Mark Johnston Drops from UPCI, Garner Next???

[pelathais]

Originally Posted by CC1

I watched the commercial for "The Journey" and am not surprsed these guys are leaving the UPC. Nothing I saw in that video "looked" UPC and in the Mothership looks are a huge part.

It is interesting how hard it is for most traditional Oneness Pentecostals to even consider a different paradigm of church than church as something you dress up to the hilt for.

I had this discussion with a UPC relative a few months ago. She thinks it is terrible that a Preacher would preach without a suit and people would go to church dressed casually. She honestly sees it as disrespect to God. Believes the old mantra that you must dress up for church to "offer God your best",etc,etc.

I tried to explain to her that these people were not disrespecting God but looked at their relationship with him as more friend than someone you had to dress up for to impress.

It always struck me as being something of a holdover from when we were "on the wrong side of the tracks." I heard a lot of sermons about how "Pentecost has arrived!" when I was young. We were "respectable people" now.

I also remember Denver Stanford preaching at GC once (early '80s?). He repeatedly emphasized a point about a conversation he had with someone "on the streets" of Boston. Some guy evidently had approached him while he was handing out tracts, read the word "Pentecostal" and commented on the fact that Bro. Stanford "didn't look like one of those."

Bro. Stanford said in his sermon, "I had a shine on my shoes and a crease in trousers and he said, 'You don't look the part (Pentecost).'" This was in the era when a preacher who wanted to "really show what God could do" would leave the farm and move to the big city and win souls.

It was nice that these guys left the farm and all to win souls. It's just rather trite of the movement to get the "crease in my trousers" stuck in its craw.

*** AND - I don't mean to tie the good brother DS (named above) to any ornery opinions and the like. It's just his sermon at GC (along with the success he was blessed with at the time) seemed to somehow sum up a certain feeling that we all seemed to have at the time.

[mizpeh]

Originally Posted by Charnock

I recently let my license drop.

I know of six other ministers whom I am close to in both age and ideology who have done the same.

They're sick of it.

What are you sick of?

[Truthseeker]

Originally Posted by *AQuietPlace*

Sick of what?

Maybe sick of not being able to wear trendy t shirts with jeans that have holes at the knees to church???

[mizpeh]

Maybe he is sick of this:

"On the other hand there is that sectarianism that is concerned with purity of doctrine and practice as a condition of community to such a degree that division of community inevitably ensues like the cells of a developing embryo. The most delightful literary description of this sectarianism that I’ve come across is found in Garrison Keillor’s fictional narrative Lake Wobegon Days where the narrator recalls the history of his Brethren tradition. The following passage is drawn from pages 155-6:"

We were “exclusive” Brethren, a branch that believed in keeping itself pure of false doctrine by avoiding association with the impure. Some Brethren assemblies, mostly in larger cities, were not so strict and broke bread with strangers—we referred to them as “the so-called Open Brethren,” the “so-called” implying the shakiness of their position—whereas we made sure that any who fellowshipped with us were straight on all the details of the Faith, as set forth by the first Brethren who left the Anglican Church in 1865 to worship on the basis of correct principles. In the same year, they posed for a photograph: twenty-one bearded gentlemen in black frock coats, twelve sitting on a stone wall, nine standing behind, gazing solemnly into a sunny day in Plymouth, England, united in their opposition to the pomp and corruption of the Christian aristocracy.

Unfortunately, once free of the worldly Anglicans, these firebrands were not content to worship in peace but turned their guns on each other. Scholarly to the core and perfect literalists every one, they set to arguing over points that, to any outsider, would have seemed very minor indeed but which to them were crucial to the Faith, including the question: if Believer A is associated with Believer B who has somehow associated himself with C who holds a False Doctrine, must D break off association with A, even though A does not hold the Doctrine, to avoid the taint?

The correct answer is: Yes. Some Brethren, however, felt that D should only speak with A and urge him to break off with B. The Brethren who felt otherwise promptly broke off with them. This was the Bedford Question, one of several controversies that, inside of two years, split the Brethren into three branches.

Once having tasted the pleasure of being Correct and defending True Doctrine, they kept right on and broke up at every opportunity, until by the time I came along, there were dozens of tiny Brethren groups, none of which were speaking to any of the others.

http://randalrauser.com/2011/01/keep...own-the-block/

[pelathais]

Originally Posted by Truthseeker

Maybe sick of not being able to wear trendy t shirts with jeans that have holes at the knees to church???

Charizard strikes me more as the type to wear neoprene hip-waders to church instead of torn jeans.

[*AQuietPlace*]

Originally Posted by mizpeh

Maybe he is sick of this:

"On the other hand there is that sectarianism that is concerned with purity of doctrine and practice as a condition of community to such a degree that division of community inevitably ensues like the cells of a developing embryo. The most delightful literary description of this sectarianism that I’ve come across is found in Garrison Keillor’s fictional narrative Lake Wobegon Days where the narrator recalls the history of his Brethren tradition. The following passage is drawn from pages 155-6:"

http://randalrauser.com/2011/01/keep...own-the-block/

Wow.

Just wow.

[pelathais]

Originally Posted by mizpeh

Maybe he is sick of this:

"On the other hand there is that sectarianism that is concerned with purity of doctrine and practice as a condition of community to such a degree that division of community inevitably ensues like the cells of a developing embryo. The most delightful literary description of this sectarianism that I’ve come across is found in Garrison Keillor’s fictional narrative Lake Wobegon Days where the narrator recalls the history of his Brethren tradition. The following passage is drawn from pages 155-6:"

http://randalrauser.com/2011/01/keep...own-the-block/

It is worth pointing out that much of our theology, especially our Dispensational eschatology, comes to us from the Brethren Movement.

[pelathais]

Originally Posted by *AQuietPlace*

Wow.

Just wow.

You said it. Of course Mizzie said it first, but she's not talking to me due to some taint I bear so it is with your "Wow" that I must converse.

[mizpeh]

Originally Posted by pelathais

It is worth pointing out that much of our theology, especially our Dispensational eschatology, comes to us from the Brethren Movement.

Good to know, Pel. Do you suppose there is a correlation between sectarianism and dispensational eschatology?

[Sabby]

Originally Posted by deacon blues

The last BOTT I attended MJ preached a fine message about Jesus. In fact I was beginning to regret attending the conference until that message. I knew God sent me there to specifically hear that Word from the Lord. I was dumbstruck that people were offended at the message. The sermon basically said that Jesus was what this is all about. That people "would see Jesus". That the only people who got in the way of people who wanted to see Jesus were the Pharisees. MJ preached if we want people to see Jesus we have to fight against a Pharisee spirit. I was in complete agreement. I was convicted to fight the Pharisee in me. I believe all people of faith have the potential to become religious, self-righteous, steeped in tradition, hypocritical Pharisees. I took the message personal and embraced its truth. Others evidently took it personal and were offended. It was the beginning of the crucifixion of MJ.

Funny thing. You would think the "Jesus Only" people, the "people of the Name", the people with the great revelation of who Jesus is would rejoice at such a message. But I guess the Pharisee part hit a little close to home for some and they didn't like the reflection in the looking glass of the Word. They decided to forget what manner of man they saw in that reflection.

And, as history bears out millions of times before, the messenger is targeted, despised, marginalized, defamed, deemed dangerous and toxic. Strange that preaching Jesus, the blood and the cross makes someone a pariah. Preach anything, but don't preach Jesus! There's no other choice. Preach for the praise of men or preach for the applause of heaven.

Burning at the stake, hanging, drowning, firing squad, excommunication, kicked out, pressured out, starved out, crucified, whatever---the end result is the same. The Machine will destroy you. Okay a little dramatic, but you get the picture. MJ will do fine. He's a good man and will keep preaching Jesus. A good church will continue to move forward.

For those of you that want to preach Jesus for those who would see Jesus, keep on keepin on. But be warned, hell takes notice of the Jesus Preachers. Be vigilant, be alert. But take heart: the gates of hell will not prevail.

Praise GOD for this word, brother.