I am Christian Science, but I joined a Congregational Church so that I can have a normal, happy , joyous, praise filled worship experience with my neighbors, like other Christians. I can study and practice CS, and still go to another church where you can feel people are joyously praising the Living God, and fellowshipping with passion and excitement!To people walking in the door to our churches, Christian Science worships feel stiff, frozen, artifical, FORMAL, intellectual, unnatural, unhuman and blocking the heart. When is change needed? When churches are folding-up across the nation and only few young people are left. When the denomination is almost extinct. It's time to put the truth in a better "package". Currently, it's in a coffin headed for the cemetary. One of our large churches recently sold because there were very few "Scientists" left. An evangelical denomination bought the building and the parking lot is filled with cars all week long."Scientists" hesitatingly ask if they might explore tip-toeingly into warming things up step by step. The answer is a resounding "YES! Make big changes and fast!"Why? Because the planet will not be left inhabitable in a few decades unless mankind spiritualizes it's thought. God needs us to make CS worship "people-friendly". We must make our worships satisfying and relevant to the average person, not just to the group who is happy engaging only the intellectual processing part of their "left brains". People have both social and emotional needs. We are supposed to be "meeting the human need" if we are worshipping the right God. Are we? If we were doing that, people would be coming to our worships. They aren't. We got off-track somewhere along the line. Maybe in making an "idol" out of the order of worship and elininating the Holy Spirit. The "letter of the law" should never extinguish the "spirit of the law".
SOME HAVE COME ALIVE AGAIN!!! I visited the SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO SOCIETY while I was traveling. YES!!! YES!!! And a hundred times "YES!" Check out their videos! It was warm, wonderful and above all "normal". They did everything that all CS churches have traditionally done, but they did things in the friendly ways that other Christian churches do. It felt natural and normal. I hope that other churches will follow their example, of letting the Spirit back in, each in their own way. And I am glad that the Mother Church is allowing everyone to peek into their experience on this site.If you are a Christian Scientists who is happy with how our sparsely attended worship services are conducted, then you need to visit a few evangelical churches and see where your neighbors are going and why. Or visit a progressive CS church. But for the average citizen to walk into one of our Sunday worships, what we do looks just plain wierd to them. Stiff memorized statements preceed our rigid skeleton of order of services, and there is no human heart. It appears as if "Scientists" fear some great heirarchy of demons will befall them if they speak as humans or neighbors with any feelings.
CS has to stop being strange and impersonal. Mankind needs what we have.Do not tell me that "the church has done it's job" and that truth has been assimilated across the culture. It has not! New churches are springing-up with hand clapping gospel music (that part is good! ), and rapidly changing New Age theology. This "new metaphysics" is a mutation of Christianity and CS. They use our language, but there is rarely a place for Jesus in it. They often worship "divine self" instead of God the Source. CS birthed the metaphysical movement into being, and it has to recover it's role in shaping society's spiritual growth. We must learn to be relevant to society once again. We have dropped out of the game. We do not know what our neighbors think. We need to jump back in. I'm glad that some churches and societies are doing that.Dave C., Montana
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I chuckled as I read this posting. Particularly the statement that says, "Mankind needs what we have." I clearly don't think that I need what CS offers.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I cringe everytime, I hear someone say, "I thank Mrs. Eddy for blah blah blah." What about God? What about Jesus? I cringe when I hear my husband say that if stranded on a desert island, he only needs S&H. What about the Bible? I cringe, everytime I attend a Wednesday night service and someone talks about a healing that is really nothing more than a self eliminating disease, ie, a cold, the flu, and miscommunication with a fellow human being. I cringe when I see CSers in judgement of each other who seek out medical care because the pain or the illness is too overwhelming. I nearly lost it when a relative died unneccesarily because they would not seek out medical help.
No, Mankind does not need what CS offers. Mankind needs to understand the unconditional love that God offers, the Holy Spirit and the teachings of Jesus. But they don't need to buy into Christian Science and they don't need to buy into MBE's teachings.
Just because someone says that they were devinely inspired....multiple times (count how many times in S&H) does not mean that they were. I guess if you say it enough times, you begin to believe it yourself. Interestingly, that's what happens with a lie as well. If you tell the lie enough times, it becomes true.
No CS 4 me
I studied CS for over 20 years and worked with lots of practitioners, went to class instruction and gave myself treatment everyday. But I've never had a healing.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I do feel a sense of God's presence, I've never actually been healed of anything I've come up against. I've always wondered why.
The church always felt dead and cold. No one ever smiled, most didn't associate with each other outside of the church. It just always felt so cold to me. I saw lots of people come and go.
We had 2 churches here but the membership in one was dying, so they sold that one and the members joined the one that was left and change the name to 3rd church. Still the same ole staleness and something fake about the members over there.
I took my sister to church with me one time and she said it felt like a haunted house.
CS definitely could use some freshness and they could be a little more social...at least a smile would do.
So I finally decided I could study CS at home. It certainly feels a LOT better.
Looks like you even stop posting to your blog :^(
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