seedfieldtalk.myfastforum.org

Darthmiller · Joined: 03 Mar 2007 Posts: 27

Is culture something we need to be afraid of? Do we need to be "counter culture" in every way? Is culture a good or bad thing? Does the Church need to engage with culture or are we better off now taking the Eastern Orthodox route of keeping Church as it has been, unchanging and seperated.

The Eastern Orthodox Church has changed very little in theology and doctrine since it parted company from the West which has changed constantly over the centuries as new theologians question the established norms.
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Going to church no more makes you a Christian than standing in a garage makes you a car.

paulvipond · Joined: 14 Nov 2006 Posts: 60 Location: Bury

How fast is the Eastern Orthodox church growing? Nuff said?
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Make you walk in the dust of your rabbi, Jesus

Darthmiller · Joined: 03 Mar 2007 Posts: 27

So you think that the Church really needs to reconsider its increasingly isolationist policy and start changing the way it does things so that more people from the outside will come in?

And btw orthodoxy is reported as being the FASTEST growing branch of Christianity so I am unsure what your point is.

(interesting how in todays society it is the most orthodox forms of any religion which are experiencing the most growth)
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Going to church no more makes you a Christian than standing in a garage makes you a car.

paulvipond · Joined: 14 Nov 2006 Posts: 60 Location: Bury

I'm obviously reading diferent reports, I thought pentecostalism was the fasted growing branch of the church. One thing we can agree on - t'aint methodism.
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Make you walk in the dust of your rabbi, Jesus

Darthmiller · Joined: 03 Mar 2007 Posts: 27

I beleive pentacostalism is the fastest growing in the west but over all the Orthodox church seems to be getting the numbers
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Going to church no more makes you a Christian than standing in a garage makes you a car.

Jannine Ebenso · Joined: 21 Dec 2006 Posts: 13 Location: Nigeria

Being cultured as I am (NOT!); ....no being in a cross cultural environment, let me add my own thoughts.

I think there is a fine balance between being so much in the culture that no-one can see the difference and being so out of it that you look like a quack.

Last week I was in Ethiopia (where the Orthodox Church is having a mini-revival apparently!). That church would not attract me at all, but Ethiopians are thronging there in their hundreds of thousands.

When I was not a church goer, what attracted me to Seedfield was:

1) Here are folks not too different to me, (just ordinary people really)
2) Here are folks who have something that I don't and wouldn't mind having (not so ordinary after all)

It is the same here in Nigeria. I had to move churches recently because the church I had been going to had changed into something I could not relate to - not doctrine-wise, but culture wise. They became 'too yoruba', and not being a yoruba I couldn't relate to it.

Where I am now is not 'a-cultural' but almost - all colours, all ages, all tribes are welcome., The sermons touch on real issues, but are soundly Biblical.

That's all.

Jannine