I love it when preachers take the time to decry another church from the pulpit…

...NOT…

But would they have let Carter be interviewed?

I have read the above posts and was pretty disgusted… this guy idolizes Guns N Roses and loves Rock N Roll… HUH.  A lady that curses and is HOLY.  Peter cursed when he was backslid.  I want to be dangerous to a predictable Church world yes, I want to preach “1 Peter 4:17-18 17 For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?  18 And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?” That is dangerous to a loose living, do what you want, be rude, idolize rock bands and curse like a sailor religious people.  Lord, forgive me for wasting my time writing this post… PS Christ ain’t coming back looking like a rock star who thinks that pirates, hard rock and rebellion is cool.  See what he says about rebellion in his book called the Bible.

Who cares about being loud or rude.... do they teach about tithing and are they as cool as Todd Rhoades? Those are the real essentials.

wow! I am new to this blog site and really enjoy the dialogue. I am a little blown away by this story and the comments though. Can’t we be loud and relevant and “cool” pastors without having to resort to immature responses that side us with rebellion, swearing, and drinking? Haven’t we forgot the definition of “holy” to begin with. I am not prescribing a hymnal and starched shirt but come on brothers, let’s grow up a little. If our skin is so thin about our methodology than maybe we should just be quiet, loving and polite.
Maybe instead of celebrating works of the sinful nature that we all battle with, let’s demonstrate Christ likeness and let the fruit speak for itself. Dude!

“As a fan of ... rebellion I like that assessment of us.” -Chris Elrod

“Rebellion is as sinful as witchcraft, and stubbornness as bad as worshiping idols.” - Samuel the prophet.

I wonder who wins in this exchange.

P.S.
Mike Yaconelli(’s comments listed above are) is an idiot(ic).

Rebellion (the spirit of) is bad, period.  The inetersting thing to me is that people often cite Jesus as “the rebel,” when He was, truly, far from it.  All Jesus ever did was obey the Father.  Hardly rebellious.

Yes, I know that there was a “rebellion” against “the system” and the “leaders” of the day, but was this rebellion or reformation, but this defense to me (even when I used it for myself) seemed fishy; almost as if Jesus’ “rebellion” made ours ok, even though what we really wanted was to just be rebellious and not fall under authority.

One of the interesting things I found out in my study of Luther is that his intention was never to leave the Catholic church.  That blows me away even now.  He saw horrible things going on and yet did not “rebel” but instead attempted, out of love for his church and the people therein, to bring about reformation.

As to the Yaconelli comments (that’s why I used these clever things - parentheses most people call them.) Sarcasm aside - my apologies - but his comments were stupid.  Moreover, and far more importantly, they say to people who are loud, rude obnoxious, foul-mouthed drunkards, that they can stay that way and be holy.  That’s worse than stupid or idiotic; it’s eternally dangerous.

Wow, James, you’re making some pretty big leaps there.  You’ve gone from a church being called loud, rude and obnoxious and added that they are foul-mouthed drunkards.  Bravo for being more discerning than me, I had no idea they were also foul-mouthed drunkards. 

And, yes, Jesus was rebellious against the religious authorities of His time, while he was obeying the Father.  You’re taking Chris Elrod’s comments about being called loud, rude and obnoxious and assuming (and you know what happens when you do that) that he advocates rebellion against God. 

I’ve been invited to visit a few churches in our area and at a couple found the type of fire-breathing, hell and damnation, fundamentalist preachers I grew up with.  I thought they were loud, rude and obnoxious, but I’m sure if they came to our church they would say we’re loud, rude and obnoxious because we’ve replaced the choir with the church equivalent of a rock band.  Notice I said I thought they were loud, rude and obnoxious, but not less holy or less righteous.

Normally, I try to keep my responses to no more than two posts, but I have to say something here…

“Wow, James, you’re making some pretty big leaps there.  You’ve gone from a church being called loud, rude and obnoxious and added that they are foul-mouthed drunkards.  Bravo for being more discerning than me, I had no idea they were also foul-mouthed drunkards.”

I did not in anyway ADD that the “loud, rude and obnoxious church.” These were two separate comments.  the first (r,l&o;) being that of (not BY) Elrod’s church, and the second (the foul-mouthed drunkard statement) being the logical extension of Yaconelli’s comments.  I never in ANY way said that because a person - or a church collectively - is rude, loud and obnoxious that they are also foul-mouthed drunkards.

Moreover, Leonard said, “I was loud, rude and obnoxious as a kid BECAUSE I invited lost people to Christ.” [emphasis mine] I think that might be a leap.  Maybe it wasn’t BECAUSE you were doing it, but the way in which you did it.  Just a thought.

In closing (for real this time) I apologize if it seems that I, at ANY time, attacked Elrod’s person, character or church.  That was not my intent or purpose.  Instead, the idea was to focus on this prevelant notion of rebellion as an idea worthy to be embraced.  This idea was best implied by Yanconelli’s quote (i.e. “I know a woman who curses like a sailor, but she’s the most holy woman I know. She is! I’m not kidding. We’ve created this image of what holiness looks like that’s just nonsense. Good holy people probably drink too much some times, and have colorful language, and there’s plenty of room in the Bible to see people like that.").  Affirming a view such as this - whether, as Leonard said “I really doubt the foul mouth drunkard sees these comments as permission.  If you think that then you might not know enough foul mouthed drunkards.” (Just a side note, a have ginormous hugantic family full of foul-mouthed drunkards who constantly espouse ideas such as Yanconelli’s - i.e., “I can worship God just as easily at home watching the football game and drinking a beer as I can in church.” among ridiculous others) - without question paves the road for people who are nominal Christians to make no effort whatsoever to seek or pursue, much less desire, sanctification. 

That’s all I have to say about this subject.

I’m known as a Confrontational Christian. I believe too many times opportunities are presented to Christians who because they have heard the “tolerance” cry so many times have become weak in presenting the Gospel of Jesus Christ to unbelievers. I agree, we should stand strong wearing the armor as this war rages on, but to consider “loud, rude and obnoxious” as a compliment to a Christian is ludicrous. Jesus emptied a temple with a whip of ropes, but He did it because His Father’s temple was being defiled. Calling a woman who curses like a sailor “holy” leads me to believe ‘Yaconelli’ has truly lost his way. A review of the acidity of some of the above comments between posters also leads me to believe it might be a good time to bath this subject in prayer. God Bless.

Gary - Thanks for asking.  Lakeland is a rapidly growing town and has a high rate of unchurched people.  In the area of town where Compass Point planted you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a church - most are traditional Baptist or AOG mega-churches.  For years Lakeland has seen mainly transfer growth from one “flavor of the month” church to another...nobody really seeking out the unchurched and attempting to reach them.  When we (and several other local church plants) began...we got so much flack from the established churches because we were trying to “steal their people”.  The problem with that argument is that 91% of our people had no church experience before Compass Point.  When this came out several churches began to look for other reasons to down us.  One local mega-church got really ticked because we were going into area parks and handing out free bottled water on hot afternoons - no advertising just water.  Apparently they had some of their folks there for a “closed event” church picnic and came back commenting on how great it was to see a church reaching out with water instead of concentrating on inreach with a “closed” picnic.  I got the most interesting phone call from one of the pastors telling me “not to ever do that again” when their church was in the PUBLIC park. He also told me that I needed to quit speaking out from my pulpit about “prosperity preaching” not being Biblcal.  He realized that I never mentioned a church by name when I did this...but it was causing their people to question the leadership.  I thanked him for his phone call...politely told him I’d not be able to follow his “rules” for us...and offered to have lunch sometime around his schedule.  He hung up and began to bash us to the congregation whenever the opportunity arose.  “Loud, rude and obnoxious” are just a few of the things we’ve been called by that church’s staff.