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Self Help Church

Noel posted an interesting Quote by Stanley Hauerwas on the Church

What we call “church” is too often a gathering of strangers who see the church as yet another “helping institution” to gratify further their individual desires. One of the reasons some church members are so mean-spirited with their pastor, particularly when the pastor urges them to look at God, is that they feel deceived by such pastoral invitations to look beyond themselves. They have come to church for “strokes,” to have their personal needs met. What we call church is often a conspiracy of cordiality. Pastors learn to pacify rather than preach to their Ananiases and Sapphiras. We say we do it out of “love.” Usually, we do it as a means of keeping everyone as distant from everyone else as possible. You don’t get into my life and I will not get into yours. -Stanley Hauerwas

This entry was posted on Monday, September 27th, 2004 at 9:31 amand is filed under Open Source Theology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

7 Responses to “Self Help Church”

  1. Tony said on: September 27th, 2004 at 11:29 am

    Wow, that’s pretty scathing.

    Do you actually believe that’s the case for every church in America?

  2. greg said on: September 27th, 2004 at 12:58 pm

    Yeah, it annoys me when people say “How can the Church help me” without ever saying “How can I help the Church”.

  3. Matt said on: September 27th, 2004 at 1:32 pm

    Tony - yes, every single one of them. no exceptions.

    :)

    I think there are degrees to which this applies to most churches in America, though obviously not all.

  4. bob said on: September 27th, 2004 at 9:19 pm

    Dude, you check Noel’s site? Do you even know him?

  5. Matt said on: September 28th, 2004 at 9:57 am

    I met him briefly once at a retreat he spoke at here near ames when I was leading worship for it.

    Other than that though, I mostly know him through his blog :)

  6. greg said on: September 28th, 2004 at 9:51 pm

    I’m guessing that was the teen conference in 2003?

  7. Matt said on: September 29th, 2004 at 8:42 am

    Correct.