If it were laid upon me….

I sat on this post for awhile due to the issues described  here,  internally debating whether or not I should post it. After all, how could I authentically speak to issues of ecclesiology if I struggled with doubts of even belonging to the church militant?  Without regards to such issues, I decided to unveil my thoughts, anyway.

If I ever were to pastor a church, which would only happen if God has a great sense of irony and loves to use the weak, the foolish, those prone to sin and despises it, and those with no leadership or interpersonal skills, these are some things I would insist upon:

• Sundays would not be a polished affair with state-of-the-art audio and visual accouterments. Musical instruments would probably be in the back of the church. Focus is to be on the Word unfolded so as to feed the sheep, not on a musical performance.  I would refuse to play any music that was programmed to draw in people who would not otherwise go to church.

• I would never, never, never, ever lay the burden of the  tithe, an unbiblical practice as taught by the contemporary church,  upon the sheep. I will not pastor over the church of Galatia. There would be relatively few sermons or speeches on financial stewardship. Though important, you don’t need Jesus to teach you to balance your checkbook and save for a rainy day. Plus…I am not so good with money, myself. It just does not mean that much to me as it does others.

• I would probably be bi-vocational.

• There would be no sermons with seven steps to this or five keys to that. Legalism lite leads to Jesus lite. Legalism is a path that leads to Hell

• I would do my best to talk a lot about Christ using few if any personal anecdotes. I want you to learn about the Messiah, not about me. If I cannot teach redemptive Biblical history, the historical and true story of Christ alone, by faith alone, by grace alone, by the authority of the Bible alone, to the glory of God alone without telling stories about me and my life experience (boring thought it would be), I do not need to claim to be a pastor. If I ever become a pastor, which is highly unlikely,  I will not be there to entertain you. When I die, I would just as soon be forgotten then be remembered as having been a charismatic leader.

• I would not ask for your personal testimonies, though you are certainly free to share – but, foremost, tell me Christ’s story in church, not yours. Your changed life, though I am happy for you, is not necessarily the Gospel. Paxil changes lives, AA changes lives, art changes lives, Mormonism has changed lives for the better. The Gospel story is what breaths life into rotten corpses. The apostle Peter probably had many interesting stories, but he told Christ’s story every time, all the time.

• There would never, never, ever be any altar call nor any other crass emotional manipulation of the flock. If Jesus and the apostles did not need them, then neither do I need that extra-biblical and rather recent and often detrimental appendage to the Gospel call. No. Sappy. Music. In. Church. Ever. Too, why do I need to close my eyes and bow my head during altar calls? Seriously….

• I would seek to heal you with the Gospel rather the Law. Too many preachers wield the Law like an anvil against the sheep when a salve of grace is called for.

• Preaching would be mostly expostional. Exceptions to expostional preaching might entail, for example, teaching about the lives and doctrines of the early church fathers and martyrs. I would also like to learn and teach on church history. Doing a class on systematic theology in the evenings would be cool, too. Theology is a fundamental part of the church. If I ever pastored a church, it would be lovingly doctrinal. Doctrine is the spine and immune system of the church.

• I would strongly discourage the turning of hobbies into ministries. You like to golf, hunt, and ride motorcycles. Such is fine with me; just don’t baptize them. Let me know when you want to go for a ride though. It would be fun to join with you.

• The crippled, the poor, the mentally ill and emotionally scarred, those not so articulate would welcomed and embraced.   Along the same lines, introverts are welcome and loved. I understand because I am an introvert, too. If you are uncomfortable in certain social circumstances, we can fellowship, you and me, over a cup of coffee or can of beer where ever you are most comfortable. I personally like sweet tea. Occasionally, a shot or two of Evan Williams is fine. Church is not easy, sometimes, for introverts.

• I would insist that the elders and teachers hold the the Doctrines of Grace. If not, you can be a part of the church, cherished and loved deeply, but never teach.

• No. Skits. Ever. No drama teams, either. You want drama, entertainment, go to a theater. The Word, being potent in and of itself, does not need our help. Drama merely adds extraneous layers. As an aside, it amazes me that people can feel comfortable playing the role of Christ in musical dramas and plays. I recall Peter requesting his body to be crucified upside down because he deemed himself to be unworthy to be crucified in the fashion of the Messiah.

• I would not make too big a deal about secondary issues such as eschatology, though they would not be ignored.

• Communion would be a real meal, I think, not a piece of bread or a plastic shot glass of grape juice. Wine would be available if desired. I also am not wed to the amount of water used in baptisms. Sprinkle or dunk, I can accommodate either. No major problems with either paedo and credo-baptism. I see valid Biblical arguments for either, though I lean towards credo-baptism.

• I would never say, as many do from the stage and pulpit, that I would not sacrifice my family for of the church, though I would hope I would never face such circumstances. Such statements, though common, seem strange and present a hopefully false dichotomy. I would die a thousand times for the church of the Christ. If my wife or children are not with me on this, then they turn their backs on the bride and body of Christ. I would not.

• I will not be a Christian culture warrior, ever. I will not try to dress unregenerate corpses up with the Law when they need the Gospel. You want a moral nation above all, have Utah succeed and move there. They are nice, family-friendly, moral people even without the Gospel delivered by the apostles. I would never preach pure moralism. It is the anti-thesis of grace.

• Children will not have to go to kids church when big people church starts if the family wants their children to be with them. Distractions are OK, to a degree, and a part of life, and a part of the body, a part of families. You hear me on this one Furtick and Noble​? I will not force families to split up when the preaching starts. Shame on you, Furtick, for removing Christ from your service for being a distraction to your show…..as you do the the least of these……

• I would probably not let my church grow much beyond 200 people if I had such control. Should it do so, and this would be a great thing, we split into two sister churches, each with trained and approved elders and pastors. If a pastor cannot at least recognize his sheep, he needs to have others step up to help feed, lead and shelter the flock. Move half of them to another pasture.  Keep growing the flock, and then splitting off to new pastures.

• Naive on my part, perhaps, but I would hope the hypothetical church I fed would not be success oriented with tangible metrics. Leave that for businesses. I would not count salivations. That is no ones job but the Holy Spirits; no one else is qualified to separate wheat from chaff. I would hope we would have an orientation of humility. If the seats are filled, fine. If not, fine. It will be Christ who grows His church, not me.

• I would literally die to protect my sheep from wolves, from bad theology. You will not see Wild At Heart or The Shack as recommended reading the churches library. I would never endorse heretics like TD Jakes as have many nominally orthodox pastors.

• I would never, ever have a fund raiser. If someone is in deep financial need, I would sell my possessions, give up vacations, and work overtime to help you. I hope the flock would do the same. Saddest thing I have seen in a long time is a large, evidently wealthy church holding a bake sale fund raiser for a child needing surgery.

• If you want to volunteer to help in the church, that is great. If not, that is fine with me, too. I know your probably work hard to support your family and need no extra burdens. Quite frankly, when you get rid of all the extraneous parking teams, media teams, creative teams, hospitality teams, volunteer coordination team volunteers, you find you do not need volunteers so much.

• Small groups, meh. I have seen them too often be pools of ignorance to which, not so long ago, I helped make even more deeply ignorant. If we do small groups, it will be elder led and Word focused. They are what you make of them.

• If you want a God of second chances, go to where the Gospel is light and cheap. I will give you a Gospel for dead men and women who float hopeless in the dark waters. They don’t need second chances. I, and they, would mess up the second chance, and the third, and the forth. I will point you to a Savior, to paraphrase Paul Capon, if memory serves, who dives into deep water to breath life into sin infused, rotten corpses, dies in the process, and later appears on the shore alive and waits for you having defeated death and sin.

Enough of my orthopraxic utopianism…

Two Faces of Rome

The Bagger 288 stands on the wall and protects us

If not a friend, then at least a co-belligerent…I hope

Early model Bolo with a sour attitude, perhaps….

…boogity, boogity, boogity, indeed…

With every head bowed and every eye closed…

Evangelicals – trivializing faith and baptizing hobbies and sports since, well, a long time ago….

Matthew 6 9:13

“Therefore, you should pray like this: (A)

Our Father in heaven,

Your name be honored as holy. (B)

10 Your kingdom come.

Your will be done

on earth as it is in heaven. (C)

11 Give us today our daily bread. [a]

12 And forgive us our debts,

as we also have forgiven our debtors. (D)

13 And do not bring us into [b] temptation, (E)

but deliver us from the evil one. (F) [c]

[For Yours is the kingdom and the power

and the glory forever. Amen.] [d]

And now on a more serious note, does anyone know of a free or really, really cheap standalone autotune or songify app for WIndows 7?  Thus far, the plugin for Audacity does not work form me, and my Google kung foo is apparently weak.

Something other than the floodgates of heaven opened….

I have been going to a local gigachurch for the last few months, and they sure do preach quite a bit about tithing. Since I didn’t want God to curse me like the preacher said God would do if I did not tithe, I studied up on this tithe thing a little bit and decided to give it a go. Also, and perhaps more importantly, I wanted to see if God would bless me with stuff, overflowing and such, if I did tithe.

On a recent Sunday, during one of the afternoon services, me and my boys, Malachi, Jebediah, Jeremiah, Obadiah, Ebenezer, and Bruce culled the best of our herd of cattle, and some of the other critters from the farm, too, and loaded them up into the cattle trailer. When we got to the church Sunday afternoon, we commenced to unload the cattle and sheep and chickens while sending young Obadiah off to find the churches’ preacher to check out our tithes for flaws like the priests did in the Old Testament. I sent out Ebenezer, the elder son, to look for the storehouse where they keep the tithes, but he could not find it. None of the volunteers that helped us park in the guest parking area knew anything about a storehouse for our tithes. Soon, church security showed up. I thought they were there to help us round up our tithe and help herd them to that hard to find storehouse as they, the cattle and such, were getting restless. I believe church security was a bit unsettled when they arrived at the scene of the tithe, too.

Given the amount of time that had passed since arriving at church and unloading our tithe, the parking lot was getting a bit messy, too, what with the 96°F temperature and the hot asphalt. ‘Nuff said about that, if you know what I mean. Needless to say and cutting to the chase, things did not go as well as I planned, and we still haven’t rounded up Helga, our best milk cow. What I do not understand is this, if some churches are so big on tithing, how come they are so inept​?

Perhaps just for awhile

To the few who read this blog on a regular basis, there may be a change of its core content and in its direction for a while as I work through some rather difficult theological issues and wrestle with some personal issues that are fellow travelers with the aforementioned and unmentioned theological issues.

What I hope may eventually be birthed from this caldron is perhaps chapter four of An Ecclesiastical Journey, something I have been wanting to do for quite a while. I hope for a more firmly grounded faith. On the other hand, I may end up in another space altogether as I try piece some foundational things back together.  Failing to find a way to do so will leave me with no option but to sadly walk away from what I have held dear for the last few years. What I will journey to if I cannot piece it all together, well I am not so sure.

Cryptic, I know, and I could ramble on, but that is the best I can do for now.

In the interim, I may do some more writing on evolution, Darwinism, ID and creationism. I may also indulge in more hobby related blogging. Time will tell.

Finding A Waterfall

Finally, closure. First, YouTube informed me that the video was a bit too long, so I edited out about 10 minutes. Next, I embedded music (selections from the album Banba by Clannad) and was informed by YouTube the music was copyrighted. Even though I am a bit new at producing and uploading videos to YouTube, I should have considered both issues before uploading. Eventually, I decided upon some public domain ambient music that sounds a bit derivative of Brian Eno’s compositions to accompany the video, and I think it works well with the video to set the desired ambiance. Also, I had no idea I made such strained and unflattering facial expressions while paddling. I tried, but I could not bend Windows Live Movie Maker to my will to edit out those painful to watch segments. That all being said,I hope you enjoy this amateurish production as much as I enjoy producing it.

Trite expressions and counterfeit Gospels…

Being a bit curmudgeonly at times, I allow some things to really get under my skin, one of which is trite expressions of faith and errant ‘Gospels’. Here is one example of an errant Gospel of which I have previously written:

Listened to a podcast a few weeks ago wherein a megachurch pastor named Robert Morris, guest speaker at the local multi-site gigachurch, make an absolute mess of the topic of tithing. The ‘sermon’ delivered was, quite frankly, a train wreak of epic proportions. He ends his confusion of Law and Gospel with a somewhat inverted invitation to salvation. Given that he just put Christians under the bondage and curse of the Law (the apostle Paul would have told Morris to emasculate himself) with his take on tithing, he then asks the non-Christians in the audience to give to God an even more epic and extravagant gift than the tithe to God, their hearts.

Now, we have some profound problems here. First, who does the giving in the true transaction of the Gospel, the Christ or the unregenerate? Second,  biblically, how is the unregenerate heart described? Well, I can tell you extravagant is not one of the adjectives. Deceitful is perhaps a better description. Below is an excerpt from the aforementioned NewSpring podcast.

LOL…Church signs

I did, however, did see a PCA church sign in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee that read “By faith alone, by grace alone” as their Sunday sermon topic.