We suffer today from the church structures coveting and imitating big business. There is a deliberate connection with Peter Drucker and other fads, such as mission vision statements. But I have already written about the ecclesiastical wannabe executives.
One person, who has published hundreds of books, suggested I talk about the way we were. What were the strengths of the earlier generations?
The two main strengths were the use and memorization of the Bible, and the traditional hymnal. Today the Bibles are getting worse every year and the hymnals are equally bad. The latest Teufel-book weighs a ton but is lite in doctrine, lusting for modernism and Calvinism.
Biblical use is the victim of these glad-handing, earnest salesmen of the latest thing. The power of the Bible comes from realizing that the Scriptures are God speaking to us. Not only that, every verse contains the power of the Holy Spirit acting on us when we hear it, read it, or remember it.
A generation or two of ordained morons has taken away respect for the King James Version, the most precise translation of the Testaments and also the most reliable. The modern New Testaments have hundreds of deliberate erasures and blatantly false - but ever-changing - paraphrases.
Awe and respect for the Holy Bible lends itself to reading and memorizing. Our great grandparents had tiny Bibles and small hymnals they could carry, read, and memorize. The hymnals often had no notes, but the old-timers knew the tunes. What good is an anchor weight hymnal with 900 good, horrible, and mangled songlets?
If the object is to please and motivate, why not copy the fight songs of the Big Ten football teams? Hymns should be modeled after the Psalms and the poetry of Revelation, not the Top Thirty. The purer the communication of the Biblical message, the more effective it is.
But that is not to say that the result is always positive. Those who reject and make fun of the Scriptures (including the KJV haters) harden and blind themselves through the efficacy of the Word of God.
The dilution of the hymns - and worship - goes hand-in-claw with the goals of their Father Below. The church shrinkers have the humility and compassion of a Chinese warlord. They permit no objections or corrections. They must win at any cost, and they have.
However, the technology they love so much can place a traditional church service into any online device. The Word cannot be fettered.
