{"id":73332,"date":"2018-08-16T14:00:57","date_gmt":"2018-08-16T18:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=73332"},"modified":"2018-08-17T06:04:54","modified_gmt":"2018-08-17T10:04:54","slug":"john-piper-visits-a-minnesota-mainline-church-services-and-finds-6-problemsmakes-6-observations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=73332","title":{"rendered":"(DG) John Piper visits a Minnesota mainline church services and finds 6 problems+makes 6 observations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>5. The emptiness of the conversation with the Muslim leader points to the fact that <strong>in the view of this church, contemporary Christianity does not have to do mainly with ultimate reality. It just doesn\u2019t. It\u2019s not a metaphysical issue. It\u2019s not an ultimate reality issue. The nature of God, the nature of Christ, the nature of salvation, the path of holiness, the nature of eternal destinies \u2014 that is simply not the issue in contemporary mainline Protestantism. Instead, the dynamics that define relationships between social groups is front and center. That\u2019s really the issue, not ultimate reality<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>6. Finally, the fact that this church is made up mainly of old people suggests at least at the present that many younger people doubt the validity of traditional religious forms that no longer embody the claim to offer ultimate truth and ultimate reality and ultimate salvation. I think that they are absolutely right to try to maintain the forms. If you walk into that church, and you didn\u2019t know any better, you\u2019d say this looks like a church from forever ago \u2014 this is what church is. Big stained-glass windows, and pastors at the front, a big organ, lots of music, singing about Jesus \u2014 what could be more churchy than this? Except there\u2019s nothing there of any ultimate reality.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.desiringgod.org\/interviews\/pipers-reflections-after-a-mainline-church-service\">Read it all<\/a> (my emphasis).<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Should John Piper Have Changed the Words to \u2018Great Is Thy Faithfulness\u2019 ? <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/7lXm1GGFMh\">https:\/\/t.co\/7lXm1GGFMh<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/john?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#john<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/bJ94goZju6\">pic.twitter.com\/bJ94goZju6<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; FaithfulNews (@faithfulnews) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/faithfulnews\/status\/1029096901940064257?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">August 13, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>5. The emptiness of the conversation with the Muslim leader points to the fact that in the view of this church, contemporary Christianity does not have to do mainly with ultimate reality. It just doesn\u2019t. It\u2019s not a metaphysical issue.<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=73332\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[209,175,168,183,184,177,108,34,171,169],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-americau-s-a","category-anthropology","category-ethics-moral-theology","category-liturgy-music-worship","category-parish-ministry","category-pastoral-theology","category-religion-culture","category-theology","category-theology-salvation-soteriology","category-theology-scripture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=73332"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73336,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73332\/revisions\/73336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=73332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=73332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=73332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}