Things I Think: Happy New Year Edition
1. I’m at the stage of life where my New Years resolution is simply to survive another year…
2. The biggest story here on the PhxP last year was the same one as everywhere else…the political and social divisions that have split our country.
The word “evangelical” has taken on new meanings that reflect political as much as theological precepts. One of the difficult side effects of this is that everything we write is now processed through the filter of this division by the reader. Everything we preach is, as well. This means that no matter what you actually say or what your intent is in saying it, someone is going to suspect it is politically slanted and reject it out of hand…
3. We continued to cover the Calvary Chapel split here, but the reality is that after the big split the group will continue to split into increasingly irrelevant sub groups…I’m not sure those stories are of interest to anyone except historians noting the end of a religious movement…
4. Blogging was the king of social media platforms for a few years…now that platform has to be increasingly combined with video on other forms of social media to maintain the same reach. Still, don’t expect to see me on Facebook Live anytime soon…
5. I’m now utterly convinced that the single biggest problem we face as a culture is the death of community and shared values about it’s importance…we no longer have more in common than that which divides us, or more accurately, we choose to emphasize that which divides us…
6. I feel like I won’t recover from 2017 until March…
7. Back to #5… we have an entire generation now who have no idea what it was like to hold many cultural things in common…so when I talk about the days when we all watched the same TV shows, read the same local newspaper, and listened to the same radio stations (and whatever music they played), I’m talking about something they’ve never experienced…
8. Technology has now advanced from something that delighted me to some things that terrify me…
9. I have no idea what the place of the church is in culture anymore…nor do I think many in the church do either…
10. I think the most common psychological issue of our time will be “anomie”…the feeling of alienation that results from a breakdown in community. Am I the only one who doesn’t feel like they fit anywhere, anymore?
Huge thanks for all those who wrote for the blog last year and shared their considerable talents with us.
Duane Arnold, Jean, MLD, KevinH, MikeE, PstrMike, and EricL all made this blog worth reading.
Thank you, Dusty for your help with the prayer threads.
Thanks to Phil Naessens for being my podcast partner…
Thank you to all of our readers who still make this a viable voice after 16 years online.
Thanks especially to those who supported us financially…we wouldn’t be here without you.
Onward…
Happy New Year Michael!
To you as well, my friend!
Michael,
None of us would be here if it were not for you and your considerable work and effort. I’m sure that I speak for many in saying, “Thank you”.
A Happy New Year to you and yours!
Thank you, Duane!
Happy new year big brother! Thanks for letting me be a part of your life all these years. 😉 much love to you and your ever increasing family.
Happy New Year everybody!
Happy new year , Dusty and Xenia…glad you’re both still here after all these years. 🙂
I’ll be out for a bit…carry on…
Xenia, happy new year! Hope yours is wonderful
I really agree with #8 — the coming of the mark of the beast and the image that speaks — yikes!! Happy New Year Michael – praying your #1 comes true.
Glad you made it through the holidays, praying it wasn’t too stressful. Happy 2018! ?
Happy New Year Michael and kitties…. Love and prayers of blessings for you.
#8 – is interesting… a discussion last nite on the plan to monitor your car’s mileage under the guise of taxing you according the the miles driven… evidently, the device installed would also mean that “they” could track you everywhere you went and when in your car also… but i’m not so sure that the end times scenarios will be tech dependent – so many, mostly godless folk, today are looking for evidence of life off of planet earth… we Christians know, or should know, that there most definitely is an unseen world in conflict outside of planet earth and it is entirely possible that demonic activity will increase as people look for that life out there somewhere (do they really think it will prove there is no omnipotent God?)
that said, Michael, you have been used of God to enforce and affirm the Faith of those of us forced out onto the fringe by the mainline Christians – whatever their label may be… i think you probably have upset the devil no end… may God strengthen and bless you and yours and the PhxP family (Lutes included 🙂 ) in 2018… i have a hunch we’re going to need His strength to get thru … pray for wisdom and discernment
Happy New Year everyone!!
Michael, your #1 is my #1.
“…we no longer have more in common than that which divides us, or more accurately, we choose to emphasize that which divides us…” It has become a sickness. I lost an almost life-long friend in 2017 over differing political views. I have pleaded with him on the basis of our shared experiences, mutual friends, hometown, etc. He just ignores it and continues to quote me out of context on Facebook with the viciousness of a starving wolf (even though he unfriended and blocked me). Part of me wants to hate him; part of me weeps over the loss of friendship.
“Back to #5… we have an entire generation now who have no idea what it was like to hold many cultural things in common…so when I talk about the days when we all watched the same TV shows, read the same local newspaper, and listened to the same radio stations (and whatever music they played), I’m talking about something they’ve never experienced…”
I experience this in the classroom on a daily basis. Some of my kids do absolutely nothing in their out of school lives, perhaps with the exception of video games. They are 12 and 13 year olds with no background experience from which to draw. A factor that makes this even more difficult to deal with is that they just flat-out don’t care. Their parents are too busy getting tattoos and smoking weed to be of any use.
Regarding community, I recall some years back when ATMs were a new thing, reading a report of an American going to Paris and exchanging his dollars for French currency. I thought: it’s the tower of Babel! My next thought was about what God might do about it. Now I think about the irony of a tool that could unify being so divisive a force. Regarding the future, we can no more expect community coming from technology than we can expect a worldly system to bring wholeness. We need to find out how to create authentic face-to-face relationships and live that out in front of the world. This is in fact how the early Church lived.
for 2 through 5 the unifying thread, at least in terms of what I’ve been thinking about in the last year or so since MHC collapsed is that many of the celebrity Christians who are treated as if they were or are thought leaders are propagandists first and foremost and spiritual shepherds second or third, if they ever qualified to be such to begin with.
Coordinated mass and social media use with a unified partisan message is, after all, pretty much exactly what propaganda is.
Ironically where 8 and 9 go, I think that social media use by Christians has often transformed into a direct subversion of Matthew 6:2-4 because a great deal of what is done on social media is giving the left hand a chance to tweet about what the right hand is doing. People who give in secret will still give in secret and the rest will post something about it and receive their reward.
Thank you, Michael, for allowing me to write my mundane platitudes on your blog. And thank you for continuing to host this place, even when it can get quite frustrating. There is none quite like it on the blogosphere and enriches many, even amongst the strife.
Happy New Year everyone!
best wishes at the outset of a new year.
community is, indeed, a significant challenge for individuals in our society moving forward, but at the same time, may be the angle the Church needs to ply in order to impact our current culture. The gospel is about connecting–us to God, us to each other.
thanks to all for continual contributions to the PP.
What Calvary Chapel split? A split would infer sort of a 50/50 split. It isn’t even remotely close to that. The church finder on the Calvary Chapel Association is filled with church after church after church. Whereas Brian Brodersen’s system has a handful of churches, but it ain’t much. What is laughable is that they have a drop-down menu to search for his affiliated churches worldwide. So they include Afghanistan and Algeria, and you can find his affiliated churches there, and of course it says, no churches found. But how important to make sure that 150 countries were included in the drop-down menu lololol. They don’t even have a church in most areas of the USA.
Late to the New Year Party – left this morning at 7 AZ time and made an 11 hr round trip to SoCal to drop off the grand kids who spent 5 days here for New Year weekend. Fun to have them, but worth every hour of the drive to take them back to their parents.
Happy New Year to All — especially Michael.
Happy New Year and a Prosperous Lutefisk Recovery Season.
@15 CK: that’s sad, and I can’t imagine seeing that day after day, potential thrown away.
We have a PS3. My son knows it’s a Playstation. It’s used to access Netflix and YouTube on the TV, and play DVDs. I have a few educational apps on my Google account, common across my phone and two tablets, and I have a couple of “1941” like plane shooting games, but no PS games. If I got some, they’d become obsessed with playing.
Aaannd, I see a new year’s molotov tossed into the thread… *sigh*
Happy New Year all!
Go Vikes!
#21 – MLD & Mrs MLD’s grandchildren are blessed… every child should have affirming grandparents … and God fearing ones, too…
One of the sorrows of modern living is how few children are nurtured and mentored…
(As Michael has blessed T – there’s a story to be told someday)
How sad to go thru childhood and never learn a sport, to never learn suck it up and do your chores, never learn how good it feels to overcome, making things or yourself bette than when you started. – real things that take time, but not money …. it so it seems to me today
Happy New Year!
Happy New Year
#20
Gloating, jeering, and measuring oneself against a brother. So sad. So glad we got kicked out. I’d rather a cup of cold water in this spiritual desert than an overpriced cup of coffee from the social club of CC. Don’t waste your time with this post. I’d hate for you to miss your prophecy updates.
Results for Church Finder in my area:
CCA: 25
CGN: 27
Calvay Global Network, the winner by a nose!
#10…breakdown of the sense of community…
I sense this too. Seems like most of my evangelical life has been spent along, watching people dash out of church at the close of the service, to go get their kids from the nursery or the youth rooms, rush home to watch NFL football, or run to Cracker Barrel. And yes there are those who linger at church chatting with other folk…my wife is one of them. I should get more used to it, and relish it since it is kind of counter-cultural. I hope to engage people more and cultivate more community this year…just a few random thoughts at 335am (eastern time)…
#28 Exactly! #20 is the epitome of arrogance. If this is in anyway resembles the leadership in CCA, I’m afraid they are at the kindergarten level in the faith if even that.
@9. The Church’s role in culture is that of the mustard seed that becomes the greatest of all herbs, so that even the birds come to rest in it. It is coming to dominate culture through influence of ideas, or just outright political leverage. Its a weed, and its not wheat.
The Church’s role is that of the net. It contains both good fish and bad. That is a direct product of bringing unbelevers into the Church in hopes of gaining influence through favorable goodwill, or obtaining financial contributions.
The Church married the Roman empire, but outlived it, as Rome weakened and split.
The Church is now coming to dominate culture through an political alliance of corporate interest, secular right leaning conservatism, wealthy philanthropist and ten of millions of Evangelical influenced voters.
The Church’s role is a civil religion focused on external changes in human behavior.
#32
Bam!