Rick Warren: COVID-19 has 'revealed a fundamental weakness in the Church'
Many churches across the U.S. are scrambling in the wake of COVID-19 because they’ve focused solely on worship instead of other aspects of ministry, Pastor Rick Warren of the California-based Saddleback Church has said.
“COVID revealed a fundamental weakness in the Church,” the pastor recently told Relevant magazine in an interview. “Most churches only have one purpose: worship. And if you take worship away, you’ve got nothing. They’re in a hurry to get back to worship because that’s all they’ve got.”
But the 20,000-member Saddleback Church is built not on one purpose, but on five,” Warren explained....
Jim Lincoln wrote: —- excerpt from,"Another COVID-19 Outbreak at John MacArthur’s Grace Community Church – UPDATED" https://tinyurl.com/ybwl9ko3 —-
Focus, Jim. This thread is about Rick Warren. Besides, you can’t have “another outbreak” without having a previous one. Three part time workers out of 7000 members isn’t an outbreak in any language, even that of liberals who are bad at math.
Did Warren really say that his church doesn't rely on worship?
All those other mish-mesh, if they're not an act of worship, get rid of em! WORSHIP is the one and only act of the believer. The problem is that most people's perception is that "Sunday" is "worship." The Bible calls for the assembling together, but most pastors know that there's no Biblical basis for Sunday to be that day.
"I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship" (Taken from Romans 12:1)
Quote:- "The word of God does not leave out the body in holy worship. That service only is acceptable to God which is according to the written word. It must be gospel worship, spiritual worship. That is a reasonable service which we are able and ready to give a reason for, in which we understand ourselves. God deals with us as with rational creatures, and will have us so to deal with him. Thus must the body be presented to God." (M.Henry) ___________
Quote:- Why do we do what we do when we gather as a congregation of Christ each Lord’s Day? I’m not asking why we gather to worship the Lord, or even why we meet on Sunday. I’m asking why we worship in the way that we worship – and why we worship differently than others worship. It’s important that we know. If we don’t understand why we do what we do, then one of two things must be true: either we’re worshipping this way simply because we’ve always done it this way – that is, because of tradition – or we simply don’t care how we worship. Neither option is healthy." (Doug Barnes)(hillsurc.com)
True belief in the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ is supposed to equip the Christian to overcome fear. Yet it has seemed to me that the reaction of much of the church to a coronavirus with an Infection Fatality Rate of around 0.2% – 0.26%, has really been no different to that of the non-Christian. Fear of the virus has shaped the way many have responded to the most astonishing powers over churches for eight centuries. You have to go back to 1208 to see such a closure of churches, which was done by a Papal Interdict (interestingly enough on 23rd March – the same day as Lockdown began) which lasted for six years. Defiance? Hardly! Not only do the majority of the churches in the country seem to think the state has absolute jurisdiction over the church (it doesn’t), but they have allowed it to reshape the way they worship, including singing, the covering of faces with bits of cloth, and the ceasing of physical gatherings and physical fellowship. The irony of course is that this is done ostensibly in obedience to God, yet the Bible commands us to worship God together physically; to cultivate fellowship together physically (Acts 2:42); and to sing loudly (eg. Psalm 47:1)-https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/2020-year-church-was-sharp-two-edged-marshmallow
The SA article is interesting as are the comments to it. The same is true for the following article. âť—đź‘Ť
Warren Throckmorton wrote: .... UPDATE: Julie Roys has an article out on Sunday
https://tinyurl.com/y938y35r
with reporting that people at Grace are being discouraged from telling anyone about their COVID diagnosis. She also has much more documentation of GCC members and staff who have COVID. It seems pretty clear that MacArthur’s rosy picture of a church meeting indoors without caution and without cases of COVID is false....
excerpt from,"Another COVID-19 Outbreak at John MacArthur’s Grace Community Church – UPDATED"
Worship is all we have sounds like jab. Worship as a family is vital, but we are living sacrifices, which is our reasonable service of WORSHIP. Sounds like the unbeliever when they accuse us of doing nothing else to help the world when we preach the Gospel. There's still seven days a week, all of which we serve the Lord.
This is an outrageous Strawman. Is he trying to sell more books? Most churches in my experience have Men's Bible Study, Women's Bible Study, Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting, AWANA or some other youth-group meeting, and ministries for This and That.
No one asks whether these programs are Biblically authorized, of course, but you can't accuse them of being idle after Sunday.
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