Preaching of Non-vaisnava Groups

The Telegraph reports that the Catholic Church in Italy is planning to follow the summer exodus of it's flock to the country's beaches by setting up a hundred foot long inflatable church at Molise on the Adriatic coast:

The 100-foot-long church will be set up on Saturday and is to be manned by a team of priests waiting to hear confession, give mass and sing holy music.

"There will be four or five people singing, with music about God," said Chiara Facci from the Catholic group Sentinelli del Mattino, which is putting up the blow-up church.

Read a brief article on this.

Keep your finger on the pulse. It's happening everywhere. Hippy was the cultural context of the 60's and 70's. Emergent is part of the contemporary cultural context.

Play to the terrain.

Orthodox at the core. Innovative at the edge

by Kripamoya das

Dear Vaishnavas,

Hare Krishna!

Perhaps you missed this piece of thought-provoking television on Christmas Day, but here's a second opportunity to watch it.

Channel 4 broadcast an extended documentary about the life of Jesus and how his life is viewed by other faith traditions, including ours. The researchers came to our Radha-Krishna temple in central London and were given lots of information and contact details of other expert sources to interview, both at the OCHS in Oxford and in Vrindavan, India.

"Here is an interesting article from Sita-pati Prabhu's blog, atmayogi.com, describing how a successful megachurch adapts their initial presentation to their target audience: "seekers," people looking for answers to spiritual questions and community support.

Traditional Christian churches often criticize seeker-oriented megachurches for breaking with Christian traditions and introducing populist elements—similar to criticism new approaches like Atma-yoga and Loft Preaching receive from "ISKCON traditionalists," who believe that nothing Srila Prabhupada himself did not introduce should be practiced in ISKCON.

I agree with Sita-pati's conclusion: don't copy the exact approach that was successful at one time, without taking changed circumstances into consideration. At the same time we have to be careful to preserve our core values—adjust the externals, but keep the essence intact.

Srila Prabhupada himself was seeker sensitive—he adjusted traditional vaisnava presentation to suit his audience, and today's seekers are quite different from the 60's and 70's crowd Srila Prabhupada met when he arrived in the US.

by phanisvara das

Founded By Andy Stanley and five associates in 1995, North Point Ministries has grown to over 17,000 members who attend worship services at three satellite campuses: North Point Community Church (Alpharetta, GA), Buckhead Church (Atlanta, GA), and Browns Bridge Community Church (Cumming, GA). In addition there are a dozen or so "strategic partners," using North Poing sermons and material in their programs, often started by ex-North Point staff.

According to www.thechurchreport.com, Stanley was voted 13th most influential Christian in America in 2006, and North Point Community Church 3rd most influential church. That's quite a bit of success, and Sitapati Prabhu, who visited Buckhead Church recently, has been impressed, too:

by Kaunteya Das

The major Italian weekly magazine “L’Espresso” has published a piece of investigative journalism on how Catholic priests handle their confessions; the Vatican became enraged at the disclosures (link to the article, written in Italian).

A journalist pretended to be a normal Christian follower asking the confessors for absolution from his sins, or rather asking if what he claimed to be doing was sinful. He visited confessionals—the booths where priests sit to hear confessions—in five major Italian cities, submitting tales of involvement in activities ranging from homosexuality to research into embryonic cells, from euthanasia to sex with minors, living with a woman without being married, abortion, taking cocaine, and even cheating on the accounts for monetary gains. What the article exposed is that often the confessors’ opinion and advice on the issues drastically differed from the official position of the Church. And this is probably what made the Vatican so furious, although they claimed outrage at the divulgation of exchanges that should have remained confidential, sacredly secret in their sacramental status.

by Manohara Shyam das

I'm using this title because I think it is very meaningful. The web site I visited this week has this name and encourages youth not to be ashamed of spiritual life. This Christian project started in 2002 in Auckland, New Zealand in the Howick Baptist Church, under the care of pastor Andrew Whitehead.

The main communication channel is email; they utilize a very dynamic way of communication that includes devotional thoughts, links to 'cool' web sites, humor, quotes, etc. Just as we do, they have study guides for the bible, specially for young people, and they are planning to write four series of fiction-novels, targeting young teenage girls. (I'm not so sure about this part ...).

On the other hand, Andrew Whitehead tours all the churches under his care twice a month, so he can maintain close relationship with the youth community and get feedback of what's going on.

by Kaunteya Das

I am reading The Rise of Christianity, by Rodney Stark; "How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries" and I am planning to jot down considerations and reflections as they come along. In fact I only just finished the first chapter, but I already found considerable stimuli for further exploration, especially regarding the dynamics of expansion of Lord Caitanya's movement in general and of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness in particular.

In his career Rodney Stark, professor of sociology and comparative religion, seems to have always focused on studying religious groups. I wouldn't be surprised if the faithful of any tradition (including Vaisnavism) would raise their eyebrows in suspicion and alarm at hearing that a social scientist (especially a non-practitioner) might attempt to gain insights on the processes of conversion, which they, in unshakable, implicit conviction, might consider as pure and exclusive manifestations of the Divine interlinking on the human plane, processes thus beyond the reach of rational sociological analysis, quantification or intellectual explanation. A more accurate research, though, reveals that great spiritual teachers (and in this writing I will focus on Srila Prabhupada, the Fouder-Acarya of ISKCON), may have closely observed sociological trends in chalking out their strategies for diffusion and in instructing their followers on how to effectively proselytize.

From economist.com I thought of sharing this because it provides insights in a number of fields: how big are the Christian organizations (and, by comparison, how small we still are), how congregations can help in marketing preaching materials, and how, in this world, even the most materialistic corporations can develop a soft corner for spiritual or religious contents if it helps them make money (and our propagation can plug into this tendency). Sharings welcome.

Your servant, Kaunteya Das

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