Linkathon!
TeamPyro asks for help preparing churches for the coming “Gaystapo”…
The WW evaluates a church “membership contract”…
Why Christians should get vaccinated…
Muslims are the worlds fastest growing religious group…
Tim Keller on why sermons often bore…
How to see differences as opportunities…
Reading the signs of the times…
The antidote to the coming persecution…
Big dustup in the renewal movement…Bill Johnson rebukes Jason Westerfield.
Excellent site for Lutheran resources…bookmark it.
Wenatchee the Hatchet with complete coverage of all things Driscoll…
Embarrassed by the supernatural?
Pastor admits to bilking seniors…
Consumer Christianity creating angst…
Of course, we have to dissect the theology of the Avengers movie…
Should Christians smoke legal pot?
Did the early church believe in substitutionary atonement?
I would like to add links to a couple of blogs I read
The Jagged Word — http://thejaggedword.com/
The First Premise – https://thefirstpremise.wordpress.com/
MLD…good job.
I hate doing the Linkathon…it takes 10 times longer than anything else.
If others have links they wish to feature. please do so.
Thanks to EricL for giving me a hand…
the pot article is lame. It doesn’t raise nor address key questions that legalization brings about, nor does it fairly compare it to similar substances/practices for recreation or medication. I thought it was poorly considered, organized, and written.
I liked the nun article. There is something about the concise wisdom of elderly saints that is hard to find in conventional sources.
I would like to comment on my own link
The First Premise – https://thefirstpremise.wordpress.com/
The article Bury the Dead with the Dead
I would hope that this will explain where I was coming from last week about the Christian life – especially the dark, sordid side of how even the Christian lives and how Jesus reacts.
The author of the blog Donovan Riley is a Lutheran pastor – and the final paragraph says it all for me – and this is a present act.
“But the dead don’t stay dead. That’s the problem. Jesus comes, and on hands and knees squats down every morning to dig up my work. And to my astonishment, I’m dug up with them.”
So Bill Johnson is looking for his Sister Souljah Moment, I see. It’s still one big legume telling a smaller one he’s nuts.
Meanwhile, is it normal to have a membership covenant/contract? I’ve been an official member of 3 churches in my life and haven’t had to sign anything. All three were either mainline-ish or classical Evangelical, so that may have to do with it.
That “membership contract” is scary stuff.
Did the early church believe in Substitutionary Atonement? Depends who you ask… http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2012/02/06/penal-substitutionary-atonement-in-the-church-fathers/
David,
I tend to agree with your assessment of the Johnson stuff.
I watched this Westerfield in action…and watching a roomful of Christians amening his psychotic ramblings was flat out scary.
“gaystapo” coming… we may yet have to put our assets where our mouth is…
it might help if churches formed dummy coporations and leased back their facilities – did not own any real estate… but then the lawyers would go after the assets of the membership?
forget doctrine – get lawyers, we need more lawyers!
The link to marriage is a classic example of how to lie with statistics. It attempts to put a spin on the positive cultural aspects of marriage and divorce and yet leaves out the most important stat of all, marriage rate in our population.
“A new report released Thursday by Bowling Green State University’s National Center for Marriage and Family Research found that the U.S. marriage rate is 31.1, or 31 marriages per 1,000 unmarried women. That means for every 1,000 unmarried women in the U.S., 31 of those previously single women tied the knot in the last year. For comparison, in 1920, the national marriage rate was 92.3.” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/22/marriage-rate_n_3625222.html
The truth is a huge percentage of people just don’t get married today and that says a lot!
Marriage is a covenant relationship of the highest level amongst humans. It is the ultimate sign of humanities ability to make commitments to others; even beyond any religious aspects of the ceremony.
So what does it say about our culture? Our word is worthless or quite possible we find it difficult to commit to anything of lasting value.
Aren’t statistics fun!
Roger Olson on embarrassed by supernatural… “…..I suspect our contemporary evangelical avoidance of the supernatural in the physical realm of reality has little to do with intellectual questions and issues. I suspect it has more to do with wanting our religion to be respectable; above all we don’t want to be viewed by the world around us as fanatics. The abuses of the supernatural seen on cable television cause us to drop it entirely. But, as the old saying goes, the cure for abuse is not disuse but proper use. We have thrown the baby out with the bathwater…..” IMV, it’s a good read
thank you this is my ponder for the day as it seems to me that we’re going to need some supernatural pretty soon and i’m one of the ‘avoiders’ of it
Fanatical?
I think the church would fit right in to American culture if it was more fanatical – look at fanatical crowd reactions at sporting event. Where else can you go shirtless in full body paint for the object of your fanaticism? How about some of the concert events?
If Christianity Today’s website was working at more than a slug’s pace I would read their arguments for why it’s more christian to vaccinate than not vaccinate. I will say, having witnessed firsthand the devastating effects of autoimmune disorders I have no intention of fiddling with or tricking my daughter’s immune system when she could very well be genetically predisposed to acquiring an autoimmune disease.
I am not opposed to vaccines per se, but I find it highly troubling that we vaccinate newborns at 2 days old. How could you possibly be able to observe them and gauge what their normal baseline behavior and physical condition are in order to tell if the vaccine cause some sort of issue?
Beyond that, vaccine manufacturers are protected from being sued or held liable if their product causes harm. I’m very uncomfortable having my daughter vaccinated or getting vaccinated myself when we don’t have any sort of basic legal right to seek redress and justice if we are harmed. I feel like I’d be contributing to a highly corrupt system if I went along with thongs as they are now re: vaccines.
“went along with things” not thongs. Yikes!
j2 said “thongs” who knew? 🙂
j2, those feelings are mother instincts and based in real concerns, you’re a good mommy
FWIW – over the years i have had 2 medical doctors, our family doctor in the ’50s Harvard School of Medicine and my children’s pediatrician express concerns over the safety of vaccines… it dealt mostly with the integrity of the manufacturer and weighing the odds of catching small-pox versus the danger from the vaccination, itself… and there is no way they’d vaccinate my newborn either… that said, there is a case for a limited schedule of immunizations when the baby is older… however, my former daughter-in-law vaccinated her children against STDs at a young age and that seemed a bit over the top to me
polio vaccine was a pretty good one. My pastor was one of the last in the country to get polio. He was stricken 4 months before the vaccine came out.
I don’t remember my kids being vaccinated as infants – it seems like we had to trot them down to the doctor to get the vaccinations before kindergarten – my kids did not go to pre school so perhaps others did it earlier.
boy do i remember the polio vaccine!!! the half killed Sabine oral vaccine almost gave polio to us moms and dads who had their children dosed with those sugar cubes and eye dropper squirts of paryially killed virus – early 60s – they literally had to set up stations on street corners to get all of us moms and dads treated – they tried to downplay the whole thing, but my husband’s uncle was a biochemist on Jonas Salk’s team … it wasn’t a political – our stuff is better than your stuff – issue at all
should have added that i went thru the big polio outbreak in the 50s, it was everywhere and the vaccine is a blessing – was then and should be even better now
I use to be really moved by the supernatural in the sense that I would sense God working in some of what I now laughingly call “ministry”. Basically I was told with great frequency that it was either me being emotional or deceived by satan. I no longer pay attention to such nonsense, I do miss it though.
I couldn’t handle more than 90 seconds of a J Westerfield video going around.
It strengthened my resolve to get the young people I minister to in using biblical terms, to reason biblically. I already was pretty durn resolved on that…
Words used and their definitions used are so important.
The video was “going around” to indicate how off he’s gotten.
I didn’t know anything about him until I heard the recent uproar.
That guy Westerfield really has a new schtick I mean it is the same as the old schtick but it is much more polished with that puppy dog look. Got to give him that he has worked on the pitch. I guess he is an up and comer, this end of the industry. I get people wanting to see miracles and being healed. When I was real sick I admit I prayed one or two times about healing, I did not nor would I ever expect such a prayer to be answered for me, but that is another post.
God to admit though he is going to make bank.
that should have been got sorry about that.
“Tim Keller on why sermons often bore…”
***
Lonnie Frisbee once sat with me during a Sunday morning service at a local church.
There was a man up front going on and on about nothing much. Lonnie leans over to me and says, “He is boring God’s people.”
That was the first time I ever heard anyone say that statement about the guy up front.
http://shekinahfellowship.blogspot.com/2015/05/what-is-true-ministry-anointing.html
http://shekinahfellowship.blogspot.com/2015/05/paul-cain-speaks-about-chuck-smith.html
http://tonyreinke.com/2014/11/18/tim-kellers-new-lectures-on-preaching/
More Lectures on Peaching by Tim Keller….
The Christianity Today website was finally not crawling at a snails pace, so I got to read the article in it’s entirety. The guy lost me when he dismissed febrile seizures as no big deal. That’s insane.