...you just might want to give the guy more than a week on the job before you make that determination. Just sayin'. Joe Boyd told me one time that a church takes on the characteristics of its pastor after about five years.
I don't know JW. Never met him. Heard him preach once, but I tuned out before the pandering to the local pastor was over. From what everyone has said, I hope he will help the church become a church again.
I grew up in Hammond. I know the system and the leadership system is broken. Pretend all they want - it ain't what a church is supposed to be. I have family and friends in the church. I wish they could see what church is really to be.
Haven't you heard? Everything is perfect here now! We have a new pastor! That was the substance of a fb post by a prominent college adminstrator's wife...everything is fine, we've weathered the storm. The bad people have left the church, and the good people who know how to get a hold of God by fasting and praying and having a positive spirit have stayed and gotten hold of God and we are on to our greatest days now!
Never mind the wounded souls strewn along the ground all over the place, she and the other 'good Christians' who know how to fast and pray and get a hold of God just ignore them and walk past them in the same way the priest and the Levite walked past the wounded bleeding man that the Samaritan took pity on....
This is so much of the attitude that needs to be banished. Hammond Pride prevents the humbling necessary to learn from the reproofs God has dealt the church and thereby limits the ability to become devout worshipers of God.
So the young people need to be made to feel themselves to again be, as they are always told, the best young Christians in all the world.
Let me fill you in on something. There may be some good kids there. There were when I was growing up. But, as a whole, they know they are not the best Christians in the nation. When sex is commonplace, beer is drunk in the cafeteria, pot is smoked in the cars, steroids are used to enhance athletic performance, kids are bullied so badly they commit suicide and then the cool kids make fun of it on a youtube vid.......do I really need to continue? They know it is a sham.
From the Q/A time, I was so happy for my family and friends there that they would have a pastor who would focus on the people and not the persona of the place. Then again, Schaap said the same thing.