SLOPPY TERMINOLOGY PART #2

Welcome back! I pray you are being blessed as these devotions come your way. I enjoy posting them and encourage you to leave a comment. God bless and let's begin...

How about the term "Church?" Is the Church a building? It is if you listen to people talk. For instance "Let’s meet at the church", or "How many people does your church hold?" And so it goes. Why is it that so often we are more concerned about the paint on the walls of a building than we are about lost souls? Could it be because we know that Christ died for the Church? And since the Church is a building we better make sure the air conditioning works properly. After all, Christ died for the Church so it better be taken care of or we will have to stand before God. Right? Does this sound as silly to you reading it as it does to me as I type it?

The term "Church" is used for the Greek word ekklesia. A proper translation would be "Assembly" or "Congregation." It literally means the "called out ones." We need to make sure we remember for whom Christ died. It was not for a building. It was for the Body of Believers. We have grown sloppy!

One of my pet-peeves is the term "Worship." Since when is Christianity to only worship for an hour on Sunday mornings? Evidently, many congregations, individuals, only worship one hour - It says so in their bulletins: "Sunday School: 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. – Worship: 10 a.m. to 11 a.m." Some congregations, individuals, evidently worship for only a small part of that one hour. They have "Worship Leaders" that come out and all they do is sing and lead singing until the preaching starts. Is that all there is to worship? According to God's Holy Spirit, NO!! Paul, as he is inspired of The Holy Spirit, writes in Romans 12:1-2 "Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect." (NASB) Are we only transformed for an hour on The Lord's Day, and not conformed to the world for that same hour? God forbid!!

True worship sounds like a lot more than just a few minutes on Sunday morning. It also includes much more than singing. We have grown sloppy!

SLOPPY TERMINOLOGY MEANS SLOPPY THEOLOGY

Welcome to another devotional and I pray you are doing well as you continue to serve our Great God. Anyone who knows me for very long might hear my mouth say something different than what is in my brain. I once told my wife I had to "go shake a tower" when what I meant was that I had to "go take a shower."Sometimes my mouth seems to have a mind of it’s own. Those are "slips of the tongue" and once the laughter dies down, no harm is done. Too often in the Church we have "slips of the tongue" in our terminology that are either the result of bad traditions or we are simply not using the correct language. Either reason may lead others, or even ourselves, to believe things that simply are not Biblical. The Church has become extremely tolerant of sloppy terminology and sloppy theology. I hear it almost everywhere I go, everything I read, people I speak with, etc. I am not talking about major issues, necessarily. Although you can hear some out-and-out heresy in some of our pulpits, that is not what I am talking about. This article deals with some sloppy terminology that good-hearted people use from time to time. Nevertheless, just because we may not be discussing major heresies does not mean that it is not an important matter. The Church of Christ/Christian Church used to be known as "A People of the Book." Now the Church of Christ/Christian Church sometimes asks, "What book do you mean?" My proposition is that due to the use of sloppy terminology we have allowed a great deal of bad doctrine, a.k.a., sloppy theology, to make it’s way into the Church. Or it could be that due to weak teaching and weak preaching, a.k.a., sloppy theology, we have begun using sloppy terminology because the Church no longer knows what the correct terminology is? Either way, we’ve grown sloppy and careless. What follows are just a few examples of this sloppiness.

The term "Pastor" is back in style, it seems. Many preachers are claiming the title "Pastor" in many of The Lord's Churches. Why is that? The term "Pastor" is only used one time in the New Testament in Ephesians4:11, and that is a poor translation of the Greek word poimen, which gets translated everywhere else in the New Testament as "Shepherd." "Pastor" is a term reserved for the Elders in the Church. The preacher is supposed to be the Evangelist. Although there are several areas in which the offices of Elders and Evangelist overlap, nonetheless, they are two separate offices with their own distinctive qualifications and responsibilities. As an Evangelist, if someone were to call me "pastor" I would not jump down his or her throat. But as soon as the proper opportunity presented itself I would explain why they should not call me the"pastor", and I have done so many times and have yet to offend anyone.Usually they are grateful and proceed to tell me that no one has ever explained that to them. Why aren’t our Churches teaching these basic terms to her people? We have grown sloppy!

"RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE"

Good day everyone and welcome to another devotion from God's Word. Today I would like to begin a look at the idea of religious tolerance. We hear it mentioned often enough in the news and media around us, but how are we to deal with it as it comes close to home in our communities and neighborhoods?

First of all we may need to define the word "religion" and then the word "tolerance" as defined from two different sources.

religion noun [C/U]
the belief in and worship of a god or gods, or any such system of belief and worship

religious adjective a religious holiday. He is deeply religious.

religiously adverb If you do something religiously, you do it regularly: I exercise religiously, I really do. (Cambridge Dictionary of American English)

(Religious) tolerance:

Among religious conservative, this means that one must accept all religious faiths as equally true.

Among others, it means to grant full religious freedom to persons of all religions, including those different from your own faith. From http://www.religioustolerance.org/gl_r.htm.

This is what we are being taught and what our children are learning and told from an early age to believe and accept. IS THIS CORRECT TEACHING? No, no, a thousand times NO!! Not that we should become like the Muslims and do all we can to annihilate, kill and wipe from the earth all who believe differently. Even Jesus The Christ did not go that far. He allowed people to believe what they chose in the face of TRUTH but knew there was ONLY ONE WAY, through HIM!! No one comes to The Father unless they go through Him. No one enters glory if they deny Him as the ONLY begotten of The Father.

We may have to live among different beliefs and religious practices, but we do not have to accept any of them as Truth. In accepting another religion as true or equal, we are really saying that what we believe in ourselves is not necessarily the right way. If all religions are equally true, they are all equally false. With this line of thinking there is no standard, no basis other than what any individual or group decides within their own life to be true. Jesus said in John 17:17, Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. (NIV)

God's Word is THE standard and to tolerate or accept "other" religions not of God is to deny God, HIS Word and all HE has done to bring salvation through HIS Son Jesus The Christ.