Sunday, August 02, 2009

Do we live our faith?

Henry Neufeld has food for thought in "Do we live what we believe?". He's editing a book that has some pointed comments. The book's author asserts that the problem with congregational decline may be that people attending church don't really believe what they say they do:

What I do question is how God can be especially present at so many worship services with so little impact. People go back again and again to experience the presence of God and then leave and go on living in the same way.

Either we are not experiencing the presence of God as much as we say we are, or that presence is having much less impact on us than it should.

Beth Quick picked up and expanded on Henry's posting.

Tony Campolo once quipped that Nietzsche came up with his formula that “God is dead” after observing a church service and noting how it felt like God’s funeral.

So ... are our worship services "dead"? Are the hearts of the "faithful" beating only faintly with the Spirit? How many truly feel the presence of God during worship versus how many say they do? Can anyone tell that we are Christians if we don't explicitly broadcast it?