Last Sunday my wife and I visited one of our churches which recently got a new minister.  It got so bad that we actually walked out before communion.  We figured with our state of mind, we would eat and drink damnation if we did partake.  Let me give you some things we observed. 

1.  I counted the times the congregation sang the 1st person singular pronoun in the praise songs.  In the first three songs, I counted 74 times (including the repeats) before I stopped counting.  I would venture a guess that it pushed 100 times when it was all over with.

2.  The "worship leader" was the type who would not shut up.  Let's just sing the songs without all the talk in between.

3.  The associate minister was preaching that Sunday (He is also new).  The "sermon" turned out to be a motivational talk on witnessing.  There is nothing wrong with that, but it was evident in the "sermon" that it was put together, and the scriptures were plugged in afterwards.  He used the "fear factor" gimmick in his power point presentation.  He also ended with a video.

4.  He managed to mangle Romans 10:14 by trying to create a difference where there was none when he interpreted the Greek work kerusso as not applying to the preacher because the word means "to proclaim."  I guess he was trying to apply it to those who are witnessing.  My guess is that the elders probably don't know enough to call him on it.

5.  The preacher also made the statement that the only difference between Peter before the crucifixion/resurrection and after is the Holy Spirit.  However this is a gross over-simplification.  Other things that affected Peter includes the risen Lord and the 40 days of additional teaching that He did before His ascension.  By this time, it would have dawned on Peter what Jesus was trying to convey in his teaching during his pre-crucifixion ministry.  All these things with the aid of the Holy Spirit made Peter a very skilled Bible interpreter at Pentecost.

6.  The communion song pretty much butchered the corporate nature of the Lord's Supper by the lyrics "just you and me, Lord."  This may be a minor point to some, but words actually mean something--they communicate our theology.

7.  The gist of the Lord's Supper meditation was "servanthood."  Though this may be true, it never got around to the reason why we celebrate the Lord's Supper in the first place.

So I'll end with 7, a perfectly biblical number.

Tim