Also, I thought that it was weird to see an altar call offering. Imports from America always look different in another culture!

Essa é a Igreja do Irmão Eli Soriano (Filipinas)?

Bom,o que eu quero dizer é que devemos pregar o Evangélio do equilibrio, ou seja, Deus cura (faz milagres ainda)dá-nos prosperidade financeira, cura restaura familia etc…
isto para nos levar a primeira finalidade, A SALVAÇÃO.
Os SINAIS seguirão aqueles que crêr. Equanto a Igreja verdadeira estiver na Terra estes sinais estarão, não pdemos omitir nada. Não podemos ao contestar aqueles que visam a prosperidade, inclusive de si mesmo, omitir que Deus salva e faz milagres em nossas vidas, na vida de nossos familiares e de todas aqueles que buscarem

It is equally true, I think, that the current situation contains shocking changes from all others. I recently an article which is very apropos:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/23/AR2009102303674.html?hpid=sec-religion

From it, two question have arisen in my thoughts:

1. What can we introduce into churches, to make them more powerful than 60-inch television sets? I suggest that if we are honest in our contemplation, we will find a great many churches are far weaker. Indeed, it is a terrible thing to say; I suggest it is far more a terrible thing which those churches are, according to certain chapters of Holy Scripture.

2. What can we do, to encourage preachers to be willing to more easily risk their jobs, in order to serve the Gospel?

Question #2 has an obvious answer in church history, still being played out in a very few places, including the local church my wife and I work in. When issues of our pastor’s job come up, he always responds in one simple way: “I work for the bishop, not the church.” The church cannot fire him, and he will be given a job elsewhere if his people rebel sufficiently. In church history (and church present) there is much abuse of this, but perhaps we need to think about rebuilding this with an interdenominational, careful, and holy approach.

There are many answers to question #1. One of them is approaches to preaching. Anyone familiar with a certain Mr. Craddock? He has had much useful to say on the topic, and there is some video of his work in action on YouTube.

J.E.B.

A few years ago I posted some thoughts on urban legends of the early church in response to my frustration with all the deconstruction going on in contemporary Christianity. The desire is to have a more pure ecclesiology, but the focus is often on imitating structure, rather than learning from the early church faithfulness, piety, and obedience. Here’s the link: http://honest2blog.wordpress.com/2007/10/15/urban-legends-of-church-history/

Good discussion, guys.

I guess you’re just … a rarity, not unChristian, Jonathan.

However, regardless of whether or not the Early Church is to be normative, my point still stands: We should, with prayer and discernment, seek to make their strengths our strengths. If there were things they got right, perhaps we should consider adapting those same ideas and actions to our current situation. This is the use of Church History, besides helping to keep us from becoming ungrounded and rootless, attempting to reinvent the Church every 10 to 100 years.

J.E.B.

Therefore, what strengths did they possess in the midst of it all? What was the Grace of God doing through them to grow His Church? If we examine their strengths while acknowledging their weaknesses, we can learn from the example of the early Christians and grow more fully into the likeness of Christ.

This is one of the great uses of all Church History, especially that of the patristic age (up to c. AD 500).

J.E.B.