Low view of the Bible...gets you this

Insight from one of my online students a few summers ago:

I was in a church of a main line denomination last February in East Dayton, OH. The congregation had shrunk from over 1,000 in the 90's to 14 in 2007. The main sanctuary was locked up because they could not light it or heat it for the lack of funds. While I was waiting in the church library I found hundreds of monogrammed and embossed Bibles that were left in the church. I initially thought that they were of old saints that had passed on. I was wrong. These were Bibles that living people had just abandoned as they left the church. It was like an Army, whipped in the field, throwing away their personal equipment to run faster. These people had thrown away their Bibles and left faith period. It is a sad commentary as to the general state of faith outside of evangelical oriented churches. (SG)

Discount the Bible, discount people, discount evangelism. But where there is a high view of scriptural authority (otherwise known as biblical inerrancy) you see spiritual vitality spreading around the world.

When do we have the form without the power?

Interesting question, here. And these are some perspectives. Others you might share?

When do we have the form without the power of religion?

· When we develop church growth strategies that target the middle class instead of the poor and marginalized, then we have the form without the power.

· When we spend more of our resources on constructing and maintaining Church buildings and property than we do on feeding the hungry, then we have the form without the power.

· When we spend more on pastor’s salaries, benefits, and pensions, than we do on clothing the naked and sheltering the homeless, then we have the form without the power.

· When we turn stewardship into financial campaigns for the Church, rather than sacrifice for the poor, then we have the form but not the power.

· When we blame poverty on the sloth of the poor rather than the avarice of the prosperous and the indifference of the comfortable, then we have the form but not the power.

· When we furnish our sanctuaries and social halls in such a way as to make the prosperous comfortable rather than make the indigent welcome, then we have the form but not the power…

· When we preach a grace which saves us without changing us, then we have the form but not the power. (Theodore W. Jennings, Jr. in Theology and Evangelism in the Wesleyan Heritage ed. b James C. Logan)