Faith Infiltration: New Testament Fellowship

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You’ve got to admit, any church that has fractals on it’s homepage gets at least one point. Such is the case with New Testament Fellowship Church, our first “non-denominational” faith infiltration.

Enter the sanctuary, and you’re greeted with… a rock concert for Jesus. They had it all – huge projection screen, a drummer behind a drum shield that still managed to be loud, electric guitars and bass, keyboards and the like, with a male singer belting out tunes in a gravely voice. The sanctuary had a black ceiling with lighting equipment exposed, and more contemporary graphics like the ones on the website. No crosses. No stained glass. No pews. People dancing in their seats. The guitarist even ran through the congregation and stood on a chair to rock out.

A song ended, and the projection screen above the pulpit went black. Sing along if you know the words, the leader said – and then they broke into an impressively good cover of Collective Soul’s “Shine”. The lead vocalist was nearly a clone of the lead singer of Collective Soul.

Music ended, and the sermon began – it was all about prayer. The pastor was a young guy wearing a hip shirt and jeans, and he spoke of how one can be best blessed by praying for others. It was generally a feel good message with a couple of interesting things thrown in:

1. The pastor told the congregation that there are “liberals out there in the left wing that really loathe Christianity.” It’s interesting how lots of Christians think that anytime someone disagrees with them it is hatred or loathing, and that this hatred or loathing is something that strengthens them, rather than making them question exactly why people speak out about Christianity. The Bible spoke of persecution, so any persecution proves the Bible was right. There are always going to be people that disagree with you, and generally they are not disagreeing with Christians because they are “bad” or “lost” and Christians are “good” or “saved”.

2. The pastor told the congregation not to use prayer as a hammer – and he spoke of “abortionists” as the example. Rather than pray that they be “judged”, pray that the lord bless them. This was, if not tolerant, at least more ethically acceptable to me than some of the other things I have heard churches say about abortion supporters.

3. The pastor actually used the A-word (!!), which is the first time we’ve heard it uttered by a pastor as part of a sermon. He said something like this, while on the topic of having faith, “Now, I know people will say they are atheists, and go ahead and let them say that because if they get into a jam, they’ll pray too”.  Okay, great. This is about the same as me saying, “Now, I know people will say they are theists, and go ahead and let them say it because when things get bad they’ll admit they don’t believe in God”

4. The pastor said that in this church, they aren’t afraid to talk about whether or not prayer is really effective. Okay, cool. He actually cited a study (woa!) by Randolph Byrd, M.D. (and the dude actually said the name of the guy responsible for the study, he gets another point) that looked at intercessory prayer of cardiac patients in 1988. The study used about 400 patients, divided them into two groups, and had one group prayed for while the other group was not prayed for. The patients did not know they were being prayed for. The study was fairly sound in methodology but the significance of it was highly exaggerated. A good critique can be found here, but let’s just say that the results were not impressive and not replicable. The study tracked 26 categories, and only six showed any significance, those six were related to one-another, and the significance was very small and easily traced to unperceived differences in the two groups or chance.

While the pastor was talking about tithing, he actually claimed that tithing for this church had a 90-day money-back guarantee. He said that if any new member of the church tithed for 3 months and then decided that God was a liar, he’d give them their money back. I’m not really sure what to think of this. I guess I can’t be eligible because a non-existent thing can’t lie.

He also decided to bring up the one story that gets Flimsy and my blood boiling – but I’ll let Flimsy rant about tithing and Abraham in his section:

*Flimsyman:

Anyone who’s followed this blog continuously might remember how much I hate Genesis 22.  This is the story of God commanding Abraham to kill his own son.  He gives no reason why, except, apparently, to test Abraham’s loyalty to him.  This story is repulsive.  As I told Ziztur after the service earlier today, what amazes me about this story is how much Christians love it.  We’ve heard this story discussed in the sermon three times out of the few months we’ve been doing the faith infiltrations.  For the love of fuck, WHY?  This story is fucking disgusting!  Don’t these people realize how absurd this story portrays their god as being?  Are they that blind?  FUCK.

Sigh.  Needless to say, I basically DON’T think highly of a church, ever, who mentions this story in a positive light.  They didn’t help my opinion of them by using this story to illustrate that you should donate to the church.  The guy talked for ten minutes about how you should give because if you do God will give back to you and “You cannot out-give God.”  Horseshit.  Your god is a monster, and your own sacred text demonstrates it.