Intervention

[Steve Born]

This song speaks to me of the Community Chapel experience, especially in view of the way Don emphasized the concept of the church as an army with him as our general, and then also because of the way one is treated by its loyalists if one finally tears oneself free of its oppressive group think:

I can taste your fear It's gonna lift you up and take you out of here And the bone shall never heal I care not if you kneel We can't find you now But they're gonna get their money back somehow And when you finally disappear We'll just say that you were never here Been working for the church While your life falls apart Singing hallelujah with the fear in your heart Every spark of friendship and love Will die without a home Hear the soldier groan, "We'll go at it alone" Hear the soldier groan, "We'll go at it alone"

I like it a lot musically as well - it starts off with a wall of sound from a pipe organ, which somehow reminds me of the massed choruses of Music Ministry.  It's from a song named "Intervention" by Arcade Fire from their album Neon Bible.

[Steve Born]

A further comment...

What I've learned in life about church, and about one's life falling apart while singing "Hallelujah" there:

When one finds oneself viewing one's membership in one's church, or even just the concept of belonging to any church, as an increasingly futile attempt to fulfill incomprehensible obligations imposed from someplace above, then one can know one is in a false church like, in my case, Community Chapel.  Its graceless, law-centered, man-exalting, anti-Trinitarian theology is an extreme example of what Luther called a "theology of glory," but lesser examples are unfortunately everywhere out there.  If your church is not offering the pure gospel of God's free grace in Christ and pointing to His merits alone as man's salvation, or if worse, you've been driven out of churches for good by theologies of glory and given up on church entirely, then know that you've been victimized by false doctrine, false churches, false ministers of the gospel, not by true ministers of Christ's church and gospel.

[Gordy]

I agree up to the point of the anti-Trinitarian doctrine. Beyond that, I believe your observation is valid and one key way to evaluate a potential church. If it is man centered it will surely fail and fail big.

[lanny]

"If it is man centered it will surely fail and fail big."
---Does that include churches named after a man?    L U T H E R ?
Lanny

[Gordy]

The name is not the primary issue to me but how it operates. If there is a strong authoritarian at the helm, I don't believe he/she has a clue about the core of the gospel not to mention dealing with people effectively. Long ago I determined that canned liturgy is not for me regardless of the name on the building. It so far removed from my interests that I don't see how I could ever adapt. I have been in many "non-liturgial" churches but in fact many do have their own form of liturgy (repetitive), just using different terms for it.

So, it's not the name but how it functions is the model I use.