{"id":680,"date":"2014-12-01T21:47:29","date_gmt":"2014-12-02T01:47:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/matthewcochran.net\/blog\/?p=680"},"modified":"2019-03-24T07:17:19","modified_gmt":"2019-03-24T11:17:19","slug":"a-change-i-can-do-without","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/matthewcochran.net\/blog\/a-change-i-can-do-without\/","title":{"rendered":"A Change I Can Do Without"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;What if Three Weekends Can Change Your Life?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s the bold question asked by a postcard I received last week announcing a local church&#8217;s grand opening.\u00a0 Because I think curiosity should be punished, I decided to read the details on the other side where it explained the question in greater depth:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">What if, during the first three weekends in [church&#8217;s] expanded and fully renovated space, you and your family had the chance to learn:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li><em>How to Celebrate Life&#8217;s Wins<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>How to Have the Best Thanksgiving Ever<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>How to Have a High Immunity Household<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">We promise:\u00a0 these three weekends CAN forever change your life.<\/p>\n<p>And to think&#8230;\u00a0 all I got from my church these past three weekends was the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. Boy, I sure missed out.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But Matt,&#8221; one might respond, &#8220;You can&#8217;t reach <del>unbelievers<\/del> <del>the unchurched<\/del> seekers by using weird theological language like that.\u00a0 They would neither know nor care what you mean.&#8221;\u00a0 Well, I have no idea what a &#8220;High Immunity Household&#8221; is or what business a church has telling me how to have one, so if that&#8217;s what they were going for, they still missed the boat.\u00a0 If they&#8217;re going to use obscure terminology that no one understands anyway, it might as well have something to do with their religion&#8211;whatever that is.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, and they also advertised their &#8220;newly expanded Children&#8217;s Environments&#8221; that are open during each service.\u00a0 After all, if would be crazy to think that Jesus actually wants the little children to come to him.\u00a0 My attitude on the recent development of &#8220;children&#8217;s church&#8221; is, of course, that Christians have always had children&#8217;s church&#8211;we just called it &#8220;church.&#8221;\u00a0 Going another mile down that road and sequestering children (up to 5th grade!) in an &#8220;environment&#8221; instead of church is a whole new level of foolishness.<\/p>\n<p>Then again, given their approach to changing people&#8217;s lives, they haven&#8217;t sold me on the idea that their adults are in church either.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;What if Three Weekends Can Change Your Life?&#8221; That&#8217;s the bold question asked by a postcard I received last week announcing a local church&#8217;s grand opening.\u00a0 Because I think curiosity should be punished, I decided to read the details on &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/matthewcochran.net\/blog\/a-change-i-can-do-without\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>A Change I Can Do Without - The 96th Thesis<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/matthewcochran.net\/blog\/a-change-i-can-do-without\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Change I Can Do Without - The 96th Thesis\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"&#8220;What if Three Weekends Can Change Your Life?&#8221; 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