Quote:
Originally Posted by StMark
I recently spoke to a young pastor (upc) at length about the future of the upc. This is a pastor i would consider fairly conservative. HIs father was and the church still looks old time for the most part.
in the conversation,the standard issue came up and to make a long story short, he told me that within 5-10 years, that pants rule would no longer be an issue. It would only be the old timers holding on to this teaching. Furthermore, he went on to say that he also believed that we are slowly going to have to let go of this rule. I almost swallowed my teeth!!!
He went on to say that most of the younger preachers are waiting for the old gaurd to move from power do they can change these things.
My Question is this, will this change the spirit of the church? I look at the AoG. most of the ones I know (with a few exceptions) have no semblence to Pentecost. I'm not talking about wild services, but they are just plain DEAD. even some of their members complain that something is missing.
however, I do concede that some of our churches are pretty dead yet have long dresses but for the most part, we are pretty lively compared to most, even the deadest ones amongst us. 
Do you agree that this enevitable in the UPC??? ( changing the dress code) or not? and will it change the consecration of the church ?
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St. Mark,
I find your account fascinating. I have a fairly young (30ish) UPC evangelist acquaintance who started telling me about three years ago exactly what this guy told you.
The guy I was talking to said that as an evangelist he is in many pastors homes and that many of them, once they felt they could trust him, would confide that they no longer felt the same way about many of the dress code standards as they had been raised but that they did not know what to do.
They did not want to tear apart their churches or destroy peoples belief systems and they also feared a loss of fellowship from fellow ministers they esteemed.
At the time I had a very hard time believing there could be more than a handful who felt this way but perhaps there are more than I thought.
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