Church signs.

A local church has my favorite church sign ever. All they post is occasional meetings and some scripture. Perfect.

Is anyone really brought to church by these signs? What is their purpose? This one almost caused me to have an aneurysm induced traffic accident this morning:

Salvation so easy a cave man can do it.

AAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

I can’t even approach the number of ways in which this is wrong. If you’ve got some of your own disturbing church signs, put them here, or better yet, come on over to Theologeeks and add them there.

Techgnostics


New words are interesting to me. Ginormous is in the dictionary now (though blogger spellcheck doesn’t like it, nor the word spellcheck). When I read a comment by Brian Volck at Ekklesia, he used the hyphenation techno-gnosticism. I searched techgnosticism and found lots of links, so now I have a new word for a subject which is getting discussed a lot lately.

It’s easy to see why. This new “medium” which is created and manipulated each day leads to some very obvious disconnects between mind and body. There are plenty of stories about how much more blurred the lines between the worlds of cyberspace and meatspace are becoming.

One of the articles Brian directs us to is the story of a man who plays the online game Second Life to such a degree that it could easily be said that it has become his primary life. But he’s not the only one who is blurring the lines between the real and the hyperreal. IBM employees are now planning a strike in Second Life. Lawsuits are being started over land in Second Life. And, of course, there are new church plants in SL.

If we could just say “it’s one game, a fad, not a trend” then we’d probably have little to discuss, but it’s not. SL is just the easiest thing to point to. Myspace, youtube, facebook, all are aspects of this new world that seems to be growing. There are some who even say there is about a 20% chance we’re living in the matrix already.

I’m not saying it’s all bad or that we should all unplug our computers or stop reading blogs, but we should talk about how we’re affected by the cyberworld, and we should be wary of the ways in which we are separated from the temple of the Holy Spirit when we enter this other world.

Jesus-Do

I recently searched “Jesus-do” which in my mind, means the way of Jesus.

Do (think “dough”) is a word that you’ll see in various martial arts. Taekwondo, karate do, etc.,. It just means “the way of”. Because the early church was sometimes referred to as “the way”, when I think Jesus-Do, that’s what I’m reminded of. Google, however, sees it much differently, and the fact that when I searched it, I didn’t see it as part of the phrase “What would Jesus do?” is funny to me. Thank God for joy given in simple things.

Coffeehouse Theology

Last night three people gathered at a local church, drank some coffee and talked. It was inspiriting. I feel somewhat better than I did in my previous post re: my poor addled brain.

We were gathered to start talking about Christian theology. We spent some time discussing possible subjects and others who might like to participate. Several people couldn’t be there this time, but are planning to join us next time. Next month, we’ll be talking about polygamy. It should be an interesting session and I hope we’ll have a few more folks to share coffee with.

Grace and Peaches.

My brain is unsettled

So I actually have about 5 different things in draft form. I’m at a low point right now, and feeling discouraged about many things. Not that I don’t have too many blessings to count, just that I’m too annoyed with too many things to take time to count them. I think the biggest thing bothering me is the pastor of the church I worship with. I think he’s probably not a good pastor, and though as a United Methodist, I can hope that he’s moved, that bothers me too.

I’m simply not sure that wanting him to go somewhere else is the proper response. I know that UMs are working on improving the itinerancy, and I know that if he had been directed better in the early years of his ministry, our church, and others before, would have benefited, but that doesn’t help me here and now. The church hasn’t trained me properly with how to deal with the loss of a good pastor or the gain of a bad one. I know that the only reason I’m still trying is because God strengthens me. The daily prayer helps.

Lord God, almighty and everlasting Father, you have brought
us in safety to this new day: Preserve us with your mighty
power, that we may not fall into sin, nor be overcome by
adversity; and in all we do, direct us to the fulfilling of your

purpose; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The children are not our future.


I haven’t read this book, but I read an online interview with the author on Globe and Mail, and it reminded me of some points I’ve heard made by other people.

My blog title was provided by a pastor friend who tries to help people understand that our children are here now, have a role in the church and should not be put away for later use.

He provides an example of a church that wanted to start a “youth group” and asked a professional to come and evaluate the needs of the local youth and determine what a youth group might look like for this congregation.

The professional found that in this small church, the three current youth had roles in the choir, church council and missions work. The professional urged the congregation to not worry about a youth group, but to keep doing more of what they were already providing.

I heard a “car talk” type show the other day in which the host mentioned that he had rebuilt an engine, with some help, at the age of 15. We often don’t expect much of our youth, and it’s time we realize that we should not wait for them to grow up before we ask them to participate.

In the Globe and Mail article I referred to, one person does raise a good point:

Why does everybody need to squeeze every last ounce of productivity out of their lives? We are moving so close to a society where you are judged purely by how much money you make and how many hours you can put in at work during a week that it seems no one is smelling the clichéd roses along the road to death.

Who cares if a teenager can work in an office just as well as an adult? They have plenty of time to do that when they are an adult; no need to go back to the ways of the industrial revolution.

Epstein answers :

Many young people would like the opportunity to start a business, own property, compete against adults, make their own medical decisions, live on their own, drink alcohol (responsibly) – or even to retire to a desert island!

But over the last century, society has come to restrict all young people – based simply on age, and no matter how motivated or competent they may be – so that they have virtually no meaningful options whatsoever. . .

The key is to allow young people to enter the adult world as soon as they are ready.

I’m not sure that most adults or youth know when they’re ready to enter adulthood. As a 40 year old male, I am still stunned when I realize that my peers are doctors, teachers and pastors, but I think the church can learn from what Epstein and others are saying about youth in the culture at large.

Our youth can take part in the liturgy; not just as acolytes or ushers or whatever small task we think they won’t mess up, but as readers, worship leaders, choir members and, should they be called, preachers. Having a once a year “youth Sunday” may be a fun way for the congregation to see the youth dress up one Sunday out of the year, but we should help our youth find their way to Christ every Sunday.

That doesn’t mean that I’m calling for a strong “works” checklist that will help youth earn their way into heaven, but I do think the apprenticeship of our youth should be a focus of the church. In a fine blog post about fishing, Kevin Baker mentions how he “grew up learning to throw a net at the feet of my Uncle Roy.” How many of our youth get to see that kind of work in action? Let’s start with worship and see where the Spirit can take us together.

A Masai Creed

This is a creed I came across through a mention in Jaroslav Pelikan’s commentary on Acts. You can find a little more info at Beliefnet. There are some phrases in it that resonate.

We believe in the one High God, who out of love created the beautiful world and everything good in it. He created man and wanted man to be happy in the world. God loves the world and every nation and tribe on the earth. We have known this High God in darkness, and now we know him in the light. God promised in the book of his word, the bible, that he would save the world and all the nations and tribes.

We believe that God made good his promise by sending his son, Jesus Christ, a man in the flesh, a Jew by tribe, born poor in a little village, who left his home and was always on safari doing good, curing people by the power of God, teaching about God and man, showing the meaning of religion is love. He was rejected by his people, tortured and nailed hands and feet to a cross, and died. He lay buried in the grave, but the hyenas did not touch him, and on the third day, he rose from the grave. He ascended to the skies. He is the Lord.

We believe that all our sins are forgiven through him. All who have faith in him must be sorry for their sins, be baptized in the Holy Spirit of God, live the rules of love and share the bread together in love, to announce the good news to others until Jesus comes again. We are waiting for him. He is alive. He lives. This we believe. Amen.

Things that go well.


I studied English in school and spent a lot of time critiquing and breaking things down to see how they worked. My nature has included too much of seeing what’s wrong with things, and in combination with my critical nature, the two have not always been helpful.

So I need to take time to notice things that are going well, and one of the things that goes well at our church is the Angel Food Ministry. You can watch the youtube clip to see a little about what it is, though the video comes from the main program, not specifically the church I live in.

We started doing Angel Food more than a year ago, and I have to say that the members of the church just said “sounds like something God would have us do.” and jumped on board.

This month, Saturday the 25th to be exact, we’ll have about 50 households come through our church and for $28 they’ll overfill a ream of paper sized box with good food. Some of these people will be using food stamps to make their purchase, some will be coming because they just want to save money, and a few will be coming because we are giving them a box to help them get through difficult times.

Now, if you dig very deep, you’ll find some prosperity gospel folks attached to Angel Food, and of course, if you want me to critique that, I can. But I can’t see any problem with a church participating in what is basically a great big food co-op.

I have had people cry from receiving their Angel Food boxes, though generally it’s not for a box that fed them, but for a box that allowed them to feed others. I think specifically of some people who take the boxes to their elderly parents who live on a very fixed income.

Lots of churches participate in Angel Food. It’s a growing thing. At our church, which has a regular attendance of about 120, we have enough volunteers each month to take orders, make labels and pass out food. Thanks be to God for helping us to help others.

Not Reading (again)

In my previous post, I mentioned the frustration of teaching Christians who don’t read much. It seems to be a trend: One in four adults say they read no books at all in the past year.

These two points are interesting: People from the South read a bit more than those from other regions, mostly religious books and romance novels…those who said they never attend religious services read nearly twice as many as those who attend frequently.

The first part is funny because I live in the South and religious books and romance novels are almost exclusively what gets read in this house. Sometimes it’s funny to be pegged by a statistic.

The second part is odd because of how many religious books get read each year, and yet people who are in church/synagogue/other house of worship aren’t the ones reading those books?

I’m no good at analyzing surveys, but this does seem to have some interesting information.