their church is increasingly unable to articulate orthodox theology in meaningful and creative manners that are deep. For many Evangelical/Free Worship Christians, emotion trumps intellect. Among the interesting answers I received in my interviews is that people come to church in order to There were some that come to learn about God, “feel God/the Spirit.” but the consensus was that worship was about feeling the presence of God. This is not a wholly unreasonable desire, but presence is not heightened in worship. God is God’s present in all of the earth. Very few people indicated a participation in regular study or reading of scripture. The use of our brain was usually down to wanted to learn something [in worship] that “I would help me through my week.” I worry that this need to feel God, combined with the history of guilt and binary good/bad thinking will mostly urge people to feel guilty in their world. Sometimes, the ability to think through a situation would allow them to see Christ in surprising places. Further, neither emotional connection to God nor intellectual connection to God is complete. We should be working toward a balance between right feelings or right affections, with right belief, and right actions. If any of these three become more celebrated than the others, the faith becomes a bit imbalanced. We need to celebrate and develop all three disciplines. Many Christians desire deeper and more frequent sacramental participation (especially from our younger Christian adults). Our younger people heavily indicated a preference toward weekly communion. While there was more likelihood for older people to use the language of fearing that “it
their church is increasingly unable to articulate orthodox theology in meaningful and creative manners that are deep. For many Evangelical/Free Worship Christians, emotion trumps intellect. Among the interesting answers I received in my interviews is that people come to church in order to “feel God/the Spirit.” There were some that come to learn about God, but the consensus was that worship was about feeling the presence of God. This is not a wholly unreasonable desire, but God’s presence is not heightened in worship. God is present in all of the earth. Very few people indicated a participation in regular study or reading of scripture. The use of our brain was usually down to “I wanted to learn something [in worship] that would help me through my week.” I worry that this need to feel God, combined with the history of guilt and binary good/bad thinking will mostly urge people to feel guilty in their world. Sometimes, the ability to think through a situation would allow them to see Christ in surprising places. Further, neither emotional connection to God nor intellectual connection to God is complete. We should be working toward a balance between right feelings or right affections, with right belief, and right actions. If any of these three become more celebrated than the others, the faith becomes a bit imbalanced. We need to celebrate and develop all three disciplines. Many Christians desire deeper and more frequent sacramental participation (especially from our younger Christian adults). Our younger people heavily indicated a preference toward weekly communion. While there was more likelihood for older people to use the language of fearing that “it
EN_Brooks_PRP.docx