Re: Harvard’s intellectual culture discourages identification with Christianity

On 4/18/06, Janice Matchett <janmatch@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> At 04:22 PM 4/17/2006, Rich Blinne wrote:
>
>
> On 4/17/06, *Janice Matchett* <janmatch@earthlink.net > wrote:
>
> @ Here's something to make you "feel" better:
> http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1616988/posts?page=10#10
>
> ~ Janice
>
>
> I agree with Rush on this movie. People have already made up their minds
and even this timely reminder of what it is all about will not change it. A
close friend of my wife's abandoned her because my wife voted for President
Bush in 2004. We ought to have been united after 9/11. The spike in church
attendance should have been permanent. I despaired my nation but then I
remembered a notable exception was Redeemer Presbyterian in NYC.

The following is from a full page NYT piece on Redeemer (February 26, 2006)
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F40912F7345A0C758EDDAB0894DE404482
[Note:
you need NYT Select to access the full text]:

> Sept. 11 proved to be a defining moment for the church. On the Sunday
> after the terrorist attack, more than 5,000 people showed up. So many people
> packed the church's Sunday morning service that Dr. Keller called another
> service on the spot, and 700 people came back to attend. While attendance
> returned to normal in other churches after several weeks, Redeemer kept
> attracting about 800 more people a week than it had drawn before the attack.
>
>
> ''For the next five years, I would talk to people about when they joined
> the church, and they said right after 9/11,'' Dr. Keller said.
>
> After the attack, the church also began to increase its training for those
> working to found churches. His church's main goal, Dr. Keller said, is to
> teach pastors how to truly love the city, rather than fear its worldly
> influences. Unlike many evangelicals, Dr. Keller advocates an indirect
> approach to change.
>
> ''If you seek power before service, you'll neither get power, nor serve,''
> he said. ''If you seek to serve people more than to gain power, you will not
> only serve people, you will gain influence. That's very much the way Jesus
> did it.''
>
> As a result, one of Redeemer's hallmarks has always been its focus on
> charity, something it emphasizes in its training of urban pastors. It
> operates a program called Hope for New York that arranges volunteer
> opportunities for people from Redeemer with 35 different partner
> organizations. Last year, 3,300 people from the church volunteered their
> time.
>
> A looming question for Redeemer, though, is how much of what Dr. Keller
> and his team have built can be maintained when he ultimately exits the
> stage. When he was out for several months in the summer of 2002 while
> undergoing treatment for thyroid cancer, attendance dipped noticeably.
>
> For now, the faithful of Redeemer do not have to contemplate that
> situation. Dr. Keller continues to preach nearly every Sunday, dashing back
> and forth to its different rented facilities and putting in unrelenting
> 80-hour work weeks.
>
> On the night of the snowstorm, Dr. Keller closed his monologue with a
> moving riff on Jesus' love in spite of humanity's flaws, and a quote from C.
> S. Lewis, one of his favorite writers: ''The hardness of God is kinder than
> the softness of men, and his compulsion is our liberation.''
>
> And then he prayed for his congregation and his city.
>
Thank you Janice. I do feel better now.
Received on Tue Apr 18 13:22:15 2006