is a black Baptist and a renowned scientist. A prayer of Thanksgiving was offered.

After one of the ministers made some additional announcements not on video, visitors were asked to stand. Only a few did so. This was followed by a fellowship time in which members milled about shaking hands while music played.

At this point, the choir performed an animated anthem, with much rhythmic clapping and swaying involved. Some in the congregation stood and clapped along with the choir during the performance. After that, Pastor Denny Davis came to the pulpit and asked for those having March birthdays to stand. After leading the congregation in singing Happy Birthday, he made some additional announcements about upcoming meetings. A soloist, along with the choir, then sang a song entitled “God Is Real,” which claimed that “God is real because I can feel Him in my soul.”

By the time Pastor Davis stood to preach, the service was nearly an hour long. Wearing a Geneva gown, he announced after a prayer that the title of his sermon was “Whatever it Takes,” taking for his text Luke 9:57-62, which reads as follows (ESV):

⁵⁷ As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” ⁵⁸ And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” ⁵⁹ To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” ⁶⁰ And Jesus^[a] said to him, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” ⁶¹ Yet another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” ⁶² Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Rev. Davis pointed out that in the text Jesus was exposing shallow commitments by some would be followers. After humorously referencing some secular love songs that make verbal commitments to one’s love that go well beyond what most men will actually follow through on, he pointedly stated that many Christians will sing, “I surrender all,” when they mean: “I surrender some.”

From this text, the pastor first talked about “the cost of followship.” He contrasted Jesus’ promise of the possibility of homelessness with the claims of modern prosperity preaching. He contended that Christians should not expect prosperity, but hardship, but added that rather than complain about our plight, Christians should remember the things that Jesus endured for us.

Second, the pastor spoke about “the urgency of followship.” Acknowledging that verses 59-60 appeared to be harsh, the pastor told the congregation that he had relied on a book entitled The Hard Sayings of Jesus (F.F. Bruce) to help explain the passage. Ultimately, he urged upon the congregation that we must move beyond past pain and be ready to move forward to the future in order to follow Jesus.

Finally, he spoke about the “commitment of followship,” which is to the King. One cannot follow Jesus and follow self at the same time. The pastor contended that no one can follow him and follow self at the same time. He argued that Jesus is saying here, “I have developed the rules. If you want to follow me, you have to live by the rules.”

From this point through the end of the sermon, the pastor began to use a melodic delivery that was punctuated by chords played by the organist. He closed by relating children’s games such as Simon Says to the necessity of following the words of Jesus and praying for the congregation.

An invitation for people to come forward was then made as the choir sang. The service concluded with an offering and communion taking place simultaneously while the choir and a soloist sang “The Blood Will Never Lose its Power.” Prayers were made both prior to and following the offering/communion ceremony.

The Reformation Project: Analyzing my Visit to Watermark Church

In my previous post, I described my visit to Watermark Church. In this one, I will provide some analysis of that visit. Because the prior post is foundational to this one, I would recommend that the reader look back at that one prior to proceeding here.

Watermark Church, with a reported average attendance of just under 9,000, is the 9th largest church in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, according to data compiled by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research. The nondenominational church was founded in 1999 with a determination to evidence authenticity of their faith in Jesus Christ. That focus on authenticity is the reason for the church's name. While the church is not a part of a formal denomination, its beliefs are baptistic and dispensational.

While some of the music used in the service contained good content, it seemed overwhelmed by the performance focus of the service. In fact, the entire service, from the pop style performance music to the emotionally anxious lead singer to the preacher clad in untucked shirt telling 10 minutes worth of jokes before giving practical advice from the Bible gave the appearance of a giant youth retreat. That is not to suggest that all that happened here was bad; it is just that the service, for better or for worse, had a vibe to it.

So, the minister on this Sunday offered up practical advice on the subject of marriage. This is something that the Scripture certainly addresses, and to the pastor's credit, he utilized a lot of Bible passages in his sermon. Even so, the sermon left me with a somewhat vague sense of uneasiness. In thinking through it later, I realized that the uneasiness largely came from the realization that the minister over promised: that is to say, in his zeal to offer therapy in the midst of our therapeutic culture, he stated assurances in a way that goes beyond what God has promised to us.

Consider the following ideas expressed in the sermon:

• If the church started getting marriage right, it would be the most earth shattering thing that the church could do;
• Marriages can't be made right unless the Gospel enters the marriage; and
• In a list of characteristics of successful marriages, he stated that they radically depend on Christ.

While no one should doubt that good marriages among Christians would be a positive for both church and world, the first of those bullets is biblically false. Jesus himself pointed out that even if one rose from the dead that many would not believe, and the truthfulness of that statement was demonstrated in the aftermath of his own resurrection. If the resurrection of the dead and the proclamation of the gospel lack earth shattering impact, what makes us think that our marriages would have the same? We should encourage one another in our marriages without giving to ourselves such a sense of self-importance.

The second and third bullets are demonstrably false. All of us, I suspect, know non-Christians with wonderful marriages, and we likely know Christians that have struggling ones. None of this is to say that the believer's relationship with Christ makes no difference to his marriage, nor would we deny that the Bible offers practical guidance in this area. However, in this age of the already and not yet, God's common grace to all men frequently permits them to enjoy happiness in marriage, just as the incompleteness of the sanctification of believer's often means we do poorly at marriage in this fallen world. Again, none of this should be used to excuse Christian failures (I certainly don't want to be guilty of excusing my own). However, the situation is simply more complex than the minister described it, and all of the above thoughts need to be included in wise pastoral counsel.

Good pastors should give wise counsel from Scripture about our family life. The Scripture, and the preaching of law and gospel, form the center of the pastor's message and expertise. Getting the gospel right is the most potentially earth shattering thing that the church can do. This is what must be offered to both the church and the world.

In my next two posts I will conclude this portion of the study by looking at the tenth of the largest churches in this region.

The Reformation Project: Visiting Watermark Church

DALLAS, Texas, February 23, 2014 -- Watermark Church had taken over and renovated an office complex on the south side of the Lyndon Baines Johnson freeway in North Dallas. At the time of my visit, significant construction had been ongoing, affecting both the freeway and the frontage road along which the church facility was located.  While that certainly could not have helped attendance, the church seemingly has flourished during this time of extended inconvenience.

Entering the building, one finds an enormous lobby that once functioned as the central lobby of the office complex. A large section to one side is filled with small tables at which people are seated chatting and drinking coffee. The coffee is free. Unlike many of the other churches visited, the café space in the center of the lobby is closed for Sunday. Around the café area, one can find brochures about various church activities and functions, including one describing a ministry called “re:generation.” This is a sort of recovery group. It was interesting to note that an important theological term was reappropriated for the purpose of branding that ministry.

From one side of the lobby, one can also see a children’s area that includes a jungle gym. Going through a door to that side, one finds a small pool such as is common at suburban office complexes. 

Going back inside and into the church auditorium, one finds himself in a large, semi-circular room that has a small feel due to the width of it. The room is crowded, as the passage ways between the seating sections are small. The large stage has faux wood paneling on either side, as well as two large video screens running a series of announcements about church ministries and events. At some point, a countdown clock begins displaying when the service will begin. The eight member band comes to the stage, and music promptly begins to play when the clock hits zero.

The service began with a set of five songs mingled with some talking by the worship leader and a prayer. The first song did contain some gospel content. At one point, the leader urged unbelievers to pay attention to the next song, as it would teach about who God is, but the song actually had little to say about God. The group of songs concluded with  “Cornerstone,” which consists of the lyrics to Toplady’s  “The Solid Rock” with a new tune and chorus that strings some thoughts together without any discernable purpose. Seemingly coincidentally, this song had now been sung at four of the nine churches visited to this point for the project.

In addition to the video screens, sections of the wall behind the stage changed colors frequently.

Following this singing, Pastor Todd Wagner came to center stage, using no pulpit as he spoke to the congregation while dressed in an untucked white shirt with light patterned stripes, jeans, and sneakers.

Wagner said that he would be talking about marriage today. He declared that if the church started getting this issue right that it would be the most earth shattering thing that the church could do. He claimed that marriages can’t be made right unless the gospel enters into the marriage. Citing statistics showing the impact of divorce on children, he quoted from Malachi the statement that “God hates divorce.”

Before launching into the body of his sermon, Pastor Wagner told a series of jokes about marriage, each concluding with the statement “…that’s when the fight started.  He then quoted and made brief comments about several scriptures related to marriage relationships, though he didn’t really expound any of them. Ultimately, he did use a variety of Bible passages to support his contention that there are five characteristics of individuals that have successful marriages:

1. They resist the lies that push them into a bad relationship in the first place;
2. They ruthlessly commit to their marriage;
3. They regularly consider themselves to be the biggest problem;
4. They radically depend on Christ; and
5. They relentlessly live humbly in relationship with others.

While dwelling on the first point, Rev. Wagner made an extended and passionate argument for sexual purity prior to marriage. He closed the sermon with prayer. He mentioned that he had a video that he wanted to show, but they were out of time. Instead the service closed with a pictoral montage on the video screens of the pastor and his wife, as well as others, while the band played music.

In my next post I will provide some analysis of the service.

The Reformation Project: Analyzing my Visit to Friendship-West Baptist

I previously described my visit to Friendship-West Baptist Church in this post. In this present essay, I will provide a bit of analysis of that visit. Readers are encouraged to read the earlier post, as it provides the basis for this one.

With a reported average attendance of 9,000, Friendship-West is the eighth largest church in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, according to information provided by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research. The church is in the southern part of Dallas, an area which has long been predominately black and economically deprived. The area has long been a center of political controversy, as it is widely alleged that economic and social policies promoted by the city favor downtown and the more affluent areas north of downtown to the detriment of the southern part of the city. This is the social environment in which Friendship-West exists and it serves to explain the reasons for some aspects of the worship service I visited.. While these factors do not excuse aspects of worship ministry that are unbiblical, they have to be considered when seeking to understand the church. After all, as will be elaborated on below, all of our churches reflect the cultural values of the people drawn to any given church, and sometimes those values, which often go unchallenged because we remain largely unaware of them, are not biblical.

This blogger has lived in the Dallas area for the last 10 years. I first became aware of Friendship-West in 2008, when then presidential candidate Barack Obama came under criticism after the release of tapes of the preaching of his minister, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Although Mr. Obama ultimately cut ties to his minister, Friendship-West's pastor, Dr. Frederick Haynes, was a vocal defender of Rev. Wright, who he described as a friend who had preached at the church.

Three of the ten churches I visited during this study were predominately black, but those churches reflected widely divergent traditions of black Christians in the United States. Earlier, I wrote about the Potter's House, where Pastor T.D. Jakes promotes a prosperity gospel of health and wealth -- arguably Rev. Haynes criticisms of the prosperity gospel in the sermon I reported on may have been directed particularly at Rev. Jakes. A church I will write about in the near future, Saint John Baptist Church, represents a mainstream expression of the black Baptist tradition. Friendship-West Baptist places a significant focus on social justice issues and ministry.

I suspect that the church would deny that its focus on social justice comes at the expense of personal evangelism. In its favor, I would note that the church's statement of beliefs on its website is more lengthy, specific and orthodox than many of the evangelical church websites I have looked up. During the service I attended, the pastor explicitly stated that the church stood for both evangelism and social justice, though the service did not reflect such a dual emphasis, as it focused almost entirely (some of the music providing the only exception) on grievances against social injustice. In addition to material in the sermon, the use of the church service to provide an advertisement for professional services, as well as the use of church time to promote candidates for secular office, should both be questioned. The pastor used the sermon to express strong disagreement with a court decision, urging an angry response in the process.

Of course, white Christians find it easy to disagree with these types of practices, but one might point out that we do not notice the way that our own cultural expressions get in the way of biblical fidelity. In fact, because our expressions reflect majoritarian culture, they may be even more difficult to identify. Thus, it is common for churches in the United States to have American flags in their churches during worship, in spite of the fact that there is no biblical rationale for doing so, and, in fact, the presence of such flags confuses allegiances, as God's people gather to worship a King whose kingdom extends beyond national boundaries. The practice is so common I rarely even notice it. Another example, expressed directly by Dr. Haynes, is the common pictorial expression of a white European Jesus. While I disagree with Haynes' rather extended but spurious argument that Jesus was actually black, he is certainly correct that Jesus did not look like the white portrayals. Dr. Haynes argued for black portrayals of Jesus. To the contrary, I would argue that we should stop altogether remaking Jesus in our cultural images. Both the white Jesus and the black one, for many reasons, are violations of the Second Commandment.

I appreciated Dr. Haynes' criticisms of prosperity preachers, who promulgate a message that is harmful to all people, particularly to the many poor people who live in the community around this church and compose, no doubt, many of its members. However, the message he preached also gave focus to a different gospel of cultural grievance. By looking to an eschaton that will come about through hostile political activism, the pastor seems to have buried the transformational hope that only comes about through the real Gospel of Christ, who himself experienced oppression in spite of living a sinless life, and who was crucified. That Christ rose again and is seated at the right hand of the Father making intercession for us. Those who suffer for him also reign with him.

That is not to deny that social ministry can be an aspect of the church's ministry, particularly as it equips its members to work actively in their vocations for the good of the community. Indeed, using many New Testament passages as an example (several of Paul's letters highlight a , this should be a cooperative enterprise among believers. Sadly, the churches on the northern side of the DFW north/south divide don't seem to have much interaction with those to the south. One might wish that could change.

Finally, because many aspects of the service seemed openly hostile, with a generalized anger directed toward whites, I want to state that the people around me in the service treated me graciously during a fellowship time, as well as both before and after the service. In the pews, we were brothers and sisters in Christ.

The Reformation Project: Visiting Friendship-West Baptist Church

DALLAS, Texas, February 16, 2014. The campus of Friendship-West Baptist Church sits along the north side of Interstate 20 to the south of downtown Dallas.  This was the only church visited for this study that had traditional pews. The large, elevated stage and choir loft was framed by two large video screens to either side that scrolled various church announcements as the congregation filtered into the sanctuary. As the early service started, the lower level was mostly full, and the balcony would largely fill in as the morning went on.

As the service appeared to be formally beginning, a video was played in which a physician, Dr. Andre Graham, advertised his professional services.  This was followed by an advertisement for an upcoming conference that was taking place that week and which would be discussed further in the service. In fact, a large number of visitors prominently seated near the front would be playing leadership roles in that conference. Other advertisements played, as well.

This was followed by another video of roughly five minutes length featuring a black woman describing various forms of racial injustice that she had experienced throughout her life, going back to her birth in Temple, Texas, for which her parents had relied on the services of a midwife because doctors refused to see blacks in that area.  She described numerous experiences of discrimination, both in employment and as a would be consumer of services. Explaining that she had lived in other states, she added that the worst of her discrimination had occurred in Texas. As the taped testimony concluded, she exhorted the congregation that education was something that could not be taken away.

This was followed by a long, vibrant prayer by a female minister of the church.

An energetic song leader, assisted by a band, praise team, and full choir, led the musical part of the service, which began with songs declaring “It’s all about Jesus” and “When You Call upon Jesus, Something Happens.” The music was repetitive and emotional, consistent with black church traditions extending back throughout American history. Interestingly, an organ was not heard during most of the congregational and other singing, but it did play in accompaniment to persons speaking.

Pastor Frederick B. Haynes, III, who, it was noted, had just celebrated his 31^st anniversary as the pastor of the church, welcomed those in attendance.  During these opening remarks, he made mention of “nonsense in Florida last night.” As I had not seen the news that morning, I was uncertain as to what he was speaking about, but as it became clear that this subject would be a significant point of discussion in the service – Pastor Haynes indicated that he had changed his sermon plans in light of the news -- I quickly scanned the news on my smart phone and learned that a jury had returned a verdict of guilty in 4 of 5 counts in a case involving a white man shooting into the truck of a group of black teenagers. The fact that the not guilty count involved the most serious charge enraged the minister, and he would discuss the nature of his anger through the course of much of the sermon later in the morning.

At this time, he mentioned that many guests were in attendance for the upcoming Proctor Conference, an annual event encouraging political activism on the part of the black church. Attendees included a representative from the World Council of Churches. The minister also worked in a reference to Fox News, who he identified as Fake News while expressing unhappiness that a story critical of a black minister had appeared on the network in the previous week.

The pastor then used a portion of the service for the purpose of introducing the congregation to members of the church who would be up for election in primaries to be held the following week. The candidates had completed cards about their candidacy that were read by the pastor, who expressed his approval of them to the congregation – he took care not to actually endorse anyone, but wanted the congregation to be aware of their presence on this Sunday. In addition to individuals who would be on the ballot, Rev. Haynes also asked controversial, but popular, Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price to come to the platform. At the time of this service, it had been widely reported that Commissioner Price was under investigation from the Justice Department for various crimes associated with his position (he has since been indicted and is awaiting trial), but Pastor Haynes provided his enthusiastic endorsement for Commissioner Price’s work to the applause of the congregation. For the remainder of the service, Commissioner Price would be seated prominently near the front of the congregation, enthusiastically raising his hand or standing to show approval for many of the pastor’s most controversial statements.

Pastor Haynes additionally spoke about his work along with Pastor Jeremiah Wright, the controversial former pastor of President Barack Obama, in encouraging churches to combine an emphasis on individual salvation and social justice in the same manner as Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ and Hayne’s Friendship West Baptist.

After an announcement by Dr. Iva Carothers promoting the Proctor Conference, the congregation was treated to a violin solo by Daniel Davis. Only in his early 20’s, Mr. Davis showed considerable talent and poise, continuing to work flawlessly after the microphone on the violin failed and required changing. This was followed by an offering, which essentially required everyone in attendance to file to the front. This enormous undertaking for a large crowd was handled in an organized and expeditious manner. The choir then performed “Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah.”

The text for Dr. Hayne’s sermon was from Matthew 2, the text recounting Herod’s murder of the innocents following the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. He criticized Christian groups that claim to be pro-life while cutting funding for government programs and otherwise displaying a failure to value black life. Along those lines, he suggested that the jury verdict in Florida furthered an attitude explicit in American culture, as revealed by provisions in the U.S. Constitution as originally ratified that counted blacks as 3/5 of a person.

Dr. Haynes sharply criticized ministers that failed to address these issues, saying that “Herod always has some preachers on payroll that he can pimp.” In particular, he resented those ministers that preached prosperity instead of prophetically speaking truth to power.  The church needs more preachers like Moses and Nathan, he urged, and, in that vein, he offered criticisms of President Obama for his drone policy, suggesting in the process that the President had been duped by the Jewish lobby. Nonetheless, he urged that God’s people also have the faith to see beyond the troubles of right now to a better not yet.

Returning to the Matthew 2 text, the pastor pointed out that Joseph found safety in Egypt, argued that Egyptians were black Africans, and contended that the fact that Jesus could be hidden there proved that the Messiah was also black.  He expressed disdain for white depictions of Jesus, but instead of opposing images of Jesus as violations of the second commandment against the use of images as aids to worship, he insisted that depictions of Jesus should be of a black person.

He used those thoughts as a further springboard calling on blacks to rediscover the achievements of African culture, including medicine and the building of the pyramids.  He then returned to the subject of the Florida trial, complaining that other preachers “will not say one damn word about what happened last night.” Anticipating criticism for the use of the curse word in that statement, he expressed outrage that there is no controversy around damning black children. While continuing to express anger toward the verdict, he offered hope that God has the last word regarding all injustice.

Following a prayer addressed to God, who was described as “our Father and Mother,” he offered an invitation for those who need “to give your life to the Lord.” This was followed by a video promoting the work of St. Jude’s hospital, for which the church received an offering, and a benediction based on the Aaronic blessing.