2 /5 Winona Gumshoe: We visited on Pentecost sunday...the music was pretty good especially for a more traditional style of church...
Speaking as a spirit filled believer I am used to a little bit more engagement during the worship.
The sermon was my main issue.
First, the good. They did read the entire passage of scripture associated with the time of Pentecost before the sermon...
I very much appreciate and value seeing the actual word of God being used in churches since this is increasingly rare and that is kinda what its supposed to be all about.
However then the pastor stood up and preached a four point sermon based on a book he read about the holy spirit rather than teaching a biblically based sermon.
And the entire thing was incredibly repetitive and entirely about repentance and almost to the point of shaming.
I also very much like to see a message that speaks on repentance since its absolutely vital to the receiving of Gods grace and forgiveness...however the entire point of the Holy spirit and repentance is for the sake of freedom; God gives us conviction of sins so we will turn from them and as soon as we do, grace is poured out...
There wasnt much discussion on grace.
They lead everyone through multiple times of intense repentance to such a degree someone commented on whether they thought we had committed sins in the past five minutes since the last time...
Valid point.
They did a time of prayer up front for people to come and surrender or repent but there was absolute silence and it was really awkward...imagine if in getting freedom you would cry and break the silence while standing in front of everyone! More shame for that Id imagine.
There should have been some quiet music at least during that period to make it more natural.
My biggest issue though was the lack of understanding of the Holy spirit and the complete lack of biblically based teaching.
The entire reason I chose to check out a more traditional church was because I really want to find solid biblical preaching and generally a Bible/Baptist based church has that...I was very disappointed to find another pastor who preached fluff and cool sounding points without the Word...and it was a very poor teaching on the subject.
