Ben Pettit

The Hermeneutics Quiz via Carter

I find myself in this place of discouragement. I feel that it is so hard to listen to someone who doesn’t know the Lord. What I mean is, someone comes to you with all their problems and their life that is so messed up. I really want to advise them and encourage them, but I feel like I can’t. Here is the thing, I know what they need. They need JESUS. They need Christ who died for them and wants to have a personal relationship with them.

I guess what I am saying is, you can’t advise someone who doesn’t know the Wonderful Counselor as Lord and Savior. So I feel like in one way I’m suppose to listen to the problems they have, but I know I’m not. I shouldn’t know or care about there sin. It’s kind of like Perry says at church so often, “I don’t want something from you, I want something for you”. For you to know Jesus Christ. I’ve prayed for some of my friends until I’ve had tears following like rivers. My heart aches for those who don’t know the Lord. My life has been forever changed by Jesus Christ and I want that so badly for everyone I meet.

Now unto the lamb who sits on the throne
Be glory and honor and praise
Call all the saints to join in the song
Worship and praise him the Lord of Lords

I’ve got this great idea and I’m going through with it. I’m opening up a new blogging site soon. It will be a multi-user blog site, so I won’t be the only poster there. I will probably just RSS import feeds that speak about church and prayer from this site. I have several friends in the area who I believe would like to participate. If your interested in being a blogger on this new site please let me know @ ben.pettit@gmail.com.

The site is going to be centered around vision, the Christian church, and prayer. I believe that we have a good thing going with so many people blogging. I use google reader to keep up with all my RSS feeds, but I’d like to see some community built on the web especially for the upstate of SC. I can tell you this though, it will not be limited to just one job type. In other words it will not be a “worship leader” web site. It will be a website dedicated to the exploration and vision of the church.

As I talked about in an earlier post, we live in a very disconnected church community. My goal is to bring some of those people together. The site will be a place of discussion. So please keep that in mind as it launches in the next couple weeks. More later!

The contemporary church is not for everyone but yes they do have a purpose. I’ve been involved with 4 contemporary churches in the past 5 years. I graduate in a week from today. I was thinking for so long that I wanted to work in a contemporary church. Here are my complaints and why I may not be working in one.

Every contemporary church is different in what they believe in terms of theology (You never know what your going to get).

Some contemporary churches believe tithing is an old testament thing. (Yeah… well they are dead wrong… read the bible for gosh sakes).

There is no association with other churches. No external support except from it’s families and people internally (A few churches may bind together, maybe).

The modern contemporary church is pushing to use a rock band and I play rock music… that fits right? My only problem is, aren’t we suppose to be worshiping the God of the universe? I mean why does it just have to be a rock band? What’s wrong with an orchestra? What’s wrong with pipe organ. I sat in UMC of Asheville, NC last Sunday and we worshiped with an organ postlude that made you want to strap on a gun and charge the gates of hell. Have we really brought ourselves to this point where all we do is listen to loud music and call it “praise and worship”? This is hard for me to say because YES I like loud overdriven guitar. I just am not completely convinced that every church needs to be doing this (your saying “duh” Ben, but yeah look at how many church plants think they need it).

In closing I will say this. Do church. Do it well. If you worship with a keyboard and organ every Sunday. Make it the best keyboard and organ sound you can. Make your transitions between worship elements flawless and seamless. Traditional is not bad. For you KJV churches, yes your a little crazy, but my Grandfather told me once that hearing the word read in KJV was just comforting to him.

Set goals. Cast vision. Run as hard as you can with what you got until you get somewhere. Don’t stand still, ever.

There is chaos, disorganization and there are students. Just happens to be that all the first two terms describe the latter. I consider myself still in the category because I am a student. So many things that they are dealing with. Fitting in, feeling love, loving others, loving themselves…..