Question for readers

For discussion:

Is there ever a time when a church split is a "good thing"?

Imagine a world outside of the box

What would happen if we ventured outside of our safe places and thought outside of the box. What if we did things differently?

Geez..be more creative!

For the love of God (literally) be more creative! Can't we come up with something different than "Hey! This thing might be anti-God...BOYCOTT IT!!" Isn't there some sort of constructive method of entering into conversation about topics that might go against the flow of what we believe?

Take for instance the upcoming movie The Golden Compass. If you haven't heard, there is a large movement of Christians that are supporting a boycott of the film. Why? Because in the final installment of the series, the children 'kill God'. Seriously. Now, what should our action be?

Does getting on the trumpet calling for a boycott sound like a smart maneuver? Did it work when the Southern Baptist Convention boycotted Disney and their affiliates? Not at all. In fact, that boycott didn't do anything but make Christians look stupid and cost the jobs of people who desperately needed them. I was working there when they fired thousands of people to recoup that money.

I think about when Jesus called his children to be the light of the world. Are we really being a light when we get more up in arms over a series of books than when a 15 year old girl is imprisoned with 20 men and raped repeatedly over several weeks?

Let's be more creative in our approach to things we don't approve of. To the world, we look like a bunch of lunatics crying about a children's movie. I once again point out that there wasn't a break out of witchcraft in our elementary schools because of the Harry Potter series. If you don't support the movie, that's fine, don't see it. But making a huge fuss about it only further destroys our voice in this world because we look like a big child throwing a temper tantrum.

Perhaps instead of being so scared that children are going to flock to atheism, we enter into a conversation with our children after seeing the movie/reading the book and talk to them about it. Giving kids what I call a "crap filter" is absolutely imperative in this world that we live in. If they aren't able to distinguish between what is good and evil and what the hidden agenda is, they are in for a difficult life. We have to teach discernment.

But please, let's be more creative than the old fashioned boycott.

When Monty Python Meets Star Wars

Exactly how this has escaped my wide adventures in internet travel I'll never know. But I bring to you one of the greatest remakes of all time:

The Golden Compass

By some sheer miracle if you haven't received an email forward about the upcoming children's movie The Golden Compass...then...you're lucky. But chances are, you've heard it and know whats going on. But just in case, it's the movie that is coming out his Christmas season strangely similar to that of the Chronicles of Narnia. Except, at the end, the children kill god.

There is a strong movement in the Christian community to have this movie banned and they're making a large fuss about the whole thing. I think I've finally come to the conclusion that I'm not too worried about it. Why? Well..."we" threw a big fit about Harry Potter because "we" were afraid that kids would start practicing witchcraft...and that didn't happen.

Neither did a massive revival occur at the release of the Passion of the Christ.

We get all worked up over nothing. For further reading I defer to the always wise SWNID.

Please..no huggie

The Christian Standard had some really good articles a couple weeks ago about how to be welcoming in your church. In an age where we are constantly trying to bring people to church, people jump from church to church to where they feel the most 'welcome'.

Now, I'm not going to get in a large discussion about how to make people feel welcome in your church. It's pretty straight forward: Go up to someone you've never seen and introduce yourself. That's pretty easy.

But one thing that is absolutely critical...and I mean ESSENTIAL that you absolutely DO NOT do: hug people as they come in the door.

Let me repeat that: DO NOT hug people!

It's weird and violating! I have a personal bubble! Respect it please! Let me give you a short story to illustrate this:

The year is 2006. We have our High schoolers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana at a fairly large Baptist church. We bring our students to this church because it's Sunday and we need a place to worship before we head on our way towards New Orleans.

We have several young girls in our group ranging from 14 to 17 years old. As we approach the building I saw him. He was about 60 years old and heading straight towards us. No big deal, I'm familiar with larger churches and their greeter policies. But as he approaches our Senior Minister, he gives him this great big bear hug then proceeds to hug each and every one of us. His hugs linger a little too long for my liking on our young girls. I was a bit uncomfortable (I tend to be the overprotective father type when it comes to our girls).

So please, if you want someone to feel welcome, do it with a hand shake. Hugs are not necessary. Hugs are for relatives and good friends. Not for creepy old men and young teenage girls. Make someone feel welcome with a hand shake and remember their name!

Ex-Religion Journalist has a good point

This morning I came across this article on a religion journalist who was walking out on his faith. The reason? He was sick of all the scandalous things that went on within the faith community.

But that's not the reason I found this article interesting.

"Bates, who says he still regards himself as a Catholic, said he was turned off by the intolerance he saw towards gays and the self-righteousness of Christians who “pick and choose the sins that are acceptable and condemn those – always committed by other, lesser people – that are not.”"

Bates is certainly right! We do pick and choose sins. We will fight pain and nail to get things like abortion banned, but we do nothing with vagrant disregard of our environment. We need to branch out a little.

Kick his ask!

For your daily cuteness...

It's a sad day.

I turned 26 years old today.

Birthdays just aren't as fun anymore.

Life just goes by way too fast.

Ministry To Men

Let's face it. The American church caters to women. Walk into any typical church today and you will notice some of the following things:

1) Decorative paintings
2) Floral arrangements
3) Love songs to Jesus
4) Flowery furniture and accessories
5) Quilts and banners and bows
6) And other miscellaneous things.

Now, don't misunderstand me, I don't believe these things are bad or that we need to trash all this stuff. What I am saying, is that we are inadvertently repelling men.

Compare the following lyrics of worship songs:

"A mighty fortress is our God! A bulwark never failing." - A Mighty Fortress is Our God

"I'm feeling like the eagle that rises. Flies above the earth and it's troubles." - Abba Father

The first song, written by Martin Luther focuses in on God and applies terms that a man can identify with: Fortress. Bulwark. Strong terms that men can identify with. The second song focuses in on feelings and emotions. Notice the very second word of the song is "feeling" and how that relates to things that are immediately surrounding the song writer. Again, nothing wrong with that, but from a man's perspective he just isn't comfortable singing love songs to Jesus.


That's my personal peeve, and thankfully our worship music at RCC fits the bill, but when I was in college we would always make fun of the brand spankin' new worship songs that would come in. We often made up our own lyrics such as "I want to buy you a rose Jesus".

Anyways, we're missing men in today's church. I used to have a ton of statistics on this matter, but you don't need stats to look around and see that only a few men are coming to church and getting involved.

This was further proven to me during this last church leadership election. Absolutely no man would stand up and be "Chairman of the board" and we only had 1 addition to our elders. But we had about 15 women want to be deaconesses (and power to them!) This isn't just a problem in our church, but nationwide. Men are no longer coming to the church and we need to find a way to get them here. Even better, go out and get them.

Promise Keepers is an excellent program designed to disciple men. More churches need to get involved in this great program. They have an excellent article on this subject that you can read here. They say it a lot better than I can.

How about the Football night bible study. Watch the game, bible study at halftime, finish the game. Complete with pizza and *gasp* beer.

If I didn't know Jesus that would get me to church!

Pick your holiday!

Happy Halloween!
or for those of you who believe that Halloween is of the devil...

Happy Reformation Day!

Oops...there's a train coming!

Every morning I drive across the same set of rail road tracks. They're nothing special. Just typical railroad tracks on top of a mini hill and a set of lights and arms that stretch across just to stop traffic should a train be oncoming.

What I find interesting though, is that every time I go over these tracks, people either a) go over the tracks without paying attention or b) look for a train as they pass over the tracks.

The observation: People depend on the flashing lights and bells to tell them that the train is on it's way. What if a train was coming and the power was out? Or the lights simply weren't working? There are houses that line both sides of the track, so people wouldn't see the train until it was too late. They cross the track...SMASH!

We do this spiritually all the time. We get involved in something and think nothing of it. We say to ourselves that if something is wrong with this, God is going to send me flashing lights and bells to warn me. But we head straight on towards those tracks without looking for any danger. By the time we hit the track, we're so far gone we don't see the train coming and soon after that, there is a train wreck.

"Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he wil flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will life you up." - James 4:7-10

The more often we come to God grieving because of our own brokenness, the better off we are in seeing that train coming before it's too late. We can't always depend on those flashing lights to get our attention. We have to constantly be on guard to resist the enemy.

The Year of Living Biblically

I found a great article on Christianity Today's website. It's about an agnostic Jew who decided to read through the entire Bible and follow it word for word. Here is an excerpt:

Of course, some of the Bible's laws prove too strange even for Jacobs. The notion that one should break the neck of a cow near the scene of an unsolved murder (Deut. 21:4) is a bit too bizarre to be transforming the NYPD anytime soon. And, as Jacobs notes, some recommendations (e.g., "kill magicians") are downright illegal.

You can find the rest of the article here. You'll enjoy it!

Common Ground on Evolution

Lately I've been obsessed with social bookmarking sites such as Digg.com and StumbleUpon.com, in fact I often use popurls.com every couple of hours to keep up on what is 'hot' on the internet.

What I have found lately though, is that there is a common rising of popularity of atheist and evolution websites that keep popping up. Is it because there is a rising population of atheist and/or evolutionist? Or is it that these sites just happen to have a larger sample of those belief systems? I don't have the answer to that. But regardless, I have been keeping up with a lot of those sites, blogs and vlogs.

I think what bothers me the most is that neither side is able to come to any type of common ground on the issue of origin of life. The Creationist/Intelligent Design is not willing to step up and talk to Evolutionist and vice versa. What I've noticed is that a lot of the reason why, is because of preconceived generalizations about the other party.

Creationist/ID believe that evolutionists are morally depraved atheists, hell-bent on destroying the Christian faith.
Evolutionists believe that Creationist/ID are religious fanatics with no real intelligence.

Sadly, both sides have justification for believing some of those stereotypes. Speaking on behalf of intelligent Christians, I apologize for any of my brothers and sisters that may seem "stupid" or resolve to unintelligent debate such as circular reasoning. Unfortunately, we have earned many of our stereotypes and I think it's high time we started proving ourselves.

When it comes to the issue of origins, we have to have some kind of common ground on both sides in order for some sort of dialog to continue. I think it's going to have to be the Creationist/ID that will step up and make the effort.

How does that happen?

I think we have to start with one question: How did it all start?

When these 2 groups get together to "talk", both sides decide to spill their entire worldview onto the other, and that doesn't do any good. If we stick to one point, we can have dialog. Let me give a for instance:

Creationist/ID: Let's forget about the age of the earth, or evolution for a moment and think about life. How do you think life started?
Evolutionist: Honestly we don't know, but our best guess is that there was a pool of water and lightning struck it and 'life' was started.
Creationist/ID: I believe that instead of a bolt of lightning, there was an original mover, call it 'God', call it aliens, call it some advanced form of life before us.

We have to speak on terms with those that don't adhere to our set of beliefs. Sure, we believe in God and miracles and that God created us. But the instant we start down that path with someone who doesn't believe in any of that, we appear to be preaching to them and we lose them. Now if a relationship exists, then it's a different story. But that's another post. Speaking in terms that an evolutionist can identify with only helps our dialog. We have to remember that we're talking to someone that doesn't share our faith, and finds things like miracles simply unbelievable.

I honestly believe that the point of Intelligent Design can be a plausible one for the scientific community. I don't expect it to be any science text books, nor do I think it should be (after all you can't apply the scientific method to God), but in a general dialog both matters come down to "Neither of us were there and no one else was, so we have to do our best guess." We will have our lens of faith while the other has on the lens of science. But we have to seek a common ground.

A Haiku

Haikus are easy
But sometimes they don't make sense
Refrigerator

Ezekiel, prophet of weird stuff

I finished my nearly 10 month study on the Gospels this week and started the Prophet of Ezekiel.

Weird stuff.

"...and in the fire was what looked like four living creatures. In appearance their form was that of a man, but each of them had four faces and four wings. Their legs were straight; their feet were like those of a calf and gleamed like burnished bronze..." - 1:4b-7

"Eat the food as you would a barley cake; bake it in the sight of the people, using human excrement for fuel." - 4:12

On a side note, when you make notes in your Bible, make sure they are legible. Apparently I had an insight into verse 5:1 and I have no idea what I wrote back in college. Oh well.

God has a word for the people of Israel and Judah through Ezekiel...and they aren't good words. Their sin is pretty obvious: Idolatry. According to God, "she has rebelled against my laws and decrees more than the nations and countries around her. She has rejected my laws and has not followed my decrees." (5:6). That's pretty bad when the nation of God has become more sinful than those that aren't godly.

Now, I have to disagree with a lot of our evangelical friends who equate America to Israel. I just don't think that God was speaking to America when he was saying some of these things. I think God's main message was to his spiritual nation...not a nation of borders and national sovereignty.

In other words, God's word has MORE to say to believers than the United States of America. But that's a different topic.

The point is idolatry. Don't do it. Plain a simple. If it were only that simple. What is idolatry? Is it bowing down to a Buddha statue? Is it making a calf out of gold and proclaiming it as a miracle worker? Well, yes. Is it trying to solve all of our problems on our own? Yes. Is it setting relationships higher than our relationship with God? Yes.

God's Word is pretty specific as to what the consequences were to the Israelites for their idolatry.

"...cry out 'Alas!' because of all the wicked and detestable practices of the house of Israel, for they will fall by the sword, famine and plague. He that is far away will die of plague, and he that is near will fall by the sword, and he that survives and is spared will die of famine. So will I spend my wrath upon them. And they will know that I am the Lord, when their people lie slain among their idols around their altars, on every high hill and on all the mountaintops..." 6:11-13a

Basically, God was going to wipe them out, there was no way around it. What does this have to do with us? We live in a culture of depraved idolatry, and we accept most of it on an everyday basis without even giving it a second thought. It's scary.

The almighty dollar.
Serial TV shows.
Books, DVDs, and other media
iPods
Computers
Video games
Work
Popularity
Success

I see a couple of mine on their, and I'm sure there are a lot more that I'm missing or don't want to think about. Church, let's give God that place in our hearts that he deserves.

No longer Christian, but disciple

I have decided to no longer call myself a “Christian”. Before you panic, let me explain. We throw around this term ‘Christian’ all the time. We talk about a Christian nation. We talk about Christian leaders and Christian families. Unfortunately, the name which used to signify someone being a dedicated and committed believer in Jesus no longer means that at all.

ABC News recently ran a poll and discovered that 83% of Americans call themselves Christians. Wouldn’t this country be a much better place if that were certainly true! I believe that the term Christian has simply become a term that someone believes in God. And that’s about it. Maybe they go to church once or twice a year for a holiday. There is no difference in lifestyle or worldview. Author Bill McKibben discovered that 40% of “Christians” can identify onlyfour out of the 10 Commandments.

The word ‘disciple’ has more of a deeper meaning and identification with Christ. If you remember the words of Jesus in Matthew 28: “Therefore go and make disciples…” Notice he didn’t use the word Christian, but the word disciple.

“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple. And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” Luke 14:26-27.

The cost of being a disciple is steep. Being a disciple is more than going to church on Sunday. It’s more than participating in a committee. It is living out the faith every single moment of the day. From the time we wake up, to when we go to sleep. Faith is more than just calling ourselves “Christians”, it’s living it out every single day no matter how difficult it may be.

So I no longer identify myself as a Christian. That’s what 83% of Americans call themselves. I am a believer. A disciple of Christ.

Comcast will suck out your soul

Ladies and gentlemen if there was ever a company with the absolute worst customer service, that would be Comcast. Not only does their regular service beyond basic cable stink, but their internet services hardly ever work and their customer service, like I stated before...is the worst!

Let's rewind back to May.

I'm preparing to leave the parsonage for our new home in town. I want to make sure I have all my services disconnected, Comcast being my main concern.

I call them. They assure me that all I have to do is bring in my cable modem and all will be completed.

Oh if it was only that easy. The next month, I receive a bill for what was previously being paid on a monthly basis. I call to make sure everything is okay and they say "Well yes! That's normal! In fact, you'll get a refund for the month of June since you paid for that month." That's great I thought! All I had to do was wait for the paper work to go through the system.

Yet again, if it was only that easy.

The next month, the bill has doubled from not being paid the previous month. I call again, slightly annoyed. They tell me that everything is okay, I don't have to pay for it. They just need to send someone out to completely shut off the service to the house from the telephone poll. They tell me not to worry, it will be taken care of. At this point, I'm thinking "yeah...right."

So what do I receive in the mail yesterday? Another Comcast bill! This time for three times the amount! Needless to say I'm a bit mad. This is getting ridiculous. So I call...again. I explain to the nice woman on the phone that this has been going on for 4 months, and I just want them to stop sending me bills and return to me (but it really goes to the church) the refund it needs! She tells me to hold.

Wonderful.

She comes back and explains that she talked with my district supervisor and that I need to come into the local office (not really local for me) and show proof that I haven't been living in that house. At this point, I lose my temper...which is very rare for me.

"Why do I need to show proof that I don't live there? I requested it to be shut off and it shouldn't matter whether or not I live there, I wanted it shut off."

"This is what you have to do."

"Why? I was told from the beginning that all I needed to do was bring in my cable modem and the service would be completed and shut off. Now you're telling me that I need to use up my lunch break and drive 45 minutes to turn in a slip of paper?"

"I know and understand sir, but there isn't anything I can do...blah blah blah..."

So today I have to go in and turn in my paper that states that I moved out of the house in June.

Apparently, you sell your soul to have Comcast. They will do whatever it takes to annoy you, enrage you, inconvenience you and otherwise make your life a living hell.

For anyone that reads this and has the opportunity, please reconsider using Comcast. In Seymour there is Cinergy Metronet which provides amazing service for both HDTV Cable (less than Comcast) and Fiber Optic High Speed Internet (Both faster and cheaper than Comcast). There are other internet and cable companies out there that actually want to take care of their customers.

Oh..I'm addicted

Last January I became addicted to a TV show. 24. I absolutely fell in love with it. I couldn't get enough of it. So I rented the first 3 seasons and bought seasons 4 and 5.

I happened to come across a friend who owned the first season of Lost. Guess what happened? Addiction! I did the whole season in 4 days. I loved it! The depth of character is great, the plot lines are addicting and intriguing. It's great!

Now I have a problem. Season 1 left me hanging...big time! So I am in need of Season 2! Please someone help me find it!

Pray

I'm getting beat up bad and things just keep coming on and everyday is just a constant struggle.

I hate to ask for prayer on a blog like this, but thats all I can think of to do.