howard stern wants to have prayer

I came across this article in while reading the Christian Post. It seems that Stern and crew wants this pastor to come on and take on all caller with thier most challenging question and are willing to give him a hour of programming to do it. While I think that the idea is great it would seem the the motive might not be as honorable. ck it out and see what you think

carson by the ton

if you happen to be a lover of D.A. Carson more than N.T. Wright then you must drop by Andy Naselli's Blog for for his pleathora of Carson Mp3 links. that's all pure carson by the truck load.

rosie siad it is enron's fault

Rosie: Was 9/11 inside job to protect Enron?Blog suggests destruction of federal investigations factor in terror attacks

i could tell you more but it would just blow your mind. Ck it out here.

seeing the bible in modern maps

Baylor is #1

Baylor ranks highest of peers
[3/23/2007]

Relevant magazine ranked Baylor the No. 1 Christian college in the United States in its current issue. The magazine, whose tagline is "God. Life. Progressive Culture." rated colleges on academics, student life and spiritual life. The grades in each category were averaged and the magazine then listed the top five. Read the full story here.

Other winners included, in descending order, Calvin College, Pepperdine University, Wheaton College and Biola University - not so bad neighbors.

fight the good fight, not hit and run

I love pedagogary, especially when it is Christian higher education. This stuff butters my toast for some reason. As of late in the baptist circles it seems there is a fight to be a good school of real scholarship and Baptist. I don't see the problems myself with the mass exodus of colleges and university running from their Baptist breathern there must be some that feel a bit stiffled. In the Christian Post today there is an article about five N.C. colleges that want to seperate thier schools from their supporting brothers of faith. It seems in all cases of this type of sepertation, the problem stated is they feel that they need to be able to choose and appoint thier own trustees so they can be successul school of academia.

As you would have guessed i see it a bit diffrent. First if you can not intergrate you faith with scholarhsip you must not be the right leadership. Sorry if it hurts your feelings, but the Cross was public and so is our faith. faith and education must be fused or it will "Harvard" on us in a heart beat. Second, if you feel a man or woman is the proper trustee after countless hours of prayer and that this is the person that you feel God is calling to be a servant to the school as a trustee and they feel the same call, then it is your job to sell them. Just like the President has to market his appointees you will need to do the work to show your constituents that this is the right person. If the fact that you are not willing to do the work because it was be too time consuming and to diffcult comes into play you must not think that is truely the right person. It if is just to hard, then once again I would suggest that the problem might be that you are not postioned in the right place rather than everyone else is wrong because they have not been swayed by your lackadaisical attempt to persuade minds that hold diffrent views. This would be like giving up on the lost becuase they don't see it our way. oh, wait! We have done this too. It seems to me that administrators should fight the good fight and not resort to a childish

guerilla hit and run tatic.

Strong words yes, but I think they they have merit and are worthy of critital thinking.

Warning: more thoughs on such subjest are likely to be posted in the future.

banned for all the right reasons

Sometimes in life things puzzle me. Others leave me completely flabbergasted

Case in points is the the article featuring Brown University reinstating a suspened Christian group.

The thing the boggle the mind first is the lack of a known reason for being suspened. It almost seems that if the is no reason for the dismissal then it should have never have happened. maybe they jsut for got. maybe Brown actually violated someone's rights. who knows.

The second boggler is the lack of Christian love and compassion shown by "Allen Callahan, associate Brown chaplain, wrote in an e-mail to students that the group's leaders were 'contemptuous and dishonest'." wow, talk about grace and forgiveness.

the third and final mind blower(also the probably reason they were booted) is this, "The fellowship is aligned with a denomination that embraces Calvinism, opposes ordaining women and gays, and considers the Bible the inerrant Word of God." How evil they must be for seeing God as supreme and soveriegn, holding to a conservative and historically correct view of the pastorate, and to top it all of the really believe the Bible. how what were they thinking.

better or worse

For all though who have been waiting ...

I have finally been to the doctor now and have found out only minimal information about what caused me to black out while driving home from Seminary last week. The good doctor is now ordering many more tests and procedures, but she don't feel that they will reveal much of anything. Acutally, the doctor suspects the test will come back looking fine. She suggested that the problems is a virus. Now this sounded crazy to me but as I talked with more and more hospital staff I heard more stories of a virus that people have that are also fainting with. Crazy I say. The doc thinks that I had the samething that they had, only I was driving.

Well you may have notices the blog has changed once agin. Now it is truely cool as it has an artic feel with the polar bears theme working to keep things from getting to hot. That is the good news.


Now for the bumper car issue. Last Tuesday, after talking the Dr. Charlie Homles, President of BMA Theological Seminary about setting up annuities for Scholarships and a Dept. Chair. I then proceeded to drive home, but beforei could make my way there I blacked out and regained conciousness about a 1/4 to a 1/2 mile aways. In the process of the I ran two stop lights, crossed four lanes of trafic, and hit one guard rail and almost went over the railing, crossed a nother four lanes of traffic and hit another railing before stopping. Or at least that is wat they tell me. We still do not know why i blacked out, but will be spending a fortune trying to figure out.

oddities

Are oddities and fun facts and odd knowledge you kind of thing. This this might be the site for you....

Factropolis

For Steve

i understadnthe controversy. Hope this helps

http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/augustine/quote.html

of Doctrine

In the essentials we need unity, in the non-essentials we need freedom; but in all things we need love.

- Rupertus Meldenius

of axeheads and fishnets

II Kings 6:1-7 Now the sons of the prophets said to Elisha, "Behold now, the place before you where we are living is too limited for us. (2) Please let us go to the Jordan and each of us take from there a beam, and let us make a place there for ourselves where we may live." So he said, "Go." (3) Then one said, "Please be willing to go with your servants." And he answered, "I shall go." (4) So he went with them; and when they came to the Jordan, they cut down trees. (5) But as one was felling a beam, the axe head fell into the water; and he cried out and said, "Alas, my master! For it was borrowed." (6) Then the man of God said, "Where did it fall?" And when he showed him the place, he cut off a stick and threw it in there, and made the iron float. (7) He said, "Take it up for yourself." So he put out his hand and took it.

Recently I shared this text with the Church I pastor as I shared the burden the Lord had placed on my heart. I began by simply sharing that the man with the axe head was faithful in trying to follow through but could not. In the middle of being faithful and being a servant, the head of the axe he was using had become loosened and fallen into the water. For the would-be lumberjack this was a great travesty. The objective would not be reached, the valued head was lost. There was no hope.

The second man was Elisha, a prophet of God. He was called and anointed by God to be his conduit, to be His voice, to deliver His message and share His vision.

The Servant saw the lost axe head as time to quit and pack it up for all was lost. Elisha, God’s man had a different vision. He was something that may other would not have had the vision for. He saw a stick as the answer. If it was common for a stick to float iron up from the river bottom, then the servant would have thrown a stick in the water. But he did not have the vision for this. The prophet did have a vision. And it was on that was not conventional. Now if he was to have asked the axeman about this he would have told him that it would in float. This is true for us too. We say that it won’t float about many things because we do not have God’s vision. We know that God’s chosen men present God’s plans and not mans, but we hear it all the time that “this won’t float pastor” or “we have tried it before and that won’t float!”


Then I presented to the Church the direction I felt the Lord was moving the Church and the plan that He had laid on my heart to accomplish it.

After this I shared from the Book of Luke


Luke 5:1-9 So it was, as the multitude pressed about Him to hear the word of God, that He stood by the Lake of Gennesaret, (2) and saw two boats standing by the lake; but the fishermen had gone from them and were washing their nets. (3) Then He got into one of the boats, which was Simon’s, and asked him to put out a little from the land. And He sat down and taught the multitudes from the boat. (4)
When He had stopped speaking, He said to Simon, “Launch out into the deep
and let down your nets for a catch.” (5) But Simon answered and said to Him, “Master, we have toiled all night and caught nothing; nevertheless at Your word I will let down the net.” (6) And when they had done this, they caught a great
number of fish, and their net was breaking. (7) So they signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both the boats, so that they began to sink. (8) When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!” (9) For he and all who were with him were astonished at the catch of fish which they had taken;

From Here I explained to the Church that we needed to quit dragging our feet in reaching the community for Christ and to let down our nets and trust Him.



This is the jist of it. let the comments begin.

just not good enough

the stripped down version of the blog was just not happening for me. so i re-did it and juiced it up a bid. not to much thought. now i just need a new picture as the current one is gruesome!!!

things that make you go hmm...

One walking with me observed, with some emphasis, “I do not believe as you do. I am an Agnostic.” “Oh,” I said to him. “Yes. That is a Greek word, is it not? The Latin word, I think, is ignoramus.” He did not like it at all. Yet I only translated his language from Greek to Latin. These are queer waters to get into, when all your philosophy brings you is the confession that you know nothing, and the stolidity which enables you to glory in your ignorance.

~C.H. Spurgeon

happy breath day too who

The music minister at our Church sent this to me ....

http://www.mybirthverse.com/

this site generates a Bible verse just for little ole you on your special day...

who would have ever thought that


i tried it and for my b-day it can up with this ....

Matthew 5:3 NIV
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

to be baptist or not to be

yes that seems to be the question


My blogpal Steve @ Citizen Bezner has been writing about Christian Education. I found the article and think that it is very intrsting and I support some of the student comments. Let me know what you think.

Just posted to day!!!
Student Senate fights for non-Baptist groups

I laid the egg

This was the week before the business meeting and I gave an over view of where I see the Lord taking us. Easter. This will be a big Sunday for us as we will be doing things that we have not done in 35 years and things we have never done before.

Taught from II Kings 6 and Luke 5. It went great. They seemed to be okay wit hit all. No one died, no tears were shed and not even one person fainted. One even said "lead and we will follow." I explained that what we really need to do is have a re-launch and that since we are over 135 years old that I might take some time to turn this big old boat around. So we are praying and planning and plotting. I laid the egg or the ground work (your choice) for the future.


Additionally the church was a buzz this morning because we have a new family visiting and they were nothing like us. They were Afro-American our congregation is generically Anglo. We were dressed country casual they were dressed to the nines in their Sunday best. It was kind of neat to see the people get up and greet them. Electricity was in the air and the places was a buzz. Worship went well. Music was good the preach was said to have been great, but I was preaching so I know it was okay at best :^) This was a couple that I had met the wife on Friday and had talked with her at the Post Office. So many times we talk to people and never see them so this was a definite encouragement.

who is in your pulpit?

I have this weird hang up. As pastor I feel that the Pulpit of the Church that Christ had entrusted me to lead and equip should not be treated like a woman of ill repute. This is not to say that I bar anyone else from preaching or that people that might have different views are not allowed to herald the Word of God from behind it. I do feel that there is a matter of spiritual stewardship and oversight in which that I should not foolhardily let those who would espouse doctrines contrary to Scripture or allow heterodoxy be professed as truth. At times I have presented doctrines and given the various view points of different group and explained each view from Scripture, explained my beliefs and left the final decisions to be made in the heart of the individual. In truth I have asked a friend to come and preach for me sometime that strongly holds a different view than I do but the point is not a major one to me. Additionally I will share with congregation before that there are different views, that I do not hold this one and that we will have further teaching on the subject. We use our Sunday evening services for training and teaching. We are hoping to build up and equip believer to carry the Gospel out in the world on a day in, day out basis.

So does my pulpit protection make me a good pastor or an evil person? Well I would have thought the fore before the latter but I keep getting verbally and intellectually assaulted by people by their view of what I have always felt was the proper act of a Shepherd.

Therefore take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood. For I know this, that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock.
(Act 20:28-29)

I guess I should stop reading some people blogs. They are are depressing me as I never know I was such a vile heretic preaching a false gospel.

In closing I put forward as query, if one brother believed that Jesus was a rock cutter and not a carpenter would that end your fellowship with him. Note – I don’t know anyone who holds this view so I felt it was a safe example.

ding dong the king is dead

This post is made with great sadness.

Last week I was taking a masters in motion class (take a whole semester and cram it into one week) when we began talking aobut Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I brought up in the converstaion that I had never heard anything but a social or liberation gospel message from him. I added that if this was all he preached than he was failing as a Pastor and as a Christain. The Professor Dr. Thom South commented that when he was completing his doctoral work he had a classmate who's PhD. work was on MLK. His friend told him that in all of his research that he only found one account of a possible salvation experience. the account he found was a testimony of Dr. King relating that when his sister and her friend went to the alter when he was about 9 years old that he went to because he did not want her to get something that he was not. this of course is not a true testimony. Hopefully he did fully retrust Christ. Please no flaming hot emails of anger and hatered. The reason I write this is because of a recent article about Dr. King that is not very flattering.

So I leave you with two quotes from the article to bait you into reading it and the link to find it.

"Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and not
concerned about the city government that damns the soul, the economic conditions
that corrupt the soul, the slum conditions, the social evils that cripple the
soul, is a dry, dead, do-nothing religion in need of new blood," King preached
in 1962 to his congregation at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.

King didn't believe the story of Jonah being swallowed by a whale was true, for
example, or that John the Baptist actually met Jesus, according to texts
detailed in the King papers book. King once referred to the Bible as
"mythological" and also doubted whether Jesus was born to a virgin, Carson said.

Writings show King as liberal Christian, rejecting literalism