{"id":903,"date":"2013-04-04T15:58:37","date_gmt":"2013-04-04T15:58:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beta.dminlgp.com\/casinos-and-discipleship\/"},"modified":"2013-04-04T15:58:37","modified_gmt":"2013-04-04T15:58:37","slug":"casinos-and-discipleship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/casinos-and-discipleship\/","title":{"rendered":"Casinos and Discipleship?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Disciples and Casinos? \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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In the course of consulting with various churches, some very interesting dynamics are occurring in one particular church. \u00a0The leadership has determined to make some changes to the church model which has resulted in the departure of most older believers (generationally and spiritually). \u00a0The leadership team discusses the changes privately and very little communication takes place outside the ‘board room.’ \u00a0The church is on course toward a financial melt down because most of those left in the church have little ownership for the operational aspects of the ministry. \u00a0Discipleship is the purported primary ministry in the church, but little time or resources are given to that ministry. \u00a0The Sunday morning show is prime time. \u00a0A number of adherents visit the local casinos on Saturday and the church on Sunday, and they even post their experiences on Facebook! \u00a0Someone’s imagination is at work!<\/div>\n
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How and why is this kind of change taking place? \u00a0If Charles Taylor is right about a new moral order being established in Western Society, then we can ask how that moral order is impacting local faith communities and how the market economy, the social sphere, and self-governance is at work in those communities. \u00a0Unfortunately, I think Taylor’s observation characterizes the modern North American church, where “the underlying idea of society as existing for the (mutual) benefit of individuals and the defense of their rights takes on more and more importance.” \u00a0Loc 56 \u00a0The decisions being made in the church of my opening paragraph are for the purpose of benefitting everyone’s self perception at the cost of real discipleship. \u00a0Again, if Taylor’s observation can be applied to the church, it seems some form of ‘equality’ is achieved at the expense of Biblical teaching. \u00a0<\/div>\n
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What was once anathema in that church is now commonly accepted. \u00a0How did this occur? \u00a0Did the ideas of the leadership infiltrate enough people so that they, the social imaginary, gave legitimacy to new practices? \u00a0I do know this. \u00a0Initially, some lifestyle practices were looked at askance, now they are largely embraced. \u00a0It is my observation that the lifestyle practices were given legitimacy primarily by strong leaders with aggressive personalities. \u00a0They are very concerned about their own individual freedom to practice their faith their way. \u00a0Since they received little push back, others joined. \u00a0It is also interesting how the ‘public sphere’ has played a key role. \u00a0Most of those leading the change are strong users of social media which seems to give them a perceived, if not real, sense of momentum. \u00a0<\/div>\n
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Reading Taylor and thinking about this church has been interesting. \u00a0The group of change agents have largely been successful to separate their everyday life from their spiritual life. \u00a0They have no problem embracing questionable practices because they see those practices as taking place in secular life. \u00a0It seems they have already embraced what Taylor describes as a “decisive stage in the development of our modern predicament, in which belief and unbelief can coexist as alternatives.” loc 1887. \u00a0<\/div>\n
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Many would say that orthodoxy holds that all time is God’s time, that there is no place or thing that is truly secular. \u00a0Taylor states, in contrast, that “Modernity is secular, not in the frequent, rather loose sense of the word, where it designates the absence of religion, but rather in the fact that religion occupies a different place, compatible with the sense that all social action takes place in profane time.” \u00a0loc 1964. \u00a0Perhaps this is what is happening in the church to which I referred. \u00a0Certain activities are religious and certain activities are secular. \u00a0<\/div>\n
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If the new moral order dynamics are at work in the church, then the question of how to unleash social imaginaries to bring about positive change is important. \u00a0In the context of personal discipleship, are we challenging one another to imagine Kingdom living so as to promote that lifestyle? \u00a0Are we having those discussions regularly in our gatherings? \u00a0\u00a0<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Disciples and Casinos? \u00a0 In the course of consulting with various churches, some very interesting dynamics are occurring in one particular church. \u00a0The leadership has determined to make some changes to the church model which has resulted in the departure of most older believers (generationally and spiritually). \u00a0The leadership team discusses the changes privately and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2,186],"class_list":["post-903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dminlgp","tag-taylor","cohort-lgp3"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}